Chapter One #2
Everyone says he's a giant pain-in-the-ass.
They call him cranky and rude. But…he's never any of those things to me.
And I do not fantasize about any of his teammates the way I do him.
And let me just say, I did not know my subconscious was so inventive.
Or that it knew so many different ways to use skate laces as rope.
I clear my throat, desperately trying not to think about said inventive skate lace fantasies. "Is your back bothering you again?"
It's been bothering him ever since he took a nasty fall almost two months ago. Unlike most of the guys on the team, Trent is close to retirement age. But he pushes himself to the brink every week anyway, stubbornly refusing to quit. Honestly, I'm not sure he knows how to quit.
"Yeah. It's definitely his back," Ryan chortles.
Trent shoots him a dirty glare before turning to look at me again, something unreadable in his cool green eyes. "Yeah, the tension is killing me. I need your magic hands, Sunshine."
Ryan chortles again before shoving another piece of fudge in his mouth.
I'm one hundred percent sure there are at least five other people in the building who are more qualified to deal with whatever tension Trent has, but I'd literally step on Legos to put my hands on him again.
"Give me two minutes," I say, already heading for the treatment room. "And don't touch the hot packs. I haven't been sued for third-degree burns yet, and I don't want to start today."
His rumbling laughter floats after me.
I grab clean sheets, then try to arrange the room so it doesn't look like the inside of a CVS after a tornado. There are always too many resistance bands, and at least one yoga ball with a slow leak…which the guys use exclusively for impromptu dodgeball.
I shove the ball in the corner and wipe down the table with hospital-grade cleaner. Nothing says holiday spirit like the lingering scent of industrial-strength lemon. Once the table is more or less dry, I quickly cover it.
I hear the thump-thump of slapshots ricocheting off the far wall from the other side of the hallway as I try to get my shit together. Someone yells, "Merry Christmas, dumbass!" and gets a loud, "Eat a dick!" in response.
Like I said, frat house at two in the morning.
Someone knocks behind me, and I turn, expecting to find Trent standing there, but it's actually Liz again, peeking around the door like a mouse trying not to get caught. She glances at the fudge, then at Trent, then back to the fudge, and finally at me.
"Are you in love with him or trying to give him diabetes?" she whispers.
"Probably both," I mutter. "They may also all be shitting themselves soon. To be determined."
She snorts with laughter and disappears again, but not before giving me another thumbs up.
God, I love her. She flits in and out like that all day long. People assume she's shy, but that's not it. She just can't stay still, like ever. She's also hilarious.
I do a quick mirror check. My ponytail is still frizzy, but at least my scrubs don't have chocolate on them, and then wash my hands like I'm a dang surgeon prepping for a life-saving operation.
As I'm tossing the paper towels in the metal can, Trent pops his head into the room, another piece of fudge in his hands. "Did I mention this is amazing? Because it's amazing."
"You might want to pace yourself," I say. "I don't have time to resuscitate you if you go into a coma."
Yeah, right. I would literally rise from the dead for a chance to get my lips on this man.
"I'll take my chances." He flops face down onto the table, arms folded under his chin. His shoulders are so broad that he actually overlaps the edges. "Besides, I' m pretty sure you'd save me if I died," he says. "You're good to me like that."
I roll my eyes, but secretly file the comment away as flirting. I'll check with Liz later to get her opinion. God knows, I need it.
I've been here three months, and my track record for interpreting the banter from the guys is abysmal.
Sometimes, when they're extra chatty, what they mean is, "I'm thinking about sleeping with you.
" Sometimes, it's, "I forgot your name, so I'm just going to be overly friendly and hope you don't notice.
" And sometimes, they mean, "I'm about to ask you to tape my inner thigh, and I need to make it less weird before your face is inches from my sweaty junk. "
I can't tell the difference.
The only thing I know for sure is that Trent is always nice to me, he always requests me for PT, and I always say yes.
In my head, that means we're going to have babies soon. Obviously. In his mind, it probably means nothing.
Liz can tell me. She's smart like that.
"Where's the pain today?" I ask, trying to sound like someone who did not just write "Mrs. Danica Kirk" in four different fonts in her notes app.
For the record, I didn't. Today.
He tilts his head to look at me, those green eyes doing ridiculous things to my womb. "Upper back like usual. It's not bad, though. It just feels tight. "
I put on my Serious Medical Professional voice. "Scale of one to ten?"
