22. Ellie
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ELLIE
My favorite gray blazer lay on my bed. On my first day at the facility, I’d buttoned it up and thought I’d looked competent. Ready to face the hockey world. It turns out I couldn’t armor-plate my way through a seven-foot orc who knew exactly where I was soft.
Marzipan watched me get dressed from her perch on the bureau, her yellow eyes tracking every movement. When I reached for the blazer, she meowed once. A warning, maybe. Or judgment.
“It’s just a blazer,” I told her.
She slow-blinked.
At 7:15 AM, I stood in the facility parking lot.
It had been two days since everything fell apart.
I had coffee from the chain place three blocks away instead of my usual spot.
I couldn’t go back to the other one, not when I could picture him in this parking lot, holding a cup with my name on it with a purple sticky note.
Thanks for not giving up on me. —B
I’d given up two days ago in a hallway. Smart, Crim would say. Cowardly, whispered the part of me that had memorized every word of his late-night texts. I didn’t know which voice was right.
The facility looked the same. Glass and steel, the Purple Punishers logo above the entrance. I’d walked through the staff entrance door plenty of times, but today my feet wouldn’t move.
Professional mask, I reminded myself. I’d spent years perfecting it. One heartbreak wasn’t going to crack it now.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it.
The concealer I’d layered under my eyes this morning was supposed to hide the fact that I hadn’t slept. Marzipan had curled against my belly around 2 AM, purring loud enough to drown out the noise in my head. Even that hadn’t worked.
I appreciate everything you did. Getting me back on the ice. That’s your job, right?
I forced myself to walk inside the building.
My office smelled like the lavender hand lotion Patty kept on her desk.
I dropped into my chair and pulled up the patient schedule for the day. Fedor at 8:30. Mikael at 10:00. Veskar at 1:00. A full roster, all of the orc hockey players needing tape or adjustments or someone to tell them they were healing on schedule.
All of them needing me to do my job.
An email notification popped up mid-morning.
Subject: Opportunity - Denver Sports Medicine Institute
I hovered my mouse over it, then clicked.
Dr. Lundrig,
We’ve been following your work with the Purple Punishers, particularly your rehabilitation protocol for adductor and hip flexor injuries. The timeline you achieved with goaltender Brashe Kedish has generated significant interest in our organization.
I stopped reading. Started again.
We would like to invite you to interview for a position as a Physical Therapist in our internationally ranked athlete division, Friday if you can fit it into your schedule.
Three days from now?
The words blurred. I scrolled down to the salary number.
Forty percent more than I made now.
A sound came out of me. It wasn’t quite a laugh. More like air punched from my lungs.
This was everything I’d wanted.
Before.
The thing he’d reduced to “just your job” and the competence he’d dismissed with a handful of words in a hallway was giving me an escape route.
I could leave and prove my worth somewhere else. Somewhere he wasn’t.
I closed the email and sat with my hands on my lap, staring at nothing.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d spent weeks pouring everything I had into fixing him. Arriving early, staying late, researching treatment options at all hours because I’d wanted him to heal. Not because it was my job. I’d seen something in him worth keeping.
And he’d thrown it back at me.
Now that same work was opening doors I hadn’t known existed.
I reopened the email and read it again. Then a third time.
The prestige. The salary. Working with internationally ranked athletes.
I’d worked hard for something like this.
I closed my laptop and stared at the wall before making myself get to work.
The water fountain was located on the second floor, around the corner from the gym. I was on my way to check on Veskar’s ankle when I heard voices near the fountain.
His voice.
I froze.
“Have you seen Dr. Lundrig?” Brashe asked.
“Not since yesterday,” Veskar said. “Why? Is your hip acting up?”
“No. I just… Never mind.”
I flattened against the wall, my heartbeat so loud in my ears I couldn’t hear if their footsteps were getting closer or farther away. I waited before moving.
This was ridiculous. I was a grown woman with a doctorate, hiding from a hockey player like I was fourteen, a newly minted freshman, and afraid someone might notice me in the school hallway.
Except it didn’t feel ridiculous. It felt necessary.
Seeing him would mean remembering the careful blankness in his expression when I told him to leave.
I straightened and headed back to my office, taking the long route.
Before noon, I sat in the treatment room, updating Fedor’s chart. Footsteps stopped in the doorway.
