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“Welcome to the Longdale Lake Resort,” he says to her. Something like a smile forms on his face.
“Thanks. It’s been amazing so far.” She pats her forehead with the towel resting over her shoulder. “I’m an athletic trainer and so I thought I’d help Alec with his knee while I’m here.”
Sebastian gives a grunt of surprise, and it’s laced with approval. “Great. He hasn’t exactly been taking the best care of it. Our mom is pretty upset about it.”
He’s mentioning Mom now? “I’m standing right here,” I say.
Oakley’s face is guarded. “It’s the least I could do after witnessing that fall.” She shudders. “He’s lucky it wasn’t worse.”
My sigh is heavy. “People fall off treadmills all the time. I’m fine.”
Both Sebastian and Oakley give me that look. The one that says they don’t think I know what I’m talking about. I’m used to seeing it from Sebastian, but coming from Oakley, it’s weird. Like she’s still on the Wolves’ staff, telling me bad news about my knee.
“I better get going,” I say as I rip a towel across the back of my neck.
“See you tomorrow,” Oakley says. There’s a hesitation in her voice.
“Sure. Thanks,” I manage before leaving the gym. Maybe Oakley and Sebastian will hit it off. As for me, I won’t be getting into a relationship anytime soon. Or ever again.
When I met Callie junior year at the University of Oklahoma, it felt like I’d met the person I was meant to be with. She was my person.
So what am I supposed to do whenmy personsuffers terminal injuries from a four-wheeler accident? To make things worse, I wasn’t even there. She’d gone camping with family while I was at an away game.
I don’t know how I can move on from that. It feels like when people, namely my brothers, tell me I need to move on, they’re telling me to fly to Saturn and set up a colony there.
Both scenarios feel equally impossible.
Chapter 7
Oakley
“Slide your foot so that it still touches the floor the whole way,” I say to Alec and I know I’m not super sweet about it.
I should be. He’s not my patient, exactly. He’s not the players I used to train back in my former life.
Except there’s all sorts ofdeja vuhappening right now in this super nice resort gym and I’m on edge. Cranky.
I sit back on my heels, making mental notes about how the muscles and ligaments of Alec’s leg slide across each other—it’s a work of art. And for some reason, it only heightens my sense of crankiness.
This may also have something to do with the bag of chocolate-covered cinnamon bears I consumed last night. After my run yesterday, I finally made my way into the town of Longdale and bought a bag.
And good news! I only bought one bag instead of the entire inventory.
Back at the hotel, I’m ashamed to say I finished almost all of it and I’m feeling it today. Achiness. An underlying sense of gloom and doom. And to top it all off, a canker sore on the inside of my cheek.
Or maybe this is all happening because of the complete one-eighty turn my life just took. All this stress can’t be good for me.
I flex my neck, moving my head side to side a couple of times as I watch Alec. He’s a quick study, and it’s obvious he’s spent a lot of time at the mercy of a trainer. I started to ask him about what he’d done before he came to Longdale, what his trainers had him doing. I’m a sucker for regimens and I’ll never stop searching for the best protocols and practices for my patients.
But he shut me down so fast, I haven’t mentioned it again. I could tell it was a sore subject, and I have to respect that.
I place my hand on the back of his knee and the closeness of his body has my own humming. Alec is attractive, yes, but I’ve worked with many an attractive man before. That’s what happens when you’re a trainer for an NFL team.
I yell at myself internally. It isn’t professional to be having such delightful thoughts of a man. And even though he isn’t technically my patient, a sense of decorum is necessary.
He’s breathing heavily and has a line of sweat on his forehead. Handing him a water bottle, I tell him to take a rest.
“You need to be drinking twice as much water as you have been, okay? And just so you know, I don’t have all my equipment here, obviously, so I’m having to improvise,” I say. ”But there’s so much scar tissue that I really wish I could break up and loosen.”
