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She was looking at me. Not at her hands, but at my face. Hers had lost that cool, professional expression and taken on…

I didn’t know what it was.

She blinked and went back to work, her hands continuing their steady pressure. I stared at the ceiling tiles and tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person.

By the time she’d finished, my hip felt like it had been beaten with a hammer and then lit on fire.

“Ice the area when you’re awake,” she said, stepping back. “Twenty minutes on, twenty off. And do these stretches.” She handed me a printed sheet with diagrams and instructions.

I took it.

“We’ll do this twice a day,” she said. “Early morning and late afternoon. Don’t skip the sessions.”

“What if I do?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “Then you’ll reinjure it in the first period of game one, and I’ll get to tell Coach Beecham and your teammates that I told you so.” She tilted her head. “It’s your choice.”

I’d be back tomorrow.

“I’ll schedule you in for eight and four each day,” she said. “Don’t be late.”

I slid off the table, testing my weight. The muscle ached, but it felt looser now. Better, actually.

Tablet tucked to her side, she strode toward her desk, dismissing me. As she should.

My apartment was dark when I got home.

I dropped my bag and stood in the kitchen with the instruction sheet in my hands, admiring her neat handwriting. She’d numbered each stretch with little arrows showing the direction of movement. At the bottom, she’d written, Ice 20 min after stretching. Don’t skip this. Next to it, she’d drawn a little frowny face. She probably drew them for everyone. A little thing like that didn’t mean anything.

I kept staring at it anyway.

My jaw ached. I’d been clenching it since I’d left the treatment room. She’d touched me today, placing her hands on my body in a careful, competent way that had been completely impersonal.

I’d wanted to tell her that I remembered the picnic. How pretty she’d looked in her yellow dress. How the look she’d given me had felt amazing until I ruined it.

I’d behaved like an idiot at the picnic. The real reason I’d shown up late today was because I’d sat in my truck trying to figure out how to be in the same room with her without making it worse.

I couldn’t tell her any of that.

You’re not here to feel, Kedish. You’re here to stop pucks. My first coach had told me that when I was fourteen. After he’d said it enough, I’d learned to stop feeling much of anything.

I stared at the frowny face again.

I was so fucked.

Tossing the paper onto the sofa, I did the stretches. All of them. Then I did them again, following her arrows exactly, making sure the angles were right.

The ice went on for exactly twenty minutes. I set a timer. When it went off, I looked at the sheet again. At the little frowny face.

Tomorrow morning. Eight AM.

I was going to be early.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ELLIE

Iarrived at the treatment room at 7:42 the next morning with coffee from the place down the street and my professional armor strapped on tight.