I knew who it was without looking.
“Ellie…”
“I have a patient in five minutes.” I didn’t look up from my tablet. “And it’s Dr. Lundrig when we’re working.”
Brashe’s face shifted. I caught it in my peripheral vision before I made myself look away, directing my eyes to the screen.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”
He left.
I stared at my tablet until the words stopped making sense, then dropped my head onto my folded arms.
I fixed people.
That’s all I did.
I ordered a sandwich from the place down the street and took it out to my car. The parking lot was quiet, most of the team inside eating or lifting or doing whatever hockey players did between practices. With game five tomorrow night, they could even be packing for the trip.
Sitting in my car, I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite, staring at the facility entrance.
Brashe’s truck pulled into the lot.
I slumped down in my seat like I was starring in a bad spy movie, keeping my head below the window line. I could barely see over the dashboard.
This was a new low for me.
He parked three rows over and sat in his truck, not moving.
Peeking above the window, I watched him pick up his phone. Stare at it. Set it down. Look at the facility. Pick up the phone again.
Ten minutes passed.
My sandwich sat forgotten in my lap, getting soggy.
He finally got out and walked inside, his shoulders tight. Favoring his left side, which meant his hip was bothering him. Which meant he wasn’t doing his stretches properly or he’d overdone it in practice or—
I cut off the spiral, but my hands were already reaching for my phone to text him a reminder.
Then I remembered I didn’t do that anymore.
I sat up straight, shoved the rest of my sandwich in my mouth a bite at a time, even though it tasted like cardboard, and went inside through the side entrance like the coward I was becoming.
Haley appeared in my office doorway while I was staring at my computer screen late afternoon, telling myself to work.
She walked in and sat in the chair across from my desk.
“I got a call not long ago,” she said.
“Yeah?” I didn’t look up.
“Denver Sports Medicine Institute.”
My hands stilled on the keyboard.
“I know the CEO,” Haley said. “We went to college together. She sounded me out about you. She kept it casual, but I knew what it meant.”
My belly dropped. “And?”
“I told them you’re amazing. Obviously.” She leaned back in the chair. “They’re lucky if you’re even considering them.” Her smile was gentle. “Are you going to interview with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“Maybe.”
She studied my face.
“You’re okay with me leaving?” I asked.
“I want what’s best for you.” She paused. “But make sure you’re choosing for you. Not running away from something.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One makes you brave. The other makes you small.”
I wanted to dismiss it. To label it as the kind of thing people said when they weren’t the ones bleeding out in hallways. But it stuck anyway, like I’d swallowed it whole and it had lodged somewhere deep inside.
She left, and I sat, staring at nothing.
My phone buzzed with a text from the Denver Sports Medicine Institute.
Dr. Lundrig, we’d like to confirm if you’re available for an in-person interview Friday? We’d cover all travel expenses, of course.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard.
Tomorrow was game day. I’d already planned not to attend, which meant I could fly out the morning after the game. Interview for the job. Fly back on Saturday.
If I went, I’d know what I was dealing with. I’d have options.
This could be a chance to prove I was worth more than what one scared hockey player thought.
Yes, Friday works, I texted.
Wonderful. We’ll set up your flight and hotel.
Crim was leaning against my car when I walked out at the end of the day.
I sighed when I reached him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?”
“Anything.”
“Tough.”
We faced each other off. Brother versus sister energy, the kind we’d perfected over years of living in the same house.
“You’re thinking about taking the job,” he said.
I’d told him about it not long after receiving the email.
“How did you know I was seriously considering it?”
“You’ve got this look, the one that says you’re about to do something brave that you’re pretending is practical.” He shifted his hip on the side of my car. “You had it right before you left for your fellowship.”
I didn’t deny it.
“So which is it this time?” he asked. “Running toward something or away?”
“Ah, yes. Another person suggesting I’m considering this solely to run away. Not because I’m qualified or because it would be an amazing career opportunity.”
“It’s all that, but you need to make sure you’re clear in your mind about why now is the right time to jump on this opportunity.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it really does.”
I looked away, focusing on the facility entrance instead of his face. “Maybe I’m running or maybe I’m being savvy about my career. Men do it all the time. Why not women?”
“Denver’s a good opportunity. You’d be stupid not to consider it.”
I frowned at his about-face. “Really?”
“Really.”