Chapter 6 #2
He sits up but the confidence in his shoulders he had while he did unspeakable wonderful things to me, have deflated a little. And I hate that I’m responsible for that.
"I don't care." he counters.
"You should care." The words come sharp but maybe they have to. "You're in the playoffs, Aleksi. You finally made the NHL after years of working for it in Europe, in the AHL, the farm team before they moved you up to the Hawkeyes. I won't be the reason you lose that."
His jaw tightens. "You haven't even asked me about what I want."
"What either of us want or don't want when it comes to this isn't part of the equation.
" God, it physically hurts to say it. "I've been down this road before.
With Tarron. It starts with promises and ends with me picking up the pieces while he moves on to the next thing, leaving me with credit card debt and a foreclosure on a house.
Yes, the flirting has been fun but we're talking about our career for a one-night stand. "
"You're not a one-night-stand to me, and I'm not him," Aleksi says, low and certain.
"I know you're not." And I do know that, somewhere beneath the fear.
Not that I know what Aleksi really wants.
This could still be a cat-and-mouse game.
After all, I was off limits. A fun pursuit that he may never have considered the consequences for.
How could either of us have predicted what would happen tonight on our flight?
Penelope's advice that hockey players wouldn’t play the sport if breaking the rules wasn't part of the game has me considering that maybe the idea of us was more exciting then the reality. The rings are made out of athletic tape after all and the fear of death makes people do crazy things.
"But I also know what it looks like when a team doctor gets involved with a player.
I've lived it. The rumors start, a complaint gets filed with the board, then the medical board investigates, and suddenly everything you've worked for is questioned.
I almost lost my license once. I can't—" My voice cracks.
"I can’t go through that again. It took everything I had to get through med school, to crawl out of where I came from, to defy every statistic stacked against me. "
God, I can hear how selfish that sounds. But I’ve had to be selfish—otherwise I wouldn’t have survived this far.
And truthfully? I don’t even know what Aleksi wants.
He said he had a crush, but a crush isn’t a promise. And that thing he said about marrying me—well, that was under fluorescent lights with a CDC official holding a clipboard. People say wild things when they think the world’s ending.
Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe he just wants something temporary, a fling to carry him through the season before he disappears back to Finland like so many players do.
A fling with Aleksi isn’t worth my license. No matter how life-changing the sex is.
The silence stretches, long enough that I can hear the air conditioner rattle and my own pulse thudding in my ears.
He runs a hand through his disheveled hair. "We could be careful," he says finally. "Wait until the season ends. Talk to Penelope about protocol. Do it the right way. I don't want to pretend this didn't happen."
A terrible, traitorous hope blooms in my chest. I could kiss him right now, curl back under the sheets with him and get lost in the idea of making this work, but instead, I kill it fast. Penelope knows better than anyone that it can't happen while I'm the team doctor.
"Doing it the right way means not doing it at all." I wrap my arms tighter around my sheets. "Not while I'm the doctor making decisions every day about your health. Not while you're playing. The risk is too high for both of us."
He studies me and I see the moment he understands this isn't just caution. It's terrifying. The kind that makes you choose safety over everything else.
"Okay," he says quietly. "One night."
Relief and disappointment tangle in my throat. "Thank you."
His gaze drops to where my hands grip the sheet, then back to my face. "But we're making the most of tonight."
Before I can respond he's kissing me again, slow and deep and devastating… and I'm melting into it, into him, giggling against his mouth like a teenager instead of a woman with a medical degree and a half-dead fern living in my studio apartment window.
He pulls back just enough to reach for the nightstand. I assume he's grabbing another condom from, but then I notice there aren't any more sitting there. Instead, he swings his legs off the bed and crosses to his duffel on the chair.
"Are we out of condoms?" I ask, completely sex-drunk and dreading the idea that our fun is over.
"I've got more, don't worry," he says over his shoulder.
