Marnie finally meets my eyes. “See? They didn’t need you to finish it.”
“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have been out there.”
“It means you can stop trying to be a martyr.” But her voice is softer now. Less angry, more relieved. “You’re okay. That’s what matters.”
The door bursts open and the team floods in—sweaty, exhausted, victorious. Rodriguez sees me on the table and grins.
“Cap! We did it!”
“Without me.”
“Yeah, well, we figured you’d done enough. Scoring the game winner and all.” He punches my good shoulder lightly. “Plus Marnie looked like she’d hunt us one-by-one if we let you back out there.”
Marnie doesn’t deny it.
The team celebrates around me and I sit there with ice on my shoulder, watching them, feeling the ache in my ribs and head and knowing Martinez got exactly what he wanted.
He got me off the ice. Made it personal. Made me lose focus.
And we won anyway, but all I can see is the look on Marnie’s face when she told me I wasn’t going back out.
Like losing me to a hockey game would matter in a way that had nothing to do with my job or her job or anything except us.
And that scares me more than any hit ever could.
23
MARNIE
I’ve treatedthousands of hockey injuries.
I know the statistics on concussions, separated shoulders, broken bones. I understand intellectually that getting hurt is part of the job, that these men sign up for it willingly, that Roman has been playing this game his entire life and knows the risks better than I do.
None of that prepared me for the sickening crack of him hitting the boards at full speed, Martinez riding him the whole way down.
“Fuck,” Jake breathes beside me as Roman crumples to the ice and doesn’t get up immediately.
Everything slows.
The refs whistling. Medical signaling. Roman still not moving.
And me, frozen, my training short-circuited by the sight of him motionless on the ice.
“Dr. Walker.” Barrett’s voice cuts through the paralysis. “You’re up.”
Right. I’m not his girlfriend watching from the stands. I’m the team’s head PT and I have a job to do.
We’rein his apartment a few hours later, and the team actually pulled off a win despite the chaos.
That should feel good. Should feel like vindication.
But the sound of him hitting the boards is playing on repeat in my brain. The way he didn’t get up right away. The blood.
He’s sitting shirtless on the couch now, the bruising already spectacular across his shoulder and chest, scrolling through his phone looking at game highlights like he didn’t just get his bell rung an hour ago.
“It was a clean hit,” he says without looking up.
I freeze halfway to the kitchen and turn to look at him. “What did you just say?”
