Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Oliver
Holding my arm out straight, palm facing up, I use the other hand to pull my fingers back toward my body. I’ve barely started when pain races through my injured wrist.
Hissing in pain and frustration, I stop the exercise. The sound echoes off the empty walls of the physical therapy room. It shouldn’t be this hard. Why is it so damn hard?!
I switch to wrist circles—five clockwise, five counter—but can only manage two before the grinding sensation makes me stop.
Next attempt: squeezing the stress ball.
My fingers barely dent the foam that a toddler could probably flatten.
And carrying a bag of groceries or a hockey bag?
Forget about it. Last week, I dropped a half-gallon of milk because my grip just gave out.
The explosion of white across my kitchen floor felt like a metaphor for my entire life.
I feel like such a failure, half of a man. What can I offer anyone if I can’t even carry five pounds?
The door to the physical therapy room opens, and Devin comes in.
The fluorescent lights catch the highlights in her hair, and for a second I forget everything except how beautiful she is.
Then reality crashes back. I open my mouth to say something—maybe hello, maybe an explanation for why I’m here—but shame keeps my tongue frozen.
I’m sitting on the edge of the table, obviously in the middle of exercises, sweat beading at my temples from the effort of movements that shouldn’t even qualify as a warm-up.
This isn’t how I want anyone to be seeing me. Especially not Devin.
“Sorry.” She freezes in the doorway, one hand still on the handle. “I can—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m done.” The lie comes out rougher than I intended.
I slide off the table, the movement jarring my wrist enough to make me bite back another curse.
I avoid her eyes, focusing instead on the anatomy poster behind her left shoulder.
It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since that kiss three days ago—three days, fourteen hours, but who’s counting—and I still have no clue what to say to her.
I can feel her eyeing me, though, her gaze tracking over my face like she’s looking for something. “How is the physical therapy going?”
“Uh, pretty shitty. Actually.” The admission escapes before I can stop it. “All of the exercises are painful.” I feel like a little bitch complaining, heat crawling up my neck, and I’m not sure why I’m being so honest with her. Maybe because lying to her feels worse than admitting weakness.
“Really?” She comes closer, the scent of her body wash—Ocean-something, isn’t it? I guess she still uses it—filling the air between us. “Have you told your physical therapist?”
“Uh… No. I don’t really have a physical therapist right now. The one I was seeing is the teams’, and since I left…” I trail off and shrug.
“Ah. So you’re in the market for a new physical therapist in the area?”
Now I can’t help but look at her, really look at her. This time in surprise. Her eyes are steady on mine, professional but with something else underneath. Is she offering to be my physical therapist? After she ran away from me in the alley?
I’m trying my hardest to make sense of things, but it’s a challenge when up is down and down is up.
“I can create an individualized program,” she goes on, her voice taking on that clinical tone. “Something that’s tailored to your needs.”
That makes my face heat up, defensiveness rising like bile. “Are you saying that I can’t handle a normal program?”
“No,” she says slowly and evenly, the way you’d talk to a spooked horse. “There is no normal in recovery. Everyone is different, and whoever told you otherwise wasn’t being professional.”
I already feel bad for speaking to her that way, but her cool response makes me feel even shittier. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. What you’re going through, it isn’t easy.”
My inhale burns my throat. “I didn’t think it would still be this hard. The doctors said my career was over, but a part of me… I thought maybe they were wrong.”
She says nothing, just stands there. The afternoon sun slants through the window, highlighting dust motes floating between us.
It wasn’t a physical therapist or a doctor who told me my recovery isn’t normal. It was my mom, her voice sharp with disappointment over the phone last week. According to her, my brothers are back in the game only weeks after injuries, so why isn’t it the same for me?
Forget that none of them have shattered a wrist.
“Do you still think they could have been wrong?” Devin eventually asks, her voice soft.
My wrist hangs at my side, so innocuous looking yet so troublesome. The scars have faded to thin white lines, but the damage underneath runs deep. How many times since that game have I wished to have a different body? Mine seems to have failed me in the biggest way possible.
