Chapter 19
CASH
February
I swung down the hallway of the rehab center on my crutches. Both of them. The faint metal rattle and soft thud every time they hit the floor pissed me off.
Scared the shit out of me too.
When I woke up that morning, something felt off. Not pain exactly. A little swollen. A little less steady.
Memories of every setback after my last three surgeries had kept me sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the second crutch where I’d left it after Matteo dropped me to one last month.
I’d learned what happened when I ignored shit like this.
I grabbed the second crutch and texted Matteo, who’d agreed with me on going back to two until he could look at it.
I shoved the door open with the tip of a crutch, the yelling getting louder now that the door was open and I’d stepped inside.
“I said I’m not fucking doing it!”
A resistance band whipped across the room and smacked into the wall before dropping to the floor.
Every head turned toward the far corner.
A kid sat on the edge of a treatment table, one crutch propped beside him and enough fury on his face to burn the whole place down. Seventeen, maybe. Eighteen at the most. Long legs. Lean build. Black athletic shorts and a gray T-shirt with a goalie mask printed across the chest.
The therapist standing in front of him didn’t so much as flinch.
“You can be angry,” she said. “You cannot throw equipment.”
“I didn’t throw it at you.”
“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”
“It hurts.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you fucking don’t.”
Matteo came through the door behind me and stopped before he ran into the ends of my crutches.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“He’s yelling.”
“Excellent observational skills, but our table is over here.”
The kid shoved himself off the treatment table, coming close to landing his ass on the ground. His therapist reached toward him when he wobbled, but he jerked away before she touched him.
“Don’t.”
“Then sit down until you’re steady.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“Eli.”
“I said I’m done.”
He grabbed for his crutch. It tipped away from his fingers and clattered onto the floor.
He swore and tried to bend for it.
The therapist blocked him. “Don’t put yourself in a position you haven’t been cleared to manage.”
“I can pick up a fucking crutch.”
“You almost fell standing still.”
“I didn’t fall.”
“You’re right. You didn’t. Because I was here.”
“I don’t need you to—”
“You planning to yell that hip into working?”
The words came out of my mouth before Matteo could stop me.
The kid’s head swung in my direction.
His eyes moved over the brace strapped around my right knee, the two crutches tucked beneath my arms, and finally my face. Whatever he saw didn’t impress him.
“Who the hell are you?”
I crossed the last few feet between us.
“Most hockey players call me Money.”
I shifted one crutch against my side and held out my hand.
“Cash Benjamin.”
He stared at my hand instead of taking it.
“That’s—that’s a stupid name.”
“Yeah, well, my parents were drug addicts and career criminals who spent more time in jail than out. They weren’t exactly bright to begin with.”
His therapist pressed her lips together.
Behind me, Matteo made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.
The kid looked at my face again. Really looked this time.
“You’re actually Cash Benjamin.”
“Last time I checked.”
His gaze dropped to my crutches again. “I heard you were getting better.”
The words hit harder than they should’ve.
“I thought I was when I went to bed last night.” I shifted my weight, the rubber tips squeaking against the floor. “Then I woke up and needed the second one.”
“So?”
“So progress is bullshit.”
Matteo cleared his throat behind me.
“Not medically,” I added. “Medically, I’m sure it’s a beautiful, well-researched process full of reasonable expectations and measurable goals.”
Eli’s mouth twitched.
“But when you’re the one doing it? It fucking sucks. You bust your ass to get somewhere, then wake up one morning, and your body decides to be an asshole. Suddenly, you’re staring at a crutch you thought you were done with.”
The anger remained in his face, but he wasn’t reaching for the fallen crutch anymore.
“That what happened to you?” he asked.
“Don’t know yet. Matteo hasn’t looked at it. But it happened enough after the first three surgeries that I know the feeling well.”
“And you’re not freaking out?”
“I’m fucking terrified.”
The admission silenced the room.
I tightened my grip on the handles of my crutches. I could still feel myself sitting on the edge of the bed that morning, staring at the second crutch, trying not to see another failed recovery.
“But,” I stopped long enough to clear the frog named emotion from my throat, “throwing shit won’t tell me what’s wrong with my knee.” I nodded toward the resistance band crumpled against the wall. “It’s not going to do much for your hip either.”
Eli looked away.
His therapist bent, retrieved his crutch, and held it within reach without forcing it into his hand.