"Ten, if you're doing the massage," he fires back.
I laugh, which he probably expects, but I'm in that space again where I don't know if he's flirting or if he's just trying to stay on my good side.
I do know that I'm already blushing, though, which is totally unfair.
He's always unflappable, and my face is a permanent shade of stop-sign-red around him.
It seriously clashes with the traffic-cone-orange scrubs.
I warm up my hands and start in, using just enough pressure to impress him. Trent is built like a boulder, but the muscles in his back move under my hands like something alive. I knead between his shoulder blades, and he groans—loud, unfiltered, possibly obscene.
"Fucking hell, Dani. You're a miracle worker," he grunts in that raspy voice that I want to hear while he's naked and on top of me.
"I know," I say, and for a second, I let myself imagine what it would be like if this weren't just my job.
If I were massaging him as his girlfriend instead of as his physical therapist. If maybe, just maybe, there was a world where I didn't have to settle for being his glorified masseuse.
Maybe I could be the girl who gets the guy for once.
It's a nice thought. I tuck it away for later.
"Can I ask you something?" he says after a minute, voice muffled by the table.
I brace myself. "As long as it's not about my fudge recipe. That's a family secret." That's a lie. I got it off the internet, but I'm pretty sure I skipped at least two full steps.
He laughs, then sobers. "Do you like working here?"
The question isn't at all what I was expecting, and it catches me off guard. "What do you mean?"
He shifts a little, resting his chin on his arms. "You always look like you're about to make a run for it. Like, if someone left the door open, you'd be gone."
I blink. Is it that obvious? "I have a complicated relationship with authority," I say carefully. It sounds better than the truth…which is that I panic a little every time I have to talk to him.
He makes a noise that's halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "You're good at what you do, Sunshine. Best PT we've ever had. Most people just want to get through the day without pissing off Coach. You actually listen."
I keep kneading, but there's a warmth spreading in my chest that's not from the heating pad stretched across his midback. "Thank you," I say softly. "That means a lot."
He turns, just enough to see my face. "Seriously. I don't trust most people with my body, but I trust you."
My brain helpfully supplies about fifteen different ways to interpret that, most of them X-rated.
I clear my throat. "You're not so bad yourself, Kirk."
He grins at me, and the room suddenly feels a little less like a sweaty sauna and a lot more like Christmas. Huh, maybe that's what I need to get into the spirit. A healthy dose of hockey hunk.
As he turns to place his face back in the hole, I notice that it's a weird shade of pink. Not cute, I'm embarrassed pink like mine. More like, I just ran five laps with an elephant sitting on my chest , pink. His ears are splotchy. His neck is splotchy.
The splotches are…spreading?
He blinks.
And then coughs.
And coughs again.
And I, brilliant, unflappable, trained professional that I am, freeze like someone just threatened to show pages of my middle school diary on a Jumbotron.
My brain is a machine of useless facts and anxiety, but in this moment, it churns up only one very important memory: the player intake paperwork, which I totally skimmed because most of it was boring.
Somewhere in that form, Trent had an allergy listed.
Something…what was it? Fruit? Tree nuts? Mold spores? No, not that. Something…
Bees.
Trent is allergic to bees and all things associated.
"Shit," I whisper, my heart sinking. "Oh, shit."
I substituted half of the sugar for raw honey.
Trent looks at me, confused, still smiling, but his eyes are a little glazed now. "Whash up?" he says, his voice already going raspy.
Liz, who has perfect timing only when it involves disaster, pops her head in the room at that exact second. She must see the look on my face because her eyes widen. "Is everything okay?"
"No!" I yell. "I mean, yes! But also no! He's allergic! I just poisoned him. Oh my god, I just poisoned my favorite hockey player."
Liz's face does that thing where all the blood drains out of it. "What? What's he allergic to?"
"Bees and honey," I say, running to the counter for the med kit. "There's honey in the fudge, and the internet said raw was bes–" I break off as Trent coughs again. It's more of a wheeze, really.
Now, as a rule, I don't panic in emergencies. I panic after. Apparently, today is an exception because I'm on the verge of losing my shit.
"Are you feeling okay?" I ask Trent, even though he looks like a lobster having a stroke as he struggles to stand up.