1
JACE
“I’m not doing fucking yoga.” My voice rings out across the training gym, and a dude on the leg press glances over at us.
Savanna, the physio, huffs out a breath, and I’m sorry I’m irritating her, but this treatment plan sucks.
“You need yoga.” She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me.
Savanna’s not the first medical professional to glare at me. I have a habit of annoying people, particularly during the past year of my long recovery.
“What I need are dead lifts. I can get better without flopping around in a scented room with some asshole’s foot in my face.”
I’m an Army Ranger, for fuck’s sake. I don’t need some woo-woo deep breathing and navel-gazing to get my body combat-ready. What I need is to get released from this place and go back into the field.
“It’s not like that.”
Savanna is nothing if not persistent. She’s had to put up with my complaining ass for the last six weeks since I arrived at Jake’s Retreat, and she’s not going to back down now.
“You can dead lift a hundred pounds, but you can’t touch your toes. Your body needs to stretch.”
My leg got twisted up on a mission gone bad in a Middle Eastern country I can’t admit to being in. My official record says I was on a training exercise in Germany, and that’s the story I’ve been told to peddle. It doesn’t matter where I was; the result is the same. A bomb went off; I was thrown in the air and crushed by a wall, and suffered torn ligaments, a fractured hip, and a massive dent to my ego. That was twelve months ago. I’ve had the surgery; I’ve done the work to walk again. What I need now is to get fit and combat-ready.
I was such a pain in the ass in the field hospital that they sent me here, thinking the mountains of North Carolina would aid my recovery. And now they want me to do yoga like some domesticated metro-male. I’ll be growing a perfect beard and sipping craft beer next. Fuck that.
“I’m healed. I can walk on my leg. What do I need to do to get back to Ranger standards?”
Savanna looks away and shakes her head.
“What do you need to do to live without pain is the question you need to ask yourself, Jace, and yoga is a part of that.”
She huffs out a long sigh and picks up her tablet, turning the conversation to the safer ground of my exercise program this week.
I don’t mean to take it out on Savanna. She’s a good physio, and I’m the patient from hell.
We both know I’m not combat-ready. I can walk and I can run, but when I did a four-mile run on the treadmill last week, I came in at thirty-one minutes. That time wouldn’t even get me past the qualifiers. And it hurt like hell afterward. It didn’t help that I twisted my ankle helping Dean get his boy back a few weeks ago.
Damn, that felt good though. Working with a team, making a plan, getting shit done. That’s what I’ve been trained for all my life. That’s what I’m good at. What I’m not good at is sitting around in bed with nothing to do but stare at a mountain all day, even if it is fucking beautiful.
There’s a grunt from the other side of the gym and the clanking of a barbell hitting the mat as a singlet-clad muscled man comes out of a hundred and fifty pound deadlift. If he’s here, then he must be recovering from something, but I don’t see his physio breathing down his neck about putting restrictions on his gym activity. Watching the guy load up more weights makes me impatient. Without the Rangers, I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore.
“Let’s leave it here for today.” Savanna doesn’t mention the yoga again, and for that I’m thankful.
“Do your exercises, and I’ll see you same time next week.”
My hip is stiff as I leave the gym, but I hold myself upright and don’t let her see any sign of a limp. If I want her and the doc to sign me off, then I can’t show how much my injury still aches.
But I’ve been hurt before. It will all come out right.
The gym is in the main building of Jake’s Retreat, with the treatment rooms down the hall and Joel’s office to the right.
I’m wondering if I should stop in and see him and ask if there’s any work he needs doing around the place. I’ve been doing some basic maintenance while I’m here, anything to pass the time.
As I step into the corridor, I almost bump into a woman coming from the direction of reception.
She’s holding a bunch of rolled-up mats that block her vision, and I try to dodge out of the way, but I’m too slow, and she walks right into me. The mats go flying and she stumbles, and my instincts kick in. My arm shoots out and I catch her around the waist, but I’m unsteady on my leg and we both crash into thewall. Her soft body rolls onto mine, and my arm tightens around her waist, keeping her upright and pressed against me.
Her eyes widen and her mouth pops open, and a scent I can’t name fills my senses.
