“Win, you don’t need to—”
“Oh.” She stops scrolling. Tilts her head. “Oh, Tori.”
“What?”
She turns the screen toward me. It’s a team photo from some charity event—Zayden in a fitted suit, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, dark eyes smoldering.
“This is your patient?” Winnie zooms in. “This man right here? With the whole... brooding lumberjack meets Calvin Klein model thing going on?”
“He doesn’t look like that in real life.”
“Liar.” She swipes to another photo. Him on the ice this time, helmet off, hair damp with sweat, jersey stretched across shoulders that suddenly seem way broader than I remembered. “God, look at his hands. Those are dad hands. I bet he builds furniture on the weekends.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And that jawline? That’s genetic unfairness, is what that is.” She sighs dramatically. “No wonder you have a crush.”
“I don’t have a crush.”
She gives me a look that says she’s known me too long for this. “Sure you don’t. Question two: on a scale of one to ten, how badly do you want to sleep with this man?”
“Winnie.”
“It’s a valid question! I need to assess the situation.”
I drain the rest of my wine and signal the waiter for another. “Eleven. Maybe twelve.”
“Noted.” She grins like this news delights her. “Question three: is there an actual rule against this? Like, in the employee handbook?”
I’ve thought about this. A lot. “Not... explicitly. There’s stuff about professional conduct and not engaging in relationships that could create conflicts of interest. But it’s vague. It’s not like there’s a line that says ‘no banging the hockey players.’”
“So you wouldn’t get fired.”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe not fired, but...” I sigh. “It’s complicated. I’ve worked really hard to be taken seriously in this field. If people found out I was sleeping with a player, that’s allanyone would see. I’d be ‘the PT who slept with Zayden Bishop,’ not ‘the PT who’s good at her job.’”
Winnie’s expression softens. “Like what happened to that woman you told me about.”
“Carla Drake.” Even saying her name makes my stomach twist. “She was brilliant, Win. Like, genuinely brilliant. I interned with her my junior year—she was the head PT for the basketball program, and everyone knew she was going places. NBA, Olympics, whatever she wanted.”
“What happened?”
“She fell for one of the players. He was a senior, projected first-round draft pick, charming as hell.” I trace the rim of my wine glass, remembering. “They thought they were being careful. Secret relationship; no one at work knew. Except someone always knows, right? His ex-girlfriend found out and went all scorched earth on social media. Screenshots of texts, photos, the whole thing.”
Winnie winces. “Oh no.”
“Yeah, it was a nightmare. The university launched an investigation. Carla maintained nothing happened until after she was no longer his PT, which might have even been true—she’d transferred him to another therapist. But it didn’t matter. The optics were bad, and the athletic department needed someone to blame.”
“Let me guess. Not the star basketball player.”
“He got a stern talking-to and a reminder to ‘be more discreet.’ That’s it. He got drafted that spring, signed a multi-million dollar contract, and last I checked, he’s starting for the Celtics.” I take a long sip of wine. “Carla got fired. Quietly,so they could avoid a lawsuit, but fired. And word travels fast in sports medicine. Every time she applied somewhere, they’d already heard the rumors. She couldn’t get hired anywhere near a professional team again.”
“That’s... that’s so unfair.”
“Last I heard, she’s doing physical therapy at a retirement home in Ohio. Which is fine; it’s good work, but—” I shake my head. “She was supposed to be working with Olympians. She was that good. And one relationship ended all of it.”
Winnie is quiet for a moment. “But that was her situation. Different circumstances, different—”
“Different how? She was a woman in sports medicine who got involved with an athlete. I’m a woman in sports medicine who’s...” I trail off.
