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Or maybe it meant she was professional enough to put personal stuff aside. That was worse, somehow. The idea that I’d become another player she was tracking. That I’d made myself small enough to fit back into the box labeled “patient.”

My fingers moved before my brain caught up, and I typed out a reply. Thank you. I’m going to win tonight.

I also wanted to type, I love you.

My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. It would be so easy and so hard to do.

The crowd's roar echoed down the hallway. My team was on the ice, warming up. The game would start soon. Win this, and maybe I’d earn the right to beg. Lose, and I’d beg anyway.

I thought, This one’s for you.

I turned off my phone and tossed it into my locker.

My equipment bag sat open at my feet.

I reached in and pulled out the instruction sheet. The original, not the backup I kept at home.

Her handwriting covered the margins. 3 sets. Hold 30 sec. No cheating.

The smiley face she’d drawn sat in the bottom corner, faded but still visible.

I traced it with my thumb.

It was warm from being in my bag all day. Or maybe from my hands. I’d taken it out twenty times since we left the hotel. Each time telling myself I’d put it back and leave it alone.

I never did.

She’d believed I could heal. That I was worth the effort of those early mornings and late nights.

I’d spent weeks proving her right about my body.

Tonight, I had to prove her right about everything else.

I tucked the sheet back into my bag and straightened. My hip pulled slightly, though it wasn’t pain, just the deep muscle work she’d warned me about. Progress, she’d called it.

The stretches came automatically now. Hip flexor first, feeling the tug along the front of my thigh. I held it for thirty seconds, counting in my head the way she’d taught me.

Breathe through it, Brashe. Don’t hold your breath. Her voice echoed in my skull.

I switched to the adductor work, lying on the floor beside my stall, the cold concrete pressing against my back. I extended my right leg, holding the stretch, and felt her hands ghost over the muscle. She wasn’t here, but I knew exactly where she’d press, where she’d adjust my angle, and where she’d tell me to go deeper.

Feel that? That’s the adhesion releasing. You’re doing great.

I finished the third set and sat up. My hands were steady now. The shaking from earlier was gone, replaced by something solid.

She’d put me back together. Not only my hip, but all the broken parts I’d been carrying since I was a kid who thought his only value was stopping pucks.

I stood, grabbed my mask, and headed for the tunnel toward ice that smelled like cold rubber. The crowd’s roar got louder with every step. Purple jerseys everywhere, fans screaming, the energy crackling through the building.

I paused at the tunnel entrance, one hand on the gate.

Weeks ago, I’d walked into a treatment room and sat on a table while a woman with green eyes and a tight bun put her hands on my hip and made me believe I could heal.

She’d looked at me like I was worth the effort of early mornings and purple sticky notes and hands that knew exactly where I was broken.

I pushed off the wall and headed out onto the ice.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR