Chapter Five
Sawyer
“Iwill admit,” I say as he gets the TV set up, “that I don’t know anything. Not how many players are on the ice at a time, not anyone’s role or job, not what a single position is called. Not one.”
“Not even the goalie?” He gives me a glance that would probably be teasing on someone else, but I’m not sure if that’s what it is. Dry humor, I think. But I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me, or just generally a little amused. And by a little, I mean very little.
“Okay, so I probably could have figured that one out.”
“None of the rules shit is as important as I might have implied earlier.”
“Implied?”
“Stated,” he admits with the tiniest hint at a smile.
“You called me useless.”
“Not you. Your skill set.”
“I would argue it was also my knowledge base.”
He tilts his head from side to side, clearly contemplating my statement. “Yeah, okay. That might be true. I also admitted it was a harsh thing to say.”
“But you didn’t admit it was untrue.”
“I guess we’ll see,” he says as he clicks the remote to start the game. “Can the world famous Sawyer Tucker nail her hockey analysis?”
“World famous?” I scoff.
“That’s what your dad told me. Seemed very proud.”
“Only because that title benefits him,” I say. “You should have asked him what made me so special.”
“Already clear he doesn’t know,” Logan says, sitting at the other end of the couch. “But I’m excited to find out.” His tone doesn’t seem excited, but then he glances at me, and our gazes lock for a beat. The air hums, and I’m startled by the shot of electricity between us.
Is he flirting with me?
No, no. Absolutely not. He’s loosened up ever so slightly, and I’m misinterpreting that. The notion that this guy, Mr. Grumpy, ten years my junior, could be flirting with me is laughable.
“Are you going to do running commentary?” I ask as two players meet in the middle of the ice and seem to have a brief sparring match with their sticks over the puck before everyone scatters across the ice.
Logan snorts and crosses his arms. “No.”
“Are you playing in this game?”
“Of course.”
“What number are you?”
“Eighty-eight.”
And even if he hadn’t told me, I think I’d have figured it out within the first five minutes of watching.
He’s really fast, and I don’t know if he’s supposed to be everywhere, but he’s definitely hustling hard.
I can see what he meant earlier about his on-ice mentality.
The minute he’s on the ice, the energy of the team shifts, which feels strange to say when I’m not in the arena, only observing through a screen.
I’m probably giving him too much credit, reading into something in the wrong way.
From across the ice, a player on the other team has zeroed in on Logan, but at the last second, Logan seems to sense his approach and sidesteps him. The extraordinary awareness of his location on the ice and everyone else’s seems to continue throughout the game.
“Can you pause it?” I ask. “Do you have paper and a pen anywhere?”
“I can check the drawers in the office. Your brother left a few things behind.” He pauses the game and heads toward the room where my brother had a desk.
“He left all his furniture?” I ask when Logan returns to hand me a pen and some blank paper.
“I left my apartment in California as it is—I’ll go back there in the off season.”
“Okay,” I say, staring at the screen. “Hit Play again.” And as I watch, without looking at the paper, I jot down drills, flexibility movements, exercises I’d normally use for rehab that I could modify to build greater strength and endurance in the areas that it seems like Logan might appreciate.
Movements and exercises I haven’t had to think about the last few years on the island are coming back to me.
My exposure to high-level athletes has been minimal since I left Northern University, but I had a good breadth of experience while I was there—football, swimming, tennis, hockey, soccer, and a host of other athletes came to physio in various degrees of crisis.
I know how to fix people. I’m confident in that. The question is whether I can add value to Logan’s already impressive physical presence on the ice, and while I’d love to try, I can’t lie and tell him I know exactly how to do it.
“Talk me through where you see your weaknesses?” I ask as I keep writing on the page, watching the tape.
“Reaction time and flexibility. More flexible, more explosive power.”
“But your primary goal is to avoid injuries, as much as it’s possible to?”
“I want to be healthy for as long as I can, in every way that I can.”
“In an ideal world, you’d play until you were…”
“Thirty-five? Thirty-six? There are guys still playing good hockey at that age in the league.”
“Then I wonder whether we get a little creative with your training. Add in gymnastics, different types of yoga, maybe some martial arts training. We can start with movement literacy. You were probably working integrative chains specific to hockey with your previous trainer, right?”
He nods.
“Well…” I take a beat to think. “Then we can look at force absorption and force transmission. Try to add in some pattern stability, tissue resiliency, mobility, stability and flexibility as we go. I’ll need your game schedule to figure all this out.”
“I’ve done hockey yoga,” he says, his voice gruff. “You seem excited.”
“I just…” I give a little self-conscious laugh.
“I know you’re skeptical, but I think I can do this.
I also appreciate that you don’t want to be anyone’s guinea pig, so if you give me a couple of weeks to try some things and it’s still a “no,” I won’t be offended.
