Chapter 7 Touch Me and I’ll Break （Eden）
TOUCH ME AND I’LL brEAK (EDEN)
Imake it three steps outside the training facility before I have to stop and breathe. My fingers are shaking, my pulse is racing, and I can still feel Nate’s skin under my palms. My brain is so melted I can barely think past making it to the train station.
Players in Defenders gear drift past me through the parking lot.
A few give me curious glances, respectful but assessing.
I barely register them. All I can think about is Nate, the way his muscles rippled under my palms, the way my fingers itched and burned as I probed his body.
I wrap my bag strap tighter around my grip.
Holding onto it grounds me and keeps me from unraveling.
Sixty minutes. That’s all it took for Nate Russo to blow apart ten years of distance.
I work with elite athletes who’d rather break themselves than admit weakness. They flirt, they push, they test—anything to dodge the real work. I don’t lose my composure.
One session with him, and the seams are showing.
My body doesn’t care about my rules. It recognizes a match and flips every switch to on. It’s not uncomfortable. It’s new. Disconcerting. I’ve never been this keyed up around a man, this charged; every nerve awake at once.
I’ve spent years going through the motions, feeling nothing, no matter how careful or attentive my partner was, no matter how badly I wanted to disappear into the distraction.
With Nate, I lit up. Craving threaded with fear. Sweet and terrifying in the same breath. The memory of touching him minutes ago sweeps through me, and my toes curl.
It’s not only because he’s stronger now, his muscles flexing under my hands. It’s that for the first time in years, I felt it—heat, ache, tingling in places that had been numb for so long I thought they’d forgotten how to function.
Up close, Nate is…impossible. Bigger than I remember.
At ten, he was my shadow and my protector.
At eighteen, he was the boy I tried to hide my crush on, the boy who promised me nothing would ever hurt me.
And now he’s a man. Six-four, shoulders that make my palms ache just thinking about them, thighs that flexed under my hands when I tested his range of motion.
The Metro-North train glides into the station right on schedule.
I find an empty seat by the window, sliding my bag onto my lap as we lurch forward.
The Hudson River flashes blue and silver in the afternoon sun, but all I can see is the way Nate looked at me when I carelessly slipped that I like men who are in control.
As if he wanted to test that theory.
My thoughts are still spinning when my phone buzzes. A text.
Bennet
Hey Eden, had a great time the other night. Want to meet up again this weekend?
My chest tightens. Bennet is everything I should want: kind, handsome, attentive. But I felt nothing when he touched me.
It’s the same hollow echo I lived with during my years with Josh.
On paper, everything was fine. The sex was.
..adequate. Not bad, not painful. But empty.
Pointless. I could never get there with him, no matter how much I wanted to.
When I was alone, with my vibrator, everything worked fine.
But with him, no matter how patient he was, how much he tried to make it work, my body had locked the door and threw away the key.
We even tried bringing the vibrator into it, hoping it would bridge the gap. It didn’t. The harder we pushed, the more frustrated we both became.
My therapist told me it was a trust issue, rooted in what happened my first year of college: a frat party, too many drinks, and someone slipping me a roofie.
I woke up sore, confused, blood between my legs, with no memory of his face—only the crushing knowledge that an asshole had taken what I couldn’t get back.
Knowing where my problem came from made perfect sense, but it wasn’t enough to fix it. It didn’t stop me from refusing to have a drink at a party or freezing up when someone got too close. It didn’t stop the part of me that wanted to feel and hated itself for not being able to.
Eventually, Josh gave up. He said he loved me, but that it wasn’t enough. “I need someone who wants me, Eden. Someone who isn’t so...cold.” A month later, he was with a girl he called “hot-blooded.” The ultimate contrast.
I still hear those words sometimes, etched under my skin.
I’m not doing this to myself again, no matter how hot and desirable Bennet is. I’m not handing a man pieces of me only to have them walk away because I can’t give them what they need.
