Chapter 13 - Theo
Theo
“Since when do you nurse a beer?” I tipped my bottle toward Hunter’s. The bar’s neon sign flickered against the glass, giving his face that washed-out glow he always got when he pretended he wasn’t worried about me.
He clinked his bottle against mine. “Since you started acting suspicious as hell.”
“Suspicious?” I leaned on the bar, letting the wood dig into my ribs. “Pretty sure I’m just sitting here, drinking with you.”
“Yeah.” He sipped. “Wild concept. You disappearing after practice? That’s suspicious.”
“That was one time.”
He snorted and flagged the bartender for another round. “And then there was the press conference.”
I lifted the fresh bottle he slid my way. “Thought the whole point of tonight was the calm before we stomp Dallas in Game 5.”
“It was,” he said. “But then you started doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
He pointed at me. “Your ‘everything’s fine’ face. Not the face you have when everything is actually fine. It’s the one you pull out when everything’s, well, not fine.”
I tried a smirk. It sat wrong on my mouth, but it was the best I had. “Stop studying my face. We’re here to drink.”
The easy buzz of the bar dulled around us. Not silent. Just… closer. Hunter turned his bottle on the counter, thumb moving along the label like he was talking to it instead of me.
“It messed me up a little,” he said. “That presser. You looked… off. And look, man, you shouldn’t be playing if you’re hurt.”
I kept my gaze on the bottle, the way his finger kept glazing over that label. The condensation cut a thin line down the glass, tapping the wood beneath it. “I’m not looking to repeat last season.”
It was the most honest I’d been to anyone who wasn’t Reese, and it felt good.
Hunter shifted toward me. “Then don’t. Nobody’s asking you to play hero.”
I didn’t answer. My head filled with the same noise I’d been carrying since Reese pressed her thumb along my deltoid and muttered that I was testing her patience and my own shoulder.
Hunter wasn’t wrong. But I couldn’t give him the truth. Not all of it.
So I picked the smallest piece. The one that didn’t turn me into a guy he couldn’t trust anymore. “I don’t wanna let you guys down again. I just want to do right by the team.”
“You already do,” he said. “But you’re of more value to us in one piece, Bouchard. Not as some taped-together version barely making it through a game.”
The taped-together version. If only he knew how literal that was.
I forced a breath deep enough to fake some ease. “Physio wouldn’t clear me if I wasn’t fit. That’s got to count for something.”
He squinted. “You mean Hopper?”
That jab landed harder than my shoulder deserved. “She’s been doing my rehab. So, yeah.”
“Sure. Rehab.” He grinned into his beer.
“What the hell are you smiling about? You look like an idiot.”
He shrugged, emphasizing a spectacularly long sip of his beer. “Just saying… She gives you plenty of game time. Makes a man wonder.”
I barked a laugh I didn’t entirely feel. “Nothing to wonder about. She’s disappointingly professional every minute of the day.”
I took a drink and kept my eyes on the mirror behind the bar. If Hunter had any idea how close he was to the truth… That edge between us the other night, Reese in that towel, telling me to get out like she’d run out of ways to pretend I didn’t matter—
“I think she likes you,” he said with a smirk.
I scoffed. “I think you’re imagining things.”
“Yeah? Then why’re you grinning like that?”
I wiped the corner of my mouth with my thumb, trying to tame whatever expression had slipped free. “You make jokes, I laugh. That’s how it goes.”
He elbowed me, and the moment cracked open into something easier.
Lighter. I let it pull me along. Because I’d rather go back to talking about nothing than thinking about how, over the past few weeks, Reese had become more than a physio to me.
And until she’d kicked me out of her apartment, I was almost sure she felt the same.
Remnants of this particular thought still clung to the edges of my mind when I walked into the med bay before Game 5. Reese was shuffling through her kit bag with a focus that made it too easy to sneak up on her.
“Ohjesusareyoutryingtokillme?” She crashed into the cabinet behind her, clutching her heart.
I stifled a laugh. “Sorry, I thought we had a date.”
There would be no smoothing things over with a lame joke today. The steely expression on her face made that clear.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
I took a seat on the exam table like I always did, but this time there was a canyon between us filled with her apartment, that towel, and the look on her face when she told me to get out.