” But I might be sad and depressed that I couldn’t do the job to his satisfaction when I’m so sure I can.
A few weeks is unlikely to make a noticeable difference for him.
The kind of impact he’s looking for on his body is more likely to take months.
“That’s a lot of notes,” he says, nodding at the paper.
“Had to get it all out.” I swoosh my hands down my body. “Writing helps my thoughts to become focused and organized. Once it’s on the page, I can do things with them.”
“I hate writing,” he says.
I suspect he hates many forms of communication based on what Tamiko told me.
He shifts deeper into the couch, and I’m not sure where we stand. Whenever I felt unstable with Dalton, I rushed into repair mode, and I’m forcing myself not to do it now. What’s happened between us so far isn’t my mess to repair. Alex and my dad created the hole in expectations, not me.
“Make a plan,” he says, finally. “I’ll give you a month. In the meantime, I’ll have my agent and manager trying to secure someone else, in case this doesn’t work. Worst case, I pay two people while we’re in transition.”
“If you don’t like my work,” I say, and I catch myself keeping my voice even—a practiced skill—rather than letting my irritation show, “you don’t need to pay me.”
He raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t have to work,” I clarify. “But I needed my life to have purpose, and I loved learning the human body, so…” I trail off, unsure how to finish.
At various points, my family’s wealth has been a source of discomfort.
Poor me, right? Sometimes I wish I was ignorant of my privilege like Ava and could just let the opinions of the world wash over me.
“Right,” he says, rubbing his face. “The Tucker billions. Not a circumstance I’m familiar with.”
“No?” I ask hesitantly. Most people aren’t in the billions category, but the way he says it makes me think wealth in general is an uncomfortable thought.
“I make good money now, obviously. My life’s all over the internet.” His voice is gruff. “If you’re curious, it’s quite a read.”
I sense that it must have also been quite a thing to live, but since we’ve inched into an agreement that at least gives me a chance to prove myself, I’m not opening his old wounds. Not on purpose, anyway.
“When did you start playing hockey?”
“Thirteen. Late by most standards. Lots of people call it a miracle or raw talent or whatever they want to pin my success on. I got lucky, and I worked really fucking hard when luck came my way.”
Unlike him, I never had to work to get ahead.
I started in that position. Inherited wealth put me head and shoulders above most people on the island.
I’ve been an asset to others just through proximity several times in my life—someone’s my friend, my boyfriend, a friend of a friend, the head of a charity or company or government organization, trying to make a deal where the Tucker name has currency, legitimizes something that might otherwise be illegitimate.
The last thought sours my stomach again, and I smooth my hair out of my face, trying to brush away my discomfort with it.
“I bet you’ve never had to rely on luck,” he says.
“I think my privilege is more that I’ve never had to think about it at all.” When we make eye contact, his gaze is assessing. There’s a good chance he resents the fact that I have money, but I’d rather have that than someone who covets it, who’s seeking the clout the name and money bring.
He breaks eye contact to check his watch that’s just beeped. “I have practice, and I need to eat. You can see yourself out?”
The abrupt shift in his tone and the conversation is unnerving, but I press my hands along my thighs and stand up. He’s already in the kitchen area opening the freezer. “We’ll need to do a preliminary assessment as soon as possible,” I say. “You’ll send me your schedule?”
“Someone will,” he calls over his shoulder. He mutters something about the chef as he roots around before popping out a ready-made meal and slotting it into the microwave. “Once the season starts, all I think about is hockey.”
I would have thought I’d be part of that “hockey” thought process, given that I’m supposed to be the lead on his injury prevention.
But I get the feeling that Logan Bishop has spent a lot of time compartmentalizing all the aspects of his life.
Probably a much better strategy than the mess I made of mine by letting too many things interweave.
“I’ll see you soon, I guess,” I say, heading toward the door.
“It’ll be tomorrow,” he says as the microwave beeps, and he takes out a steaming container. “I have one rest day a week, but otherwise, I’m training, practicing, or playing a game.”
Is that too much? One rest day a week doesn’t seem like enough recovery time when the season is in full swing. Tomorrow during the assessment, I’ll ask more questions. I can already tell I’ve lost him by the thousand-yard stare he has toward the ocean view.
“See you tomorrow.”
Then, as I drive back to my office, I call the head of physiotherapy for Northern University.
I haven’t spoken to her in years, but if I’m going to walk into the assessment with Logan Bishop tomorrow feeling prepared, I need a refresher on what I should be looking for and what research I have to be doing in the next twenty-four hours to feel ready.
The last thing I want is to feel out of my depth the first day he gives me a real chance at proving my worth. No matter what, some guy isn’t determining my self-worth ever again. The only person who determines that is me.