Chapter 6 - Reese #2
“Uh, that’s not my shoulder, Doc,” he said.
“Not a doctor.” My fingers pressed into the band of muscle running beside his spine. Tight as steel cable. “You’ve been compensating. Overworking everything around it to make up for the weakness there.”
He didn’t argue, which told me more than anything he’d said out loud today.
“Here,” I said, nudging slightly. “Feel this?”
I increased my pressure enough to unlock the knot buried underneath.
It shifted under my thumbs like something trying to wriggle free.
Theo’s breath hitched. Then broke. Then turned into a low, unguarded groan that sank straight into the floor and somehow into me too.
My insides vibrated with it. My skin prickled with goosebumps.
“I thought the goal was to keep me on the ice, not kill me,” he said through strained, panting breaths.
“Oh, wasn’t I clear before?” A cheeky grin played at the corners of my mouth. “The team will have to drag you through finals, ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’ style.”
A laugh burst from him, or maybe it was a sob. I couldn’t tell. But once it was over, I found the release in his back I’d been looking for. Slowly but surely, his breathing synced up with mine.
“Middle of your thoracic erector,” I said, but the words came a little rougher than intended. “It’s doing way too much work.”
His hands flexed over the edge of the table, fingers digging into the synthetic leather. “Keep talking dirty like this, and we’re gonna have a whole other erector problem.”
Smooth. And also funny. But I was relieved he couldn’t see my face. This wasn’t the time for messing around. I paid him back by increasing the pressure some more, and sliding my thumbs all the way up to the base of his skull.
“That… ugghhh… holy shit.” His knuckles went white. “Keep— keep going. Don’t stop.”
I shouldn’t have liked hearing him say it like that, all breathless and choked-up. I really, really shouldn’t have.
My hands moved down again, slower this time, mapping the places he tensed before he could brace for them. He reacted instinctively with little shifts, quiet grunts that bled into relief. The kind of noises I only heard when someone’s body stops pretending for them.
Eventually, his breathing deepened. Evened out. He’d gone loose and supple under my touch, all that bravado melting into a version of him I hadn’t seen before. Not even last night, when everything nearly came apart.
“This didn’t happen overnight,” I said quietly, leaning over him to get into a stubborn spot between his shoulder blades. My hair slipped forward and brushed his arm; I felt him notice it even though he said nothing. The tension was there. “You’ve been pushing through this for weeks.”
“Longer,” he said. “Couldn’t mess up our cup run.”
It was staggering, his sudden vulnerability. That, and how willing he still was to risk everything for the game.
“You could’ve ended your career if I hadn’t stepped in when I did.”
He turned his head toward me, cheek pressed to the table. His voice was low, flatter than usual. “I know.”
My hands stilled.
Just for a second.
Just long enough to feel the weight of his admission and what it meant.
I forced myself back into motion, kneading yet another hard line of tension. “You’re going to have to trust me, Bouchard. And you’re going to have to allow yourself to be fixed.”
“Not sure which part scares me more,” he said with a tight, dry laugh.
His back rose under my palms as he took another slow breath, and it hit me how close we were, how shielded this room felt from everything we were worried about. Playoffs, promotions, all of it mere background noise.
“Hopper?”
“Hmm?”
His eyes were closed. Mouth drooped open like he’d start drooling at any second. “Whatever you’re doing… don’t stop.”
I didn’t.
God help me, I didn’t.
The longer I worked, the more his body relaxed. Breathing steadied. Slowed to the point where it felt like the room itself was breathing with him. I registered the tiny drop in weight as he drifted off, and softened my touch to glide my palms over the natural curve of the muscles in his back.
I kept moving to avoid startling him out of his sleep, easing off in increments until my hands fell to my sides.
His frame slackened completely, and I stood there for a beat.
Just looking at him. At the broad sweep of his shoulders rising and falling, the exhaustion and pain carved into lines that were never on display when he performed for the crowd.
I’d called him an idiot a few times. Said that hiding his injury was a reckless move that could’ve ended his career. But now, standing here like this, I was beginning to wonder what it said about me that I’d agreed to keep his secret. Complicit? Selfish?
His future on the ice. My job. Our problems were tangled so tightly I couldn’t undo one without unraveling the other.
Which didn’t make my actions any better than his.
The room felt too warm all of a sudden. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made it impossible to pretend the stakes weren’t shifting under our feet.
His phone buzzed, reality barging back in. Theo startled awake with a small inhale that tightened his shoulders.
He blinked a few times, voice coming out all gravely and thick with sleep. “Did I—?”
“You did.”
He pushed himself upright, palms braced on the table as he took a second to get his bearings. His hair was a mess, flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, and damp from the heat of the massage. The flush that clung to his cheekbones made me look away.
I remembered my half-packed kit bag and went back over to it now, urgently rearranging the contents in a random pouch. “How, uh, how does it feel?”
He pulled his shirt on, carefully rolling the joint as if to test it. “It’s the first time in I don’t know how long that it doesn’t feel like I have a searing hot blade stuck in me.”
“Good.”
Another buzz, and this time he groaned as he reached for it. “Probably Hunter, wondering why I’m late for the movie.”
I watched him shoot through a quick text, and slide his phone back into his pocket as he slid off the table.
“What did you tell him?” I asked, already nervous about this whole ass lie we were gonna have to keep covering up.
“The truth. That I fell asleep taking my dog to the vet.” This time when he shrugged, both shoulders came to the party. A spark of pride fluttered in my chest at that.
“You need to leave before your stupid jokes send me into a coma,” I said with a laugh. Relieved. But a little bummed to watch him do exactly as I said.
This was it. There would be no backtracking or coming clean. Not without ruining everything we’d both worked for.
So later, when I handed van der Berg my report for the upcoming match, it marked all players fit to play.