“Sit back down,” I said. “Let her figure out what hurts and why. Then you can decide how pissed off you are.”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “You always this bossy?”
“You should meet my surgeon.”
The words left a hollow spot behind my ribs.
Thad would already know what was wrong with my knee if he were here.
Except he wasn’t.
Eli took the crutch from his therapist and lowered himself onto the table.
Matteo touched my shoulder. “Your turn.”
I followed him toward the other side of the room before my knee—or the thought of Thad—could stop me.
Matteo pointed at the treatment table. “Sit.”
“You always this bossy?” I joked.
“You should meet your surgeon.”
I glared at him.
His grin lasted until I climbed onto the table and stretched out my leg. Then his attention dropped to my knee, all business.
“When did it start feeling different?”
“When I woke up. I can’t explain it. Something’s just…different.”
“Pain?”
“No.”
“Anything happen yesterday?”
“Nothing happened worth mentioning.”
“That means yes, something happened, but you don’t want to tell me.”
I thought back through the day. PT. Putting away a grocery order. Making Thad dinner. A trip to Halo House. And Maxie talking me into shooting foam pucks at a laundry basket until Phoenix threatened to tattle on me.
“I might’ve been on it more than usual.”
“How much more?”
“Some.”
Matteo looked at me.
“Okay. A lot.”
“There it is.”
He worked his fingers carefully around my knee, checking the swelling before putting me through the same movements I’d done a hundred times. I watched his face for any change and hated myself for it.
“Stop trying to diagnose yourself through my eyebrows,” he said.
“Then stop making faces.”
“This is just my face.”
“It’s a shitty face that’s not telling me anything.”
“That’s ’cause faces can’t talk.” He bent my knee farther.
I waited for pain.
Nothing.
“The swelling’s up,” Matteo said, straightening my leg again. “Your motion is still good. No new pain. Nothing here is setting off alarms, but we’re backing down today.”
The breath left me slowly.
“So I didn’t fuck it up?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I’m not seeing anything alarming. We’ll keep you on both crutches today, manage the swelling, and reassess.”
I nodded, but my gaze had already moved to my phone beside me.
For weeks, Thad had been there before anyone finished an assessment. His hands would’ve been on my knee. His questions would’ve come faster than I could answer them. He would’ve known something felt different before I worked up the nerve to admit it.
Now I didn’t even know whether he was in the building.
“Want me to update Thad?” Matteo asked.
The question scraped over something raw.
“He’s busy.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Matteo held my gaze for another second before turning toward the resistance bands.
I reached for my phone anyway.
No messages.
Of course there weren’t. Thad was probably rebuilding a shoulder destroyed on the ice. He had patients who actually needed him.
I was fine. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and turned the phone face down.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
Matteo handed me a band. “Less than you want.”
Same as everything else in my shitty-ass life.
Matteo put me through the kind of session usually reserved for children and the nearly dead. Easy range of motion. A few quad sets. Ice.
Every time I looked across the room, Eli was still there.
He bitched through every exercise his therapist gave him, but he did them. By the time she cut him loose, sweat drenched the kid’s clothes, but the anger seemed more controlled.
Eli stopped beside my table. “You here tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
His expression closed.
Fuck.
“But I’ll be here Wednesday.”
“Oh.” He adjusted his grip on his crutches. “Yeah, I will too.”
“Good. As much as it sucks, you can’t rehab that hip on your own any more than you can protect the crease without your defense.”
He gave me a look that said I could go fuck myself, then followed his therapist into the hallway.
Matteo waited until the door shut. “Interesting.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
He wrapped the ice pack around my knee. “Oh! You mean my shitty face?”
“The very one.”
By the time Matteo released me, the swelling had gone down enough to make the second crutch feel like an overreaction. But I kept using it anyway. Three surgeries had finally taught me that embarrassment hurt less than starting over.
I had the rideshare drop me off at Halo, instead of going home.
Home.
The word came too easily now. Way too easily. What should’ve felt good, instead lodged beneath my ribs like a knife. Sharp. Painful. Devastating.
All because I let myself hope.
Thad’s house had been mine for months. Every morning. Every night. Every miserable fucking step between the bed and the bathroom when I couldn’t even make it there on my own because my damn knee wouldn’t hold me. Thad had been there for it all.