Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Quinn
Things I’d expected to happen after I was hired on full-time as a physical therapist: my schedule being obnoxiously full of both pro and non-pro athletes.
Things I did not expect: my schedule being full of doe-eyed children, most of whom were on peewee hockey teams with thirsty moms who wanted to see if it was true that a former NHL player was now working at the office.
The kids were amazing.
Everyone else was…less than amazing.
But it was distracting, at the very least. It was a good job, and I was good at it, considering how many years I’d spent under the harsh but tender loving care of my own therapist. She was the sole reason I could walk again.
She was the sole reason I didn’t give up on literally everything.
It had been a close call for a while, especially because although the team is your family, when you get booted out, they tend to, you know. Forget you.
A little, at first.
And then a lot.
I got a few DMs after the photoshoot since it was the first time I’d shown my face in public after the string of interviews I’d done before officially retiring. But they were nothing more than, “hey, glad to see you’re doing well,” or, “hey, glad to see you’re still hot.”
A couple of them asked if I’d ever gotten on the ice again—which yes. I had. I couldn’t skate well. At least, not compared to the way I could before the accident, but I realized that ice was always going to make up a good part of my blood.
Boston had several community leagues and what felt like more ice rinks than churches, so I wasn’t missing out whenever I got the itch.
But something in me had shifted since my night with Ferris.
It was like a sudden and profound moment that I really was moving on, and the younger, better generation was taking my place.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the draft or the trades in the last few years, but after leaving the chat—and after it was obvious Ferris wasn’t going to try and contact me through text—I looked up his collegiate stats.
He was going to do well.
He was going to do more than well. He was going to win trophies. He was going to hoist the Cup and press his lips to that cool metal and feel the rush through his bones. He was going to be a fucking champion, and it gutted me a little to know I wouldn’t be there to see it.
Ferris still felt a little bit like he was mine, even if that moment had only lasted a few hours.
Sometimes, when I dreamed of him, I could feel him like he was really in my arms. I’d wake up cold and more lonely than I expected to. It was one fucking night. How did he have such a goddamn grip on me after this long?
“Yo. Quinn? You good, man?”
I blinked and realized I’d been hovering with the stylus over the tablet for way too long. Glancing up, I saw Cal staring at me with a raised brow. He was the one who’d finished up my training. The one I was half taking over for since his wife had just had twins and needed extra help at home.
He’d gone from five days a week to two, and today was his Friday. Though it was actually a Thursday.
“Sorry.”
He shook his head and leaned on the counter. “You look like you need a vacation. Or a drink. Or a drink on vacation.”
“I don’t drink,” I told him quietly. That was a half lie. I drank a little, but I had to be careful because drowning out both inside and outside pain with whiskey was a little too tempting some days.
“Vacation, then. Syd and I went on one of those adult-only cruises last year. Six days in the Caribbean. Most gorgeous shit I have ever seen.”
“I’m not really a boat person,” I told him. I finished adding my notes, then looked up to see Lisa—the receptionist—flipping the Closed sign on the door and locking it. Halle-fuckin-lujah. It had been a week, and I only had one more day to get through.
“You’re not really much of an anything person, are you?” He pushed away from the counter and stared me up and down. “Seriously, what do you like?”
“My fish.”
He stared blankly. “Fish are basically living décor, man.”
Not true. My fish was weird as fuck. Which was probably my fault for naming him Fish. He was a betta—bright blue with a huge fantail.
“Also, my cat.” I hadn’t planned on getting one, but then Ferris happened, and I found myself at the shelter two weeks after buying my brownstone. She was a flat-faced, part Persian, garbage cat. Literally. She’d been found in a garbage dumpster behind a restaurant and was missing half her tail.
I loved her with every fiber of my being, even if she hated all people and only came out from her cushy cat bed to eat, use her litter box, and hiss.
Though she did sleep with me every night.
“I’ll have to give you that one. I would die for my cat. I would kill for him.” He flashed me his phone screen, which was his twin daughters on the floor with a big orange cat between them.
