6. Brashe
CHAPTER SIX
brASHE
The next day, I accidentally showed up twenty minutes late to my PT appointment.
That was a lie. I’d shown up late on purpose.
I sat in my truck in the parking lot, my hands locked on the steering wheel, staring at the building.
My ribs felt too tight. Like I’d strapped on a weight vest and forgotten to take it off.
This was fine. I’d had injuries before. PT wasn’t new.
Except it had never been with her.
The clock on the dash ticked over to 2:20 PM.
I got out of my truck, my hip flexor protesting the movement with a dull ache that radiated down my inner thigh. It wasn’t bad enough to stop me from walking. But it was bad enough that I’d felt it the second I’d pushed off wrong in practice, that split-second of oh fuck before the muscle seized.
I could skip PT. Tell Coach I’d do the stretches on my own, ice it, and take some anti-inflammatories. I’d done that before with other injuries. But this wasn’t small enough. The MRI had made that clear. Coach Beecham said I wasn’t playing until PT cleared me.
I went inside.
The treatment room was located down the hall from the main gym.
I’d been there before, but it looked different now.
Colder. A treatment table sat in the center of the room, covered with fresh paper.
A desk sat against one wall, the computer monitor dark.
Cabinets lined the other side, labeled with supplies.
Ellie stood by the desk, writing something on a tablet. She didn’t look up when I walked in.
“You’re late,” she said in a neutral tone of voice, the same she used for everyone.
“Um…sorry about that. I got caught up in something else.”
“Sit.” She gestured to the table.
I did as she asked while she studied me with her cool, assessing gaze.
Her green eyes didn’t give anything away.
She’d pulled her hair back in a low bun, but a few blonde curls had escaped at her temples and neck.
She wore a blue blouse tucked into dark pants and low heels that added a tiny bit to her height, though she was probably only five-four.
Very short when compared to an orc, though most humans were.
She looked competent and controlled.
Untouchable.
“How’s the pain today?” she asked.
“It’s fine.”
Her jaw tightened. “On a scale of one to ten.”
“Three.”
She made a note on her tablet. “Alright. Lie down.”
I didn’t move.
She waited, one eyebrow raised.
“On your back,” she said. “Unless you’d prefer I assess your spine instead.”
I found no humor in her voice.
I stretched back, the paper crinkling underneath me. One of the ceiling tiles had a stain in the left corner. I focused on that instead of the sound of her footsteps as she walked closer.
“I’m going to palpate the area,” she said. “Tell me if anything hurts.”
I nodded.
Her hands touched my hip.
My entire body locked up.
Her hands were warm. That was the first thing I noticed. They were smaller than mine, her fingers pressing carefully along the line of my hip flexor, finding the edge of the muscle.
She didn’t look at my face. Her eyes tracked her hands with a little furrow between her eyebrows.
“Relax,” she said.
Sure. Easy. I forced myself to breathe.
Her fingers moved lower, tracing the adductor down toward my inner thigh in a clinical, methodical way.
I was dying.
Every point of contact burned because it was her hands on me. She stood close enough that I could smell the soap or shampoo she used, a faintly floral scent.
She pressed down on a spot above my knee.
I didn’t react.
She moved higher. Pressed again.
Still fine.
Then her fingers found the spot, right at the top of my inner thigh where the muscle connected to my pelvis, and I flinched.
She stopped, her gaze flicking up to meet mine. “Three out of ten still?”
“Yes.”
She pressed again in the same spot. Then harder.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek.
“Number?” she asked.
“Six,” I muttered.
“Alright.” She made a note on her tablet. “The good news is it’s not as bad as it could be. The bad news is you’re going to hate me for the next week.”
“Already do.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Good. That’ll make this easier.”
She moved to the other side of the table, positioning herself to get better access to my hip. “This is going to be uncomfortable.”
Right.
Her hands pressed down, her fingers digging into the muscle with steady pressure.