“I think… that false hope won’t get me anywhere.” I look her square in the face, trying to inject conviction into my voice. “I’m happy coaching. I’m happy on Pine Island.”
I’m happy when I’m with you.
The thought hits me like a slap shot to the chest. Yearning fills me. I want to apologize for the other day, to let her know I’m sorry for taking things too far. I want—no, need—her to understand that she’s on my mind day and night.
If she’ll give me another chance, I’ll do everything to make sure I don’t misstep.
“My ten a.m. tomorrow morning just canceled,” she says, before I can say any of that. Her words come out rushed. “Can you come to the clinic then?”
“Oh. Uh, sure.”
The door flies open, banging against the rubber stopper, and a student from the soccer team enters. She’s holding her shoulder, grass stains on her uniform. “Oh, sorry,” the kid mumbles.
“It’s okay.” Devin waves her in, immediately switching into caregiver mode. “Come on over. Rochelle will be here soon.”
I step away from the table, my attention lingering on Devin. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Her eyes sparkle for just a moment, something warm flickering there, and then swiftly dim before she looks away.
Trying not to read into it, I head out the door.
I’ll talk to her when we see each other again. Tomorrow. Ten a.m.
Even though my gut is twisting from anxiety, I’ll still be counting down the minutes.
The next morning, I’m at the clinic fifteen minutes early, sitting in my car with the engine running and heat blasting against the January cold.
My hands grip the steering wheel as I stare at Devin’s clinic.
It’s right on the edge of the water, waves lapping against the rocky shore, facing the mainland with a dock extended into the restless waves.
Though it’s clearly an old building, the paint is a fresh blue, and there are benches and umbrellas out front, currently covered in frost.
As welcoming as the clinic is, I struggle to get out of my car. The morning so far has been spent trying to figure out how to bring up the kiss. The best I can come up with is just saying “I’m sorry about the other night.”
Simple enough, right? Even if the task feels gargantuan.
My phone says nine fifty-eight a.m. Time to stop being a coward.
In the clinic, warmth hits me immediately, along with lavender and something medicinal but not unpleasant.
I don’t have time to check in at the front desk.
Devin appears at the mouth of a hallway like she was waiting.
She’s dressed in khakis and a polo shirt with the logo “Pine Island Physical Therapy” embroidered over the pocket.
Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, leaving wisps around her face, drawing attention to her perfect facial structure.
“Hey,” she says, and her voice does something to my insides. “Come on back.”
I nod and follow her down the hallway decorated with photographs of nature—Pine Island in different seasons.
Summer beaches, autumn forests, winter shores.
The room she takes me to is just as pleasant as the rest of the clinic, with a comfy couch in the corner and calm music softly playing.
Some kind of instrumental that makes me think of rain on leaves.
It’s the opposite of the PT clinic for the teams’, which felt sterile and more like a lab than anything else.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she says, gesturing to the padded table.
I sit on the edge, the paper crinkling under me, and my gaze catches on a framed photo on a bookshelf.
It shows Devin standing in front of this clinic, a big red bow across the doorway, and her family—her sister Jemma, their mom, and her dads—around her.
Everyone’s smiling except Jemma, who’s looking at something off-camera.
“Was that opening day?” I nod at the photo.
She turns around to glance at it, her ponytail swinging. “Yeah.” A smile flits across her face, but it’s brief.
I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but seeing a picture of her family reminds me of the first time I met them.
The week leading up to it had been brutal—double practices and a scrimmage where I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
Whatever I said to them—something defensive about their “concerns”—definitely rubbed them the wrong way.
Every time after that, Jemma and their mom barely spoke to me.
They even made occasional comments about Devin’s high school crush, Billy.
Not that I needed a reminder that Devin was too good for me. I always thought hockey success would make me worthy. Multimillion-dollar contract, billboard ads, the works. Still wasn’t happy. Nothing filled the hole.
Ironically, it took losing everything to see that.
“Dev—”
“What exercises have you been doing?” She cuts me off so quickly I don’t think she even heard me speaking. But there’s something in the way she fumbles with her clipboard, dropping it before catching it against her thigh, that tells me she’s not as composed as she seems.