I didn’t have photos of Clawdine. I didn’t really have photos of anything, which was probably some kind of personal failing. “Mine’s kind of a dick, but I love her anyway. She’s a princess.”
Cal sighed. “We have to find a way to dislodge that stick in your ass, bud.”
“Trust me, there’s nothing up there.” I might not have been so grouchy if there had been in recent days. I hadn’t thought much about sex after the accident…and then Ferris came along and fucked that all right to hell.
And me along with it.
Now I wanted it again, but with him. Or with someone as good as him. But the few times I’d ventured out to see if I could get laid, no one sparked interest. They were all too…average. Too fucking basic.
Too…not Ferris.
“Why don’t you come out with—”
“I don’t go out,” I said quickly.
Cal groaned. “You’re going to die alone, and your dickhead cat is going to have to eat you.”
“I’m happy to feed her after my last moments are over,” I said flatly. Turning away, I walked up to the desk and tried for something that felt like a smile when Lisa stared at me. “Any new surprises for tomorrow?”
“One late-afternoon appointment. After five,” she said, pulling a sympathetic face.
“Aww, what the fuck?”
“We got a call about it. Apparently, it’s some guy from the…what are they called? Big hockey team?”
Shiiiiit. “Okay,” I said slowly. They had a whole entire team of professionals that helped players. So why me? “Someone super famous, or…?”
“I guess he’s not a player. Or something?
” She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t really do sports, you know?
Anyway, it’s just an assessment, then we’ll work him into your schedule.
His script is for three days a week to start, then up to four.
They need him graduated by June if we can manage it. ”
I tried to pull up his chart, but the system flashed an error at me. “What the fuck?”
“Sorry. Upgrades. It’ll be down tomorrow until nine,” she said with an apologetic stare. “Anyway, he doesn’t sound too bad. Something about a break and a torn ligament, if I remember right. The notes we got said he’s expected to make a full recovery.”
Though I hadn’t been doing this for long, I’d already heard that more than once. And eighty percent of the time, it was correct, but that twenty percent it wasn’t felt like a damn canyon of disappointment that I had to deliver.
But that was the life I’d chosen. I’d been on both sides of that coin, so in a way, at least I was prepared to give whatever news my client had to hear.
“I’m gonna head home,” I said, tapping the counter. I turned to face Cal. “Need anything else?”
“Nope. Well, yes.”
I stared, raising one brow.
“Do something that isn’t you being a sad sack of shit, jerking off in your shower, and going to bed early.”
Flipping him off, I said nothing as I turned away and headed for my office to grab my stuff.
The truth was, he was right. I probably would jerk off in the shower with Ferris’s name on my lips, then curl up under a heavy blanket with my cat, throw on some mindless streaming show on my laptop, and drift off to dreams of a life that might have been but never would be.
“Can I help you?”
I hadn’t realized I’d gotten to the front of the line, and I still hadn’t made my mind up yet.
Leaning on my cane, I shifted to the side and glanced behind me at the woman who was staring up at the menu board.
She looked vaguely familiar in the face and wore a long-sleeved yellow top with embroidery and a matching gauzy headscarf that was lying low along her braid, which fell halfway down her back.
Her gaze met mine, and her eyes narrowed.
“Would you like to go ahead? I can’t decide what I want.”
She laughed. “Have the pistachio chocolate latte. I don’t normally like trends, but I can’t get enough of this one.”
“You know what,” I told her, then tried for a smile, “why not?”
“You don’t usually like pistachio?” she asked.
“I love it. But I used to have this trainer who would scream at me if I ate even an ounce of fat unless I was bulking for the season.”
“Are you a muscle builder guy?”
I burst into laughter. “God no.” I flopped my arms, which had lost way too much muscle mass after not working out the way I used to. “No, I played hockey.”
Her eyes widened, then darted down to my cane, and her expression did something complicated. There was pity, which hurt, but I couldn’t be mad at her about it.
“Yep. One wrong step and it was all over. But I’m good now. I just forget I can do things like drink pistachio lattes when I feel like it.”