She worked along the length of the adductor, finding every tight spot and place where the fibers had knotted up.
It hurt, though it wasn’t the same as the pain I’d felt with the initial injury.
This felt deeper, pain that built with every second until I clenched my teeth and fisted my hands at my sides.
I’d taken worse. Pucks to the ribs. Skate blades to the arm. A concussion that had left me seeing double for three days.
This was different because she was the one doing it. And because some messed-up part of me thought I deserved it.
“Breathe,” she said.
I sucked in air through my nose.
“You’re tensing up. That makes it worse.” Her voice came quiet now, almost gentle. “When I press down, exhale. Let the muscle release.”
I tried. It didn’t really work, but I tried.
She kept talking, explaining what she was doing. Why the muscle had tightened. How the soft tissue work would help break up the adhesions and increase blood flow. That this type of therapy would speed up healing.
I wasn’t really listening to the words but the sound of her voice.
She was trying to help me. Not punish me. I almost said something, but her fingers dug into the worst part of the strain and the words died.
“The problem with goalies,” she said, her hands still working, “is that you think you’re invincible. You throw yourselves in front of hundred-mile-an-hour slap shots, get hit, and act surprised when your body reminds you it’s made of tissue and bone, not cement.”
I huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh.
Her hands went still, her fingers still pressing into the top of my thigh. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You laughed.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did.”
I made the mistake of looking up.
She was looking at me. Not at her hands, but at my face. Hers had lost that cool, professional expression and taken on…
I didn’t know what it was.
She blinked and went back to work, her hands continuing their steady pressure. I stared at the ceiling tiles and tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person.
By the time she’d finished, my hip felt like it had been beaten with a hammer and then lit on fire.
“Ice the area when you’re awake,” she said, stepping back. “Twenty minutes on, twenty off. And do these stretches.” She handed me a printed sheet with diagrams and instructions.
I took it.
“We’ll do this twice a day,” she said. “Early morning and late afternoon. Don’t skip the sessions.”
“What if I do?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “Then you’ll reinjure it in the first period of game one, and I’ll get to tell Coach Beecham and your teammates that I told you so.” She tilted her head. “It’s your choice.”
I’d be back tomorrow.
“I’ll schedule you in for eight and four each day,” she said. “Don’t be late.”
I slid off the table, testing my weight. The muscle ached, but it felt looser now. Better, actually.
Tablet tucked to her side, she strode toward her desk, dismissing me. As she should.
My apartment was dark when I got home.
I dropped my bag and stood in the kitchen with the instruction sheet in my hands, admiring her neat handwriting.
She’d numbered each stretch with little arrows showing the direction of movement.
At the bottom, she’d written, Ice 20 min after stretching.
Don’t skip this. Next to it, she’d drawn a little frowny face.
She probably drew them for everyone. A little thing like that didn’t mean anything.
I kept staring at it anyway.
My jaw ached. I’d been clenching it since I’d left the treatment room. She’d touched me today, placing her hands on my body in a careful, competent way that had been completely impersonal.
I’d wanted to tell her that I remembered the picnic. How pretty she’d looked in her yellow dress. How the look she’d given me had felt amazing until I ruined it.
I’d behaved like an idiot at the picnic. The real reason I’d shown up late today was because I’d sat in my truck trying to figure out how to be in the same room with her without making it worse.
I couldn’t tell her any of that.
You’re not here to feel, Kedish. You’re here to stop pucks. My first coach had told me that when I was fourteen. After he’d said it enough, I’d learned to stop feeling much of anything.
I stared at the frowny face again.
I was so fucked.
Tossing the paper onto the sofa, I did the stretches. All of them. Then I did them again, following her arrows exactly, making sure the angles were right.
The ice went on for exactly twenty minutes. I set a timer. When it went off, I looked at the sheet again. At the little frowny face.
Tomorrow morning. Eight AM.
I was going to be early.