“Oh. Uh. I can show you.”
I demonstrate the routine: tendon glides that feel like razor wire, nerve flossing that sends electricity up my arm, isometric holds that make my whole forearm shake after three seconds.
Devin watches with a slight frown, occasionally saying “Okay, that’s enough” when my face must give away the pain level.
“Stop when you feel pain,” she says firmly. “You want to work your way up to that strength and mobility, not force it. These exercises are too advanced for where you are right now. Go ahead and stand up, and we can take a look at your whole-body alignment.”
I stand, feeling oddly vulnerable under her assessing gaze. She steps back, surveying me with a critical eye.
“Make sure you watch your posture. Not just when you’re doing the exercises, but all the time. It’s not about keeping your shoulders back, like we were always told.” She moves closer. “Raise your chest to the sky… Yeah, like that.”
Her hand briefly touches my chest, adjusting my position, and I have to focus on breathing normally.
“You know what?” She turns back to her supplies, knocking over a bottle of ultrasound gel in the process.
“Shit,” she mutters, catching it before it rolls off the counter.
A flush creeps up her neck. “Let me show you a completely different approach. These exercises are more about retraining your nervous system than building strength right now.”
She demonstrates something called pendulum swings—literally just letting my arm hang and swing gently. “This is it?” I ask, and for the first time today, there’s humor in my voice. “I went from hundred-pound presses to... this?”
“Welcome to square one,” she says, and there’s an unexpected lightness in her tone. “Population: you and everyone else who’s ever had to rebuild from scratch.”
“That’s oddly comforting.”
“Right?” For a moment, we’re just Oliver and Devin again, not patient and PT, not exes with complicated history. Then she seems to remember herself, straightening. “Now, let’s work on some assisted range of motion.”
This requires her to take my arm and move my wrist around in gentle circles.
Which requires her to stand right next to me, close enough that her hip occasionally brushes mine.
She manipulates my wrist with careful precision, but when she has to adjust her grip, her fingers slip slightly—she’s nervous too.
“Radial deviation,” she murmurs, moving my wrist sideways. “Tell me when—”
“There,” I say when the first twinge hits.
“Good. Now...” Her breath catches as she has to step even closer to get the right angle. The scent of coffee and mint on her breath brings back the memory of our kiss in the alley.
It’s not until her gaze meets mine that I realize I’m staring at her face instead of watching what she’s doing. She searches my eyes, her breathing hitching, pink entering her cheeks. The air between us thickens, charged with possibility.
She leans forward the slightest bit, maybe an inch, her eyes dropping to my lips. My pulse roars in my ears, but I stay frozen. I won’t be the one to cross this line, not when she ran before.
For a heartbeat, we hover there, suspended between past and future.
Abruptly, like someone dumped cold water on her, she draws back. “I’ll go print these out for you.” She nearly trips over her own feet in her haste to get to the computer.
She spins around and walks to her computer so fast that my “Thanks” is directed at her back. The printer hums to life. She hands me the warm pages, then slips her hands into her back pockets. “Shoot me a message later this week and let me know how they’re working for you.”
“I will. Should I, uh, call the front desk?”
“You can text me.” She looks away. “Since you have my number.”
“Will do.” The longing that I’ve been keeping tamped down rises in my chest. This is it. My opportunity.
She checks her phone. “Oh. I have another client waiting.” Her smile seems apologetic, but I get the sense that she can’t wait to get me out of here.
Which is confusing. If she didn’t want to see me, she could have recommended me to one of the other physical therapists here. Maybe she’s just as confused as I am, caught between what was and what could be.
Except I know exactly how I feel about her. And she doesn’t trust me. Doesn’t see me as someone she can count on.
I know I’ve let her down before. The only way I can create trust between us is by showing her I’m different. Day by day, choice by choice.
Which will take time.
“Thanks again.” I head for the door, printouts in hand.
Her gaze lingers on me, heavy with unspoken words. But in the end “You’re welcome” is all I get.
And that’s fine. It has to be. The best things in life take time, and if there’s one thing I have plenty of