4. Jax
Chapter four
Jax
Dave texts me at one.
Out sick. The physio team is sending someone.
Sorry man.
It’s Fine. I honestly don’t care who shows up. Just need the shoulder fixed before Thursday.
I drop my gear bag. Strip down completely — Dave’s seen everything, replacement will too, doesn’t matter. Grab the sheet off the counter, lay it across my hips and get on the table.
Thursday’s game runs on a loop. Their top line. Shooting patterns. Where the puck goes when the left side breaks down.
By minute eight I’m in a bad mood on principle.
I hear the door handle.
Fucking finally.
I don’t look up.
“Lotion’s on the counter behind you,” I say. “Left shoulder. Two pumps.”
Footsteps stop.
“It’s right there,” I say. “Green bottle.”
“I see the bottle.”
I turn my head.
Fuck.
Nova Shaw is standing just inside the door in leggings that have absolutely no business being in this room. Charcoal gray. Painted on. The kind that know a woman’s body so well they stopped asking permission.
Her sweater’s oversized. Slipping off one shoulder. And right there at the hem — where it rides up on her left side — there’s a sliver of skin just above the waistband. Just enough.
I look at the ceiling.
Locked. That’s going in the spank bank.
The sheet has immediate and deeply inconvenient opinions about this.
“You’re not the replacement.” My voice is steady, controlled, giving absolutely nothing away. Considering the circumstances, that’s a minor miracle.
“I got turned around looking for the storage room,” she says. “I didn’t know I’d be walking into—” She stops. Looks at the table. At me on the table. “This.”
“Replacement cancelled,” I say. “Not me.”
“You can’t cancel yourself.”
“Correct.”
“So you’ve just been lying here.”
“Eight minutes.”
“Just waiting.”
“Yes.”
She looks at the door. I look at the ceiling.
“You have hands,” I say. “Shoulder needs doing. Math’s pretty simple.”
Silence.
I wait.
“Lotion,” I say, pointing to the counter. “Two pumps.”
She turns to get it. I catch a glimpse.
I look at the ceiling immediately.
The sheet is not interested in being reasonable.
“Walk me through it,” she says.
“Come here first.”
She comes to stand beside the table. Puts her hands on my shoulder.
Cold. Ice-coffee cold. She’s been holding that cup all morning and her hands are freezing. I feel it everywhere and cold is genuinely the least of it.
“More pressure,” I say.
She leans in.
The sweater slips again. The hem rides up on her left side and there’s that strip of skin again and—
I find a new section of ceiling. Far corner. Unexplored. Very flat up there.
“More.”
“I’m pushing as hard as I can—”
“Use your weight.”
She puts her whole weight into it. She’s so close now I can smell her hair. Her body’s at eye level and I’m doing my damnedest not to look. I’m a professional
Cut the shit.
“You’re staring at the ceiling really hard,” she says.
“I’m managing.”
“Managing what.”
I open my mouth. “The situation.”
“What situation.”
“your—”
“Yeah?” A dare in it.
“Your leggings,” I say.
Fuck.
That came completely out of my mouth into the room.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No,” she says. “No, it’s—” She stops. Something in her voice. “It’s fine.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Very clinical.”
“I’m a clinical person.”
“Sure.”
“Nova.”
“Jax.”
“Two inches left,” I say.
“Two inches,” she agrees.
She moves. Finds the knot.
I go completely still.
Not the managed kind. The real kind. The kind that means something just landed that’s been sitting in my shoulder for two weeks and her hands are finding it without me directing them and I don’t have the capacity to manage the ceiling and this at the same time.
Pain first. Then comes relief. Then the very specific problem of her hands staying there long enough for my whole body to register exactly who’s touching me and how careful she’s being about it.
There’s something unfair about competence in a woman I’m already trying not to think about.
“There,” she says. Quiet. All the banter gone.
“Yeah,” I say. Same.
“How long,” she says.
“Two weeks.”
“Jax.” Her thumb stops moving.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying it with your hands.”
“My hands have opinions.”
“Believe me,” I say. “I know.”
