Page 105 of The Goalie in Room 1

“That’s ’cause faces can’t talk.” He bent my knee farther.

I waited for pain.

Nothing.

“The swelling’s up,” Matteo said, straightening my leg again. “Your motion is still good. No new pain. Nothing here is setting off alarms, but we’re backing down today.”

The breath left me slowly.

“So I didn’t fuck it up?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I’m not seeing anything alarming. We’ll keep you on both crutches today, manage the swelling, and reassess.”

I nodded, but my gaze had already moved to my phone beside me.

For weeks, Thad had been there before anyone finished an assessment. His hands would’ve been on my knee. His questions would’ve come faster than I could answer them. He would’ve known something felt different before I worked up the nerve to admit it.

Now I didn’t even know whether he was in the building.

“Want me to update Thad?” Matteo asked.

The question scraped over something raw.

“He’s busy.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Matteo held my gaze for another second before turning toward the resistance bands.

I reached for my phone anyway.

No messages.

Of course there weren’t. Thad was probably rebuilding a shoulder destroyed on the ice. He had patients who actually needed him.

I was fine. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and turned the phone face down.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

Matteo handed me a band. “Less than you want.”

Same as everything else in my shitty-ass life.

Matteo put me through the kind of session usually reserved for children and the nearly dead. Easy range of motion. A few quad sets. Ice.

Every time I looked across the room, Eli was still there.

He bitched through every exercise his therapist gave him, but he did them. By the time she cut him loose, sweat drenched the kid’s clothes, but the anger seemed more controlled.

Eli stopped beside my table. “You here tomorrow?”

“Nope.”

His expression closed.

Fuck.