Goading The Goalie – Melissa Williams

Not good. Barely functional. But I can take a small inhale and not feel like a fireball and a cactus are fighting for supremacy in my throat. Progress, I guess. Squinting toward the far end of my room, I can see the light leaking around my curtains is soft and gray. I’m getting really tired of not knowing what time it is. Every pill and cough syrup I take seems to have a sleeping aid in it.

Or maybe I’m just exhausted from this damn illness. My hand instinctually reaches toward my nightstand…but my cell isn’t there. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize where it must be. With Joey. Hadn’t Sidney said something last night and this morning about Joey calling him? My lungs still burn when I inhale too deeply, and my head is doing this dull, persistent thud-thud-thud that feels like someone’s rhythmically kicking the inside of my skull. But the fever haze is thinner. My thoughts move less like sludge and more like…very thick pudding.

I snort a laugh at my dumb joke and trigger a coughing fit. “You okay in there, Mom?” Joey calls from the other room. Is there a bit of annoyance mixed in with his concern? “Fine,” I croak back as loudly as I can. Which isn’t loud at all. I force myself upright, gripping the blanket until the room steadies. The door to my bedroom is cracked open, and from the living room, I hear the unmistakable sound of TV chatter.

Relief loosens every muscle in my body. Good, Joey’s distracted and will give me some space for the next thirty minutes so I can clean up a bit. I feel like sweat is caked onto me. And I don’t even want to look in the mirror to see what’s happening with my hair. If I have the strength today, I’ll double condition it in the shower and pray it all brushes out in the end.

I sit there for a second, not ready to attempt standing again and breathing carefully. It’s then I notice a bright yellow square note on my nightstand and a basket filled to the brim with sick-girl supplies. And oh. My. God. Did he write me index card instructions? That man. Damn it, that man was sneaky. I don’t even recall him being in my room before he left for his team practice. How in the world. With a shaky hand, I pick up one of the index cards.

Copyright © 2026 by Melissa Williams Production Copyright © 2026 by Kobo Originals This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Edited and proofread by One Love Editing Cover design by Steamy Designs Production by Crius Group Hulshout All rights reserved. For information about permissions to reproduce this book address Rakuten Kobo, 150 John Street, 5th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3E3.

ISBN 9781779671752 Website: www.kobo.com/originals OceanofPDF.com Table of Contents Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four OceanofPDF.com PROLOGUE SIDNEY The first time I felt the prickles of anxiety, I was fifteen and thought I was in the first stages of frostbite.

My fingertips started to tingle, and the air in my lungs felt like slime, heavy and slow moving. My Juniors team had been practicing on an outdoor rink for a change of scenery, so being cold was part of the charm. I was used to being cold. This was different. It felt different…and kind of scary. I wish I could say that I wasn’t dramatic about it…but I can’t. After five minutes of struggling, I waved for a time out.

The head coach and goaltending coach came skating over when they noticed I wasn’t immediately coming to them. My heart was beating too fast, my head spinning with confusion and fear. I’d tried to move forward, to reach out to them, but my limbs quickly turned to lead. My body was getting heavier and heavier by the second. When the coaches finally got to me, I was convinced I was dying.

They’d taken one look at my panicked eyes through my goalie’s helmet and immediately dragged me off the ice for assessment. It was only after half an hour of observation and tests that they concluded what was wrong with me. Nerves. I just had a case of bad nerves, and I’d let it consume me.

“You just gotta play through the pain,” my coach told me later.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5f81f554d63a32ac
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,379,424 bytes (1.316 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781779671752
• Pages: 176
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 240.15 minutes
• Total Words: 48,030
• Total Characters: 260,426
• Average Words per Page: 272.9
• Average Characters per Page: 1479.69

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