“Listen, I—”
“I’m gonna do a quick mobility check before I tape you up.” She didn’t waste time, lifting my arm with one hand under my elbow. The other was braced at the top of my shoulder. “Don’t force it.”
Easier said than done. She guided my arm outward and the joint pushed back with that familiar pinch. I tried not to react, but my spine tightened anyway. Her gaze flicked up. She’d felt it.
“Okay, now bring it in,” she said, and moved my arm across my center line.
That one was way worse. A catch right at the start, then a deeper pull that made my jaw clamp down hard. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, Coach’s innocent back slap at that presser seemed to have done more damage than I’d first thought.
She moved beside me to reach the back of my shoulder, her thighs pushing close against mine. I bit the inside of my cheek and braced myself as she pressed along the edges of my shoulder blade, tracking the way it shifted. Her thumb paused when the glide faltered.
“You’re compensating,” she said.
“I’m managing.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
We fell into the rhythm of checks and prep, the quiet punctuated by her muttered comments and my sarcastic quips. Even with the undercurrent of awkwardness from our last encounter, the flow between us carried that same friction that could light a fire.
She stepped around to face me again, tape already in her hand and that look on her face that made her a stranger, not the person I’d been hacking it out with for the past few months.
“Wait.” I put my hand over hers to stop her rolling off the tape. She frowned, but did as I’d asked. “I need something for the pain.”
She sighed and pulled out of my grip. “I’ll give you a couple of painkillers after.”
The strips got cut and lined up on the edge of her desk, and I waited until she’d finished before speaking again.
“Not painkillers. I need… something stronger.”
Her eyes widened, but she quickly schooled her features back to neutral. “No.”
She muttered something about protocols, ethics, and possibly very bad ideas, but the way her eyes flicked to my shoulder told me she was already calculating.
“Hopper, please.” I didn’t sound good begging, but I sure as hell wasn’t above it. Not with everything riding on this game. “I can’t go out there feeling like this.”
She set down the tape, and finally looked at me for real. Whatever softness she used to fake when she had to coax players through these mobility tests was gone. “You can barely hold the joint where it needs to be. You don’t need a needle, Bouchard. You need rest, a scan, rehab...”
“Yeah, well, all of those things can’t happen now, can it?” I challenged her, determined to get what I was asking for. “There’s a game in a few minutes, and I have to be on that ice. You know what’s riding on this, and if I don’t show up, what we both stand to lose.”
“Spare me the martyr act.” She turned back to the cart. Metal clinked. Her shoulders stayed locked. “You’re not doing this for me. You never were.”
I felt that one, but didn’t show it. “I can’t go out there only half-functional.”
“I said no.”
“Please. The pain is off the charts today. I know my body, and I know I won’t make it through the game unless...”
My voice did something rough at the edges that made me stop. I wasn’t gonna cave in front of her. I’d already begged. Caving wasn’t an option.
She closed her eyes for half a breath—tiny, controlled, like she regretted giving the moment even that much space—then opened a drawer.
“Off the books,” she said. “And just this one shot. You mention it to anyone and I’ll cut your arm off myself.”
She prepped the syringe with quick, efficient movements.
No hesitation or questioning. Just that quiet, furious competence that had gotten me this far.
She came back over to me and stepped in close.
I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t dare give away how my pulse kept tripping over itself whenever she did that.
“Shirt,” she said simply.
I peeled it off, and managed to keep it down to a single grunt of pain when I moved my arm. The room wasn’t cold, but my skin reacted anyway when her hand steadied the back of my shoulder. The needle slid in, clean and fast. A quick pinch and then it was over.
“It’ll kick in soon,” she said.
But it hit faster than that. Heat unspooled down my arm, and the pinch disappeared. After another minute or so, I rolled my shoulder to test the range, and a grin tugged before I could stop it. I drew my arm back, then swung it forward. No warning tug. No bite. Nothing.
“Look at that,” I said. “Feels good as new.”
“That’s the problem.”
She grabbed my wrist before I could repeat the movement. Her fingers wrapped around me with more force than necessary, like she knew she needed it to keep me still. That touch went straight to my gut.
“You can’t feel the damage you’re doing,” she said. “So don’t get reckless out there. You aren’t fixed. You’re numb, which is dangerous for someone in your condition”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You say that so much it’s lost all meaning to me,” she replied, and pulled up a piece of tape from her desk. “Just promise me you’ll be careful. That’s all.”