Chapter 19 #3
“At Cash and not where you were supposed to .”
“He’s distracting.”
I settled on my table. “Goalies who blame distractions give up soft goals.”
“Goalies who talk during other people’s sessions are assholes.”
“That too.”
Matteo crouched to adjust the resistance on the machine in front of me. “I see you’ve both matured since Monday.”
Eli’s therapist told him to shift onto his injured side again.
His body moved a fraction, then stopped. His hands clamped around the bars.
“I am.”
“You’re thinking about it,” she said. “I need you to do it.”
“I’m trying.”
The edge in his voice silenced whatever smartass response had been waiting behind my teeth. He wasn’t pissed this time.
He was scared.
I started my first repetition. “You play deep or challenge?”
Eli glanced over. “What?”
“On a breakaway.”
“Depends who’s coming at me.”
“Bullshit answer.”
“It’s the right answer.”
“Then prove it.”
His therapist caught on before he did. “Again, Eli.”
He shifted as he explained why an aggressive depth would get a goalie embarrassed against anyone with decent hands. More weight moved onto his injured side before he realized what he’d done.
“Better,” she said.
Eli immediately looked down at his feet.
“Don’t,” I told him. “You’ll get in your own head.”
“You asked me a question.”
“And you forgot to be afraid while you answered it.”
His glare should’ve burned a hole through me. Instead, he reset his stance.
“You’re wrong about the breakaway.”
“I’m never wrong.”
“That explains all those goals you let in.”
Matteo covered a laugh with a cough.
Eli shifted his weight again. Farther this time.
His therapist didn’t celebrate or draw attention to it. She simply said, “Again.”
Eli kept his eyes on me. “What about a left-handed shooter coming down the right side?”
I leaned back against the table. “Now you’re asking the right question.”
Eli spent the rest of his session and most of mine trying to prove me wrong. Every time his weight shifted to his injured side, his therapist adjusted the exercise until he was doing the work without thinking about it.
Finally, she stepped back. “That’s enough for today.”
Eli looked down at his feet as if they’d betrayed him by cooperating. “That was it?”
“That was plenty.”
He grabbed his crutches and stopped beside my table on his way out.
“See you next time?” he asked.
“Probably.”
“Good.” His face reddened. “I mean, I still have to explain why you’re wrong.”
“Bring evidence.”
“I will,” Eli said with a smirk.
He followed his therapist into the hallway without looking back.
Matteo watched him go, then turned to me. “You distracted him into loading his hip.”
“He was talking hockey.”
“He was doing his exercises.”
“He’s a fucking goalie. He can do two things at once.”
“So can you, apparently.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
“I’m thinking you may be good at something besides irritating me.”
“Unlikely.”
“How did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t.” I glanced toward the empty doorway. “He was too busy thinking about everything his body couldn’t do, so I gave him something else to think about.”
Matteo’s eyebrows lifted. “You made him feel like a goalie again.”
The words caught beneath my ribs.
For a few minutes, Eli hadn’t been rehabbing a fucked-up hip. He’d been a goalie arguing hockey with me.
“Somebody needed to,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t had that connection in a year. I’d missed it. I missed my boys. Every damn day.
Talking with Eli might have helped him, but who was I to say? I knew fuck-all about this shit. What I did know was it had definitely helped me. It had made me feel needed. Necessary. The way only standing in a net had ever made me feel. I wanted…no. I needed more of that in my life.
I looked up at Matteo, who was staring at me like he’d found gold at the end of the rainbow or something.
“Stop doing that. It’s freaky.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever the hell you’re doing right now.”
He smiled and returned his attention to my knee, checking range of motion and swelling. When he finished, he sat back and said, “Swelling’s down. Motion still looks good. You can go back to one crutch.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Unless you’d like me to invent a catastrophic setback.”
“I’m good.”
I pulled the second crutch away from the table and stared at it. Picking it up the other day had felt like losing a whole month. Now it was a crutch again. Nothing more.
“Take it home,” Matteo said. “And don’t make me regret dropping you back to one.”
I tucked it beneath my arm and headed for the door.
“Cash,” he called, stopping me.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Thanks for your help with Eli. I don’t know if you realize how much you helped him.”
I stared at him, confused and curious all at once.
I’d never been good at helping others. My childhood had robbed me of that skill.
Or maybe I was just a selfish asshole, and it wasn’t my parents or my shitty upbringing that taught me to only care about myself.
Helping that kid though…it felt good. Better than anything else I’d ever done in my life.
Not even a shutout had felt that good.