Free Knock Me for a Loop by Heidi Betts

stocked the cupboards and fridge with easy-to-reach and easy-to-prepare foods, and gotten the apartment set up for someone with limited mobility.
    But their sympathies had grown short and their tempers long when he’d blown off his first appointment at the rehabilitation center. And then the second and the third and the …
    They’d tried finagling, browbeating, even bribery. But what was the point?
    He’d seen the X-rays. He’d heard the doctor explaining his injuries to the others even before he’d been fully conscious. It was bad.
    In a word, his knee was fucked up.
    He could be early to every physical therapy appointment, do every exercise they recommended and then some, and there were still no guarantees he’d ever play hockey again. In fact, chances were good—better than good—that he would never return to the ice. He’d be lucky if he ever walked again, and even that would most likely be with a limp.
    So why the hell should he bother?
    All he knew was hockey. He’d never done anything else, wasn’t qualified for anything else. And even if he had been, who wanted to go from being the star goalie for a professional hockey team that had been to the playoffs seven times and brought home the Stanley Cup four of those years, to selling insurance or asking, “Would you like fries with that?”
    It wasn’t like he needed the money—he had enough socked away to last him three lifetimes—so he would just as soon be left alone.
    His friends thought he was wallowing, giving up. He preferred to think of it as cutting his losses. Why waste time or energy on getting his knee to function at fifty or seventy-five percent when it still wouldn’t put him back in his Rockets jersey?
    “I like being a stubborn ass,” he tossed back in response to Gage’s charge. “It suits me.” Just like his ribald T-shirt collection—the one he was wearing now Said THEY CALL IT PMS BECAUSE “MAD COW DISEASE”
    WAS ALREADY TAKEN—and the basketball hoop fastened to the wall above his laundry hamper suited him.
    Before they’d broken up, Grace used to tease that he was a little kid at heart. When she was in a good mood, at least. When she was angry with him, she’d complained that he had a Peter Pan complex and needed to grow the hell up.
    The first time she’d accused him of such a thing, he’d had to look it up. He’d thought being called Peter Pan meant he liked to wear green tights and was light in the loafers. Instead, it simply meant there was a part of him that didn’t want to grow up.
    And what was so wrong with that, anyway? What was wrong with having a sense of humor, being young at heart, not taking life too seriously? As far as he was concerned, there were a lot of people in the world who could stand to loosen up a little and let the sticks fall out of their asses. Maybe a corny T-shirt or two would do them some good.
    “You’re not just being stubborn,” Dylan tried again, his tone more soothing and cajoling than Gage’s, “you’re being stupid.”
    Well, so much for soothing, Zack thought with a mental eye-roll.
    “You’re only hurting yourself, Zack. No one else is keeping you in that wheelchair. No one else is turning you into a pathetic, housebound invalid. That’s all on you.”
    “Gee, thanks for the news flash,” he responded with heavy sarcasm.
    “That’s it,” Gage bit out, pushing back to his feet. “I’m done with this shit. Sit there and mope. Feel sorry for yourself. Crawl into a hole and hide from life. Whatever.”
    The last was delivered with a healthy dose of disgust and frustration while Gage towered over him, face angry and muscled torso bulging with barely restrained violence.
    “But don’t expect me to hold your hand or coddle you any more than we already have. I’m out of here.”
    Leaning down, he grabbed an open bag of Cheez Doodles from the table and pitched them in Zack’s direction, hitting him square in the chest and sending air-puffed snack pieces and