Chapter 7 Marnie
MARNIE
Stop. Professional thoughts only.
I’ve seen him shirtless before. Multiple times. It’s fine. I’m a physical therapist and he’s an athlete and this is literally my job.
But I haven’t seen him shirtless and wet.
Water is clinging to his chest, running in rivulets down his abs, pooling in the lines of muscle I’ve been very deliberately not thinking about for six weeks.
His compression shorts are plastered to his thighs in a way that should be illegal in any setting, much less a professional one.
There’s a droplet sliding down from his collarbone, following the center line of his chest, and my eyes track it without permission. His mouth quirks.
Shit. He caught me staring.
My face is on fire. I can actually feel the heat crawling up my neck, and there’s nowhere to look except at him or at the pool or literally anywhere else but I’ve already been caught so what’s the point.
“The water helps with resistance without impact,” I explain, very carefully not looking at the way the water hits just at his hip bones, or how his compression shorts are basically painted on when wet. “We’ll do range of motion work first.”
“In the shallow end?” He’s standing in four feet of water looking vaguely offended. “I’m not five.”
“No, you’re a six-foot-six hockey player with chronic shoulder instability and an inability to follow basic instructions.
” I wade in wearing athletic shorts and a tank over my sports bra, trying to ignore how his eyes track the water climbing up my body.
“Shallow end means you can’t cheat and use buoyancy to avoid the work. ”
“I don’t cheat.”
“You literally did forty reps yesterday when I prescribed ten.”
“I can’t believe Jake told on me.”
“Jake’s protecting your career.” I move behind him in the water, hands positioned on his shoulder blade and upper arm. “Slow controlled movements. Let the water provide resistance.”
He starts the exercise, and I have to focus very hard on the biomechanics of his movement and not on the fact that wet skin is slippery and warm and my hands keep sliding across muscles that belong in an anatomy textbook.
“Slower,” I instruct, applying pressure to guide the movement. “You’re rushing.”
“This is slow.”
“This is you trying to get through it. Slow means feeling each degree of rotation.” I adjust my grip, accidentally brushing his ribs.
His breathing changes.
“There. Feel that?”
“Yeah.” His voice is low. “I feel it.”
The pool room is too warm. The chlorine smell too strong. The early morning light streaming through the windows creates patterns on the water that draw attention to the way it runs down his skin, and I need to stop noticing things like the water droplets caught in the hollow of his collarbone.
“Eight more,” I say, but my voice comes out wrong.
“CANNONBALL!”
The scream precedes the splash by half a second. A tsunami of pool water crashes over us as Brody Carter launches himself into the deep end with the grace of a dying walrus.
“Jesus Christ, Brody!” Roman wipes water from his eyes. “What are you, twelve?”
“Mentally? Yes.” Brody surfaces, grinning. “Morning, Doc! Morning, Cap! Fancy seeing you here at...” he checks the wall clock, “seven-thirty in the morning. Together. Alone. In a pool.”
“It’s therapy,” I say, but I’ve stepped back from Roman like we’ve been caught doing something completely inappropriate.
“Looks therapeutic.” Brody starts doing the worst freestyle stroke I’ve ever seen. “Very hands-on therapy.”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Roman asks. “Like home? With your wife?”
“Elliot’s at some coffee thing. Early morning book club with the girls.” He stops swimming to float on his back. “She dropped me off. This month they’re reading a book called ‘Pucked by my Teammate’s Dad.’”
I know exactly which book that is. I’ve read it. Twice. The scenes are... memorable.
“We’re working,” Roman says firmly. “Leave.”
“Can’t. Gotta do my laps. Coach’s orders. Cardio every day.” Brody starts his terrible freestyle again. “Don’t mind me. Pretend I’m not here.”
Right. Pretend he isn’t doing interpretive swimming ten feet away while I have my hands all over his captain.
Roman continues his exercises while Brody swims, but the dynamic has shifted. I’m aware of being watched, even though Brody seems focused on his workout.
“Five more,” I tell Roman, repositioning my hands more carefully now.
“So that book Elliot’s reading,” Brody says between strokes, “she keeps laughing about it. She read me this part with a pool scene. Apparently it’s physically impossible.” He flips to backstroke. “I mean, water doesn’t work like that.”
My face is burning. Roman’s shoulders are tense under my hands, but I can’t tell if it’s from the exercise or the conversation.
“Three more reps,” I say, trying to sound professional.
“The books get pretty detailed from what I hear. Dex said he and Goldie tried something from last month’s pick and he pulled a hamstring.”
“Two more,” I say, desperate to finish.
Roman completes the last reps in silence, then turns around in the water. We’re closer than I expected, maybe a foot apart, and water is running down his chest in rivulets I absolutely should not be tracking.
“Same time Monday?” he asks, voice low enough that Brody probably can’t hear.
“Seven sharp.”
“I’ll be here.”