But an hour with Nate Russo, and I remember the before. When touch meant safety, not threat; when desire didn’t scare me. He’s the boy who used to make me feel good. Now he makes me want to surrender.
I stare at Bennet’s text, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Then I type back:
EDEN
Hi Bennet. Thank you for the wonderful date. You’re great, but I don’t think this is going to work. I’m sorry.
I hit send before I can second-guess myself and drop the phone back in my bag.
The train barrels south. By Grand Central’s gold ceiling and rush-hour roar, I’ve almost convinced myself I can handle Nate professionally. Work mode. Focus. Keep it about the work. I’ll be fine. Probably.
Melissa is in between sessions when I arrive at the office, leaning against the reception desk with her arms crossed and a grin that says she’s been dying to ask.
“Well?” she says, eyebrows raised. “How was your first session with the great Nate Russo?”
I slip past her toward the treatment room, aiming for casual. “It was good.”
“Good?” she echoes, trailing after me. “That’s all you’ve got? Eden, the man is hockey royalty. Half of New York would kill to be in that room with him.”
My grip tightens on my bag. For a second, I wonder if I should tell her the truth—that I’ve known Nate Russo half my life, that seeing him again knocked me sideways. But the words stay locked behind my teeth.
“He’s just another client,” I say instead, keeping my tone steady. “He’s got a muscle strain that’s going to require a lot of hands-on treatment.”
Melissa tilts her head, studying me with the same sharp focus that turned a tiny office into a thriving practice. It’s one of the things I admire about her—the reminder that if she built this from nothing, maybe I can too. “You look rattled.”
“I’m fine.” It’s too quick. Too defensive.
“Uh-huh.” She doesn’t buy it for a second. “Tell me the plan.”
I pull out my iPad, grateful for the anchor in my hands. I give her a quick rundown.
“And his ice time?”
“He can still play,” I say, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “But he’ll have to scale back intensity—limit explosive pushes, avoid overextending. As long as he follows the plan, he’ll stay in games and keep healing.”
Melissa nods, clearly pleased. “Perfect. He’s a high-profile client, Eden. If you get him back to full speed, word will travel. This could make your career.”
I hesitate, throat tight. I know how stupid it is, that any sane therapist would be jumping at the chance. Still, the words slip out. “What about Alex? He’s great with adductor rehab. Maybe he could—”
“No.” Melissa cuts me off with a sharp look. “The Defenders asked for the best, and that’s you. Besides…” Her expression softens. “The money from this contract alone could cover the first few months’ lease on that space you’ve been eyeing on York Avenue.”
My heart stutters. The space I’ve been picturing every time I walk past that For Rent sign.
It wouldn’t be a run of the mill practice.
The Carver Method. A clinic built around my own approach: elite-level rehab rooted in sports medicine and dance science, blended with craniosacral therapy to reset the nervous system and accelerate recovery.
A place where athletes and dancers come back stronger, and where Upper East Side moms and weekend warriors line up for the same treatment the pros get.
The business plan is there, the concept fully mapped out.
And yet here I am, still under Melissa’s roof. Safe, steady, but working for someone else. All that’s left is the final hurdle: signing the lease and making it real.
“This is only a couple of months, Eden. You can handle the commute. And frankly?” Melissa studies me, a note of concern in her voice. “You need this for a solid start on your place. Not just the money—the reputation. Rehabbing this guy will make you big.”
I force a smile that feels tight. “Yeah. You’re right.”
She pats my arm and heads toward her next appointment, leaving me standing there with my iPad and the storm brewing in my chest.
For the next two months, I’ll have to touch him without letting him see how much I still want him, how deeply he’s under my skin, how impossible he is to shake, no matter how long it’s been or how hard I’ve tried to forget my teenage crush.
Two months of repairing his body while mine comes dangerously close to unraveling.
I spent years convincing myself I was damaged. That the numbness was permanent, that I’d never experience what other women did. But one hour with Nate, and my body is screaming that maybe I was only waiting for the right man to walk back into my life.