She laughs. Doesn’t mean to. Warm and real and completely unguarded and I turn toward it before I can stop myself.
“Don’t,” she says immediately.
I face the ceiling.
“I was going to look at your face.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was.”
“The ceiling’s neutral,” she says.
“You’re using my line.”
“It’s a good line.”
“It’s the only thing keeping me functional right now.”
She goes quiet again. Working through it. Finding what needs finding.
That’s the part I’m not prepared for. Not the leggings. Not the sweater. Not even the sheet trying to stage a coup. The fact that the second she stops teasing me and actually means it, the whole room changes.
“When I walked in,” she says. “And you were on the table.”
“Yeah.”
“I lost my train of thought for a second. Maybe two.”
“I noticed.”
“You were supposed to be looking at the ceiling.”
“I was,” I say. “Mostly.”
“We’re both managing,” she says.
“Professionally.”
“The sheet’s doing incredible work.”
“Wait…what?”
“Really. Under significant pressure.”
“Don’t make me get up off this table.”
“Oh, you won’t.”
She’s right. I won’t.
Standing up right now would be a commitment I’m not prepared to make in front of another human being.
Her hands move over my shoulder again, slower this time, finding the line of tension under the joint.
Then they stop.
Not fully. Not enough to make it obvious.
But I feel the pause.
Her eyes are on my right arm.
The griffin.
Most people ask about the mask first. The number. The glove. The saves. Women ask about the body if they think they can get away with it.
Nova looks at the ink like it surprises her.
“That mean something?” she asks.
I glance down at my arm. “Guardian.”
Her fingers press into my shoulder again, but her rhythm’s different now.
“That’s it?”
“Power. Courage. Protection.”
I say it simple because it is simple. Or it was when I got it.
Something crosses her face.
Fast. Gone before most people would catch it.
I catch it.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Nova.”
“It’s just…” She looks at the tattoo again, then back to my shoulder like my muscles suddenly require all available focus. “Interesting.”
“That’s one word.”
“It’s the one I’m using.”
Fair enough.
Her thumb finds the knot again and digs in.
I breathe through my nose.
“And this one?” she asks, nodding toward my left shoulder.
“The compass?”
“Yeah.”
“Keeps me pointed.”
She goes quiet.
Not the sharp kind. Not the defensive kind.
This one sits lower.
Her hand stays on my shoulder, warm now, careful in a way that does something stupid to my chest.
“Of course it does,” she says softly.
I don’t ask what she means.
I want to.
I don’t.
Her thumb finds the knot again, higher this time, tucked under the edge of muscle like my body hid it there on purpose.
I don’t make a sound.
She notices anyway.
Her hand stills for half a second, not long enough to make it a thing. Long enough to tell me she knows I lied about the pain.
“You do this a lot,” she says.
“Get rubbed down by journalists?”
“Pretend something doesn’t hurt because admitting it would inconvenience the room.”
That gets under the sheet faster than her hands do.
“Two more minutes,” she says. Back to the shoulder. Quiet again. “Then you’re done.”
“Yeah.”
“And Jax.”
“Hm.”
“Eight out of ten,” she says softly. “That’s not manageable. That’s not what that word means.”
I don’t say anything.
She finishes. Steps back. I sit up. Roll the shoulder.
She’s close enough that my knee could brush her thigh if I moved half an inch.
I don’t.
That may be the only decent decision I make all day.
The relief hits immediately. Real. Significant. I hadn’t realized how much of my range I’d lost until it comes back all at once.
I look at her.
All of her. The chaos of her hair. The hands that found a two-week knot in four minutes. The laugh she didn’t mean to let out.
None of it’s going anywhere. That’s the problem.
“Better?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Significantly.”
She gets her bag. Her iced coffee. Hits the door.
“Nova.”
She stops.
“Cap’s off the lotion bottle.”
She turns around. Puts the cap on. Doesn’t look at me.
“The sheet,” she says. “Give it my regards.”
She leaves.
I lie back.
The room’s still carrying her. Lotion. Coffee. Whatever’s in her hair.
My shoulder feels better.
That’s the least useful thing about this.