There’s something in the way he says it that makes my stomach flip.
I back toward the pool edge, needing distance. “I have to go. Mom has an appointment.”
“Tell her I said hi,” Brody calls out, which is weird because he’s never met my mom, but sweet in the way I’ve learned is just how Brody operates.
I grab my towel and bag, aware that I’m fleeing. But I’m only three steps toward the door when it opens again.
“Brody Carter, you told me you’d be in the weight room!”
A woman walks in. Tall, dark-haired, carrying herself with the confidence of someone who regularly deals with hockey players’ bullshit. This must be Elliot.
“I was going to the weight room,” Brody says, not even trying to sound convincing. “But then I remembered I needed to swim.”
“You hate swimming.”
Roman snorts.
I try to edge toward the door, but Elliot notices me.
“You must be Dr. Walker. I’m Elliot, Brody’s wife.” She extends a hand, and her handshake is firm before she turns toward her husband. “You saw them from the weight room window and decided to crash their therapy session, didn’t you?”
“I would never—”
“You literally texted me ‘Cap and hot PT in pool. Going in.’” She holds up her phone.
Roman makes a choking sound.
My face is definitely crimson.
“I meant ‘going in’ like going into the pool area,” Brody says weakly. “For exercise.”
“Sure you did.” Elliot turns to me. “We have a book club on Tuesday nights. Very informal, mostly wine and gossip disguised as literary discussion. You should come.”
“I—that’s nice of you to offer—”
“Fair warning, we find the books with the smuttiest descriptions. But the wine is good and it’s nice to have people who understand the schedule insanity.”
I glance at Roman, who’s studiously examining the pool tiles like they hold the secrets of the universe.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
After I change, I practically run to my car, sitting there for a moment to collect myself.
The morning started as professional therapy and ended with me being absorbed into the WAG social circle while standing in a pool with a half-naked hockey captain whose teammates are actively trying to matchmake us.
My phone buzzes.
Mom
Blood draw moved to 9. Pick up coffee on your way?
At least that’s normal. One normal thing in my increasingly abnormal life where I’m treating the city’s most attractive hockey player while his teammates document it via text and his friend’s wife invites me to book club to discuss pool sex scenes.
I start the car, and my phone buzzes again.
Roman
Sorry about Brody.
Not your fault.
Roman
Still. He’s an idiot.
A well-meaning idiot.
Roman
The worst kind.
I shouldn’t smile at that, but I do.
Monday. Seven AM. Don’t be late.
Roman
Wouldn’t dream of it.
I toss my phone on the passenger seat and pull out of the parking lot, definitely not thinking about the way the water ran down Roman’s chest, or how his voice sounded when he said “I feel it,” or the fact that Brody Carter texted his wife “hot PT” and I’m not sure whether to be flattered or mortified.
Probably both.
Definitely both.
Mom’s waiting when I pull up, but she smiles and takes the cup with hands that shake slightly, and says, “You’re glowing. Good morning?”
“Complicated morning.”
“The best kind.” She sips her coffee and doesn’t push, which is how I know she knows something’s different.
We drive to the cancer center in comfortable silence, and I try not to compare the two parts of my life that refuse to stay separated.
The daughter taking her dying mother to get bloodwork.
The PT who just spent an hour with her hands on a man who makes her forget every professional boundary she’s ever maintained.
The center is quiet this early. We check in at the desk, find our usual seats in the waiting area, and Mom pulls out her phone to show me photos from her garden that Teresa took yesterday.
“The tomatoes are coming in,” she says, scrolling through pictures of plants I haven’t had time to visit. “They’re the best I’ve had in years.”
“That’s great, Mom.”
“You should come by and pick some. Make that pasta thing you used to love.”
“I will.”
But we both know I probably won’t. That I’ll get caught up in work and appointments and therapy sessions that run long, and by the time I remember the tomatoes they’ll be past ripe and Teresa will have used them for sauce.
“Linda Walker?” The nurse calls from the doorway.
Mom stands, steady on her feet today, and I follow her back.
They draw blood from her left arm because the right is too damaged, and she doesn’t flinch when the needle goes in.
She’s gotten good at this. Too good. The kind of good that comes from doing something so many times it stops being frightening and just becomes routine.
After, we sit in the car for a moment before I start the engine.
“That man,” Mom says. “The one making you glow. Is he worth it?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Marnie.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Everything worth having is complicated.” She pats my hand. “Just... don’t forget to live while you’re busy keeping everyone else alive.”
I don’t have a response that doesn’t sound like a lie.
So I drive us back to her house, walk her inside, make sure Teresa knows to text if anything changes, and head back to the facility for my afternoon sessions.
And try to ignore the way Roman looked at me in the pool, or the fact that Elliot Carter invited me to book club, or how Mom can see something in my face that I’m not ready to acknowledge.
But mostly, I fail at all of those things.