“Good for you. Order a brownie to go with it.”
I snorted and turned to face the barista, who looked to be maybe fifteen if he was a day. He was staring at me with that generational dead-eyed stare. “Mediu—no. Large pistachio latte. And a brownie.”
“You’re a very good boy,” the woman said behind me. “If my own son would listen half as much, maybe he could be half as successful as you.”
“You think I was successful?” I asked her, swiping my card, then stepping aside.
She gave me a slow up-and-down look, then nodded. “Yes I do.”
She wasn’t wrong. It was hard to accept some days, but going from professional sports, where I had won championships more than once, to becoming a physical therapist was definitely a mark of success.
Or something like it, anyway.
She stepped up to order—four different kinds of coffee and a mountain of pastries, which was surprising, though I wasn’t about to comment on it. She paid, and then we both stepped to the pickup counter.
“What do you do now?” she asked just as I was taking my phone out of my pocket.
“Oh. I went back to school after I retired.”
“Did you play for Boston?”
I shook my head. “No. San Jose to start, and New York until I retired. I did my residency here—”
“Are you a doctor?” she asked quickly.
I snorted a laugh. I was a doctor of sorts, and since I wasn’t actually going to see this woman again, I shrugged. “I’m in sports medicine. It ended up making more sense than going into another field. I spent two years in intensive physical therapy, and I wanted to give back.”
“You seem like such a good boy.”
I hadn’t been called a boy like that—from someone’s mom—in so, so long. It should have annoyed me, but it felt…nice.
Soft. Comforting.
“I do my best.”
“Your parents must be very proud.”
My parents had been dead several years, but that always screwed a conversation six ways to Sunday, so I smiled and shrugged. “I think I chose better than some guys who decide to rot after retirement. I think I’d lose it if I tried to do that.”
She tilted her head to the side, then gave me a decisive nod. “Tell me your name. I’m going to make sure my son studies you and sees what a person should do if they fall off their path.”
I flushed and told her who I was, hoping against hope that she’d forget by the time she got home. The last thing I needed to be for anyone was a role model. God help anyone who wanted to be like me.
The day was so busy, I’d forgotten to check my new patient’s chart until right before I was walking in to meet him. He’d already been triaged and assessed by the tech, and I pulled up his file as I stood just outside the closed patient room door.
I scanned his assessment first. Car accident six weeks prior, broken tibia, surgery to place four pins to stabilize the break, and a torn talofibular ligament, which had also been repaired through surgery.
And then I looked at his name, and it felt like the world was crumbling beneath my feet.
Ferris Kasim Redding.
Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was another athlete living in Boston with the first name of a John Hughes movie and an Urdu middle name.
And maybe cows would learn to talk and run for Congress.
I took a deep breath, then glanced around like maybe some omniscient god figure was waiting around the corner to yell, “Just kidding,” and laugh at the cosmic joke. But there was no one there to rescue me, and Cal didn’t work Fridays, which meant it was me.
It was just me.
And I couldn’t leave Ferris sitting in that room like a fucking chump, could I?
Though I could. I could have an emergency and leave and tell whoever was at the front desk to reschedule him with literally anyone else, so long as they did it on my day off. Not that I had a day off while the office was open, so…
I was fucked.
I was so fucked.
And then it hit me because that meant Ferris was here—on the edge of his first season with the NHL—with an injury that might ruin his career before it even started. Christ, a car accident? What the fuck had happened?
Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the door and pressed my ear against it.
“Come in!”
Fuck you, Quinn. Stop being a goddamn coward and do this. He’s just a patient. He’s just a man with an injury who needs treatment, and that is your job. It doesn’t have to be a thing.
I pushed the door open and came to a halt.
He was sitting on the exam table, his leg in a walking boot, a set of crutches beside him.
He looked like a more tired version of the man I had held on my lap and fucked into oblivion.
He looked like the man I’d kissed softly and held tightly.
The man I’d showered with and didn’t want to let go of.
His gaze met mine as he sucked in a sharp breath.
Yeah. It was going to be a thing.