I hear foil tearing in the dim room and then he's back, settling between my thighs, making me forget my own name for the fifth. Or is it the sixth time tonight?
Darkness. Silence. The digital clock glowing 4:17 AM.
I wake with my heart already racing, adrenaline flooding my system before conscious thought catches up.
I fell asleep. After another round with Aleksi. I was so utterly spent, so flooded with endorphins, I just... surrendered. Passed out like my body finally gave up pretending it had any willpower left.
Now panic sharpens everything.
I should check. Assess. Do what I'm trained to do.
I mentally inventory my own symptoms first: No fever. My throat feels normal. No chills. No nausea. Breathing is steady: elevated only because fear hasn't learned to sleep. Pulse fast but strong.
Alive. I'm alive.
Then I register the solid weight of Aleksi's arm beneath my neck, his chest warm against my back.
But could he be—?
My hand trembles as I reach for his wrist. What if he's not okay? What if while I slept—
Warm skin. Strong pulse. Steady rhythm.
The relief nearly breaks me. I feel my eyes threaten to tear up. What if I made it and he didn’t. Could I live with myself for that?
No… I couldn’t have.
"We made it," I whisper to the dark.
"Were you checking my vitals, Doc?" His voice is sleep-rough and unfairly sexy against my ear.
I jump. "God, you scared me."
His other arm swings over me, tightening around my waist, pulling me closer. "Professional habit?"
"You do seem to make a career of making me worry out on the ice." My heart is still trying to escape my ribs.
"See, I knew you cared." I can hear the smile in his voice, and then kisses the side of my throat.
"Just as much as I care about anyone else on the team. Doctor's can't have favorites." It's 99% true but I'll never admit that my heart pounds a little harder when he takes a shift on the ice. I'll take that to my grave.
"Come on," he says in that sexy "just woke up" voice of his. "You have a little bit of a favorite."
"I can't and I don't. No special treatment. I make the same calls for each player."
I feel him give in just a little and change the subject.
"Were you feeling my pulse because you were worried I was dead?"
"Just... checking."
"Would you have missed me?" His palm spreads warm across my stomach. "If I'd been gone?"
"Do we really have to talk about this?"
"You would've cried at least a little, right?" His thumb draws lazy circles just below my navel. "Because you have to admit, last night was pretty good."
Good?
Good doesn't even touch what last night was.
I've never felt that connected to another human. Never had that many orgasms from penetration alone, never mind everything else he did with those ridiculous hands and that criminally talented tongue. Never felt so completely seen and wanted and safe all at once.
But we were both terrified. Convinced we might not see morning. That has to be why it felt so intense. Trauma bonding. Adrenaline. That's all this is.
"A tear, maybe, but only because the Hawkeyes need you to win the Stanley Cup." I tease.
He squeezes my hip and I jump with a chuckle. "You're heartless, Doc," he says.
"Okay, maybe more than one tear." I concede.
Though the truth is, I don't think I would be the same if I had woken up this morning and he hadn't. Going on with the rest of my life knowing that Aleksi was no longer in it would have broken something in me that would never be repaired. And I have no intentions of digging into that any deeper.
"We have a couple more hours before the CDC comes back," he mumbles against my neck. "Sleep. Long day ahead either way."
He's right. I need rest. Need to conserve energy for whatever comes next.
I let myself sink back into him, into the warmth and safety of his body curved around mine. His breathing evens out again. The room settles into quiet.
Sleep doesn't come for me. I lie there listening to his heartbeat against my spine, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, memorizing the weight of his arm.
Storing it up for when I have to let it go.
When I wake the second time, pale morning light is prying at the edges of the curtains. Aleksi’s arm is still around me, his chest rising and falling in that steady rhythm that calms something in me.
Outside, hallway voices. The CDC team is back. I hear the knocks, thermometers, the slow machinery of protocol down by the pool.
Reality crashes in like surf.
I just had the best sex of my life with a man who clearly wants more. Who looked at me last night like I was something precious instead of a disaster waiting to happen. Who made me a ring out of athletic tape and called me his wife like he meant it.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it carefully, trying not to wake him.
Nine new messages from Tarron.
My stomach turns.
Tarron: Maybe it's fate we'll both be in Seattle
Tarron: I'm different now, K. I've done the work
Tarron: Just give me an hour. That's all I'm asking
K. His nickname for me.
I used to think it meant I belonged to someone–proof I mattered when half the time my mother was too high to remember she had a daughter, let alone my full name.
After the divorce I learned he called the cheerleader R.
The Instagram model was L. Initials are easier than names when you're juggling lies.
I've been here before. The love-bombing.
The promises. The absolute certainty that this time is different, until it isn't. Until I'm the one left trying to explain to the mortgage company that he got the house in the divorce and that they should be contacting him regarding foreclosure proceedings.
Only, neither him, nor his lawyer completed the paperwork so both of our names were still on the hook.
Even if Aleksi seems different, and he does, how can I trust my own judgment? My track record with men is a highlight reel of catastrophically bad calls. All players, who knew how to play the game.
And it’s not just my heart at stake this time.
Our careers are on the line. The medical board’s fraternization rules are clear, and the NHL will act.
If anyone finds out what happened in this room, I could lose my license.
Aleksi could be suspended, traded—derailed right when he’s finally living the dream.
The Hawkeyes could lose their shot at the Cup and not be allowed to take part in the next draft.
The playoffs are happening. His team needs him.
I need to protect him. Even if he doesn’t like how I do it.
Even if it means putting space between us now, clearly and quickly, so there’s no confusion about what last night was… and wasn’t.
I extract myself from under his arm, moving like a ghost. He mumbles something in Finnish, rolls onto his back, but doesn’t wake.
I dress in yesterday’s clothes. Pack my toiletries. Zip my bag.
Every small sound feels like theft.
My hand finds the door handle, then pauses.
One more look. Just one.
He’s sprawled across the bed, gloriously naked, the sheet tangled at his hips. One arm is stretched into the space where I’d been sleeping, like his body is still reaching for me. His face is unguarded in sleep, that perpetual grin softened into something young and raw.
The space under his arm is still warm where I fit.
My chest squeezes.
This is what life keeps asking me to give up: the quiet after. The safe place. The feeling of being wanted for exactly who I am.
But wanting isn’t enough. It never has been.
I grab a hotel notepad from the nightstand and write, “I promise this is the right thing to do. See you in Seattle. —K.” I slide the note under his phone, where he’ll see it first.
I lean down, careful, and press my lips to the corner of his mouth—the same spot I kissed a dozen times last night.
“I’m sorry I’m not braver,” I whisper, pushing a few strands of his blond hair out of his face. “Please don’t hate me.”
I straighten, grip my luggage handle until the plastic creaks and then my eyes catch on the ring.
The athletic tape circled around my finger with Aleksi’s pen folk art engraving.
I glance at his left hand on the bed, still wearing his too.
I know I should pull it off, leave it with him, distance myself from everything that happened yesterday, but I’m too selfish to let go of this.
I just need to be able to keep one thing.
Something to remember that happened… we happened.
One last look at the six-foot-three giant sleeping like a fallen statue.
I don’t want to leave, but I have to. It would be too easy for him to convince me to stay.
So I slip out the door as quietly as I can. Like a coward who doesn’t have the strength to fight him face to face. He has to know, I’m doing this for his career too.
The click of it closing behind me sounds final.
The desert morning is pink and cold, the sky painted in thin strokes of apricot and lavender over the courtyard of CDC agents, none of whom are in hazmat suits anymore, meaning that whatever tests they got back means we’re cleared.
I square my shoulders, turn toward the nurses’ station at the end of the hall, and start walking—away from the warm, impossible room, and toward whatever it takes to keep both of our careers safe.
And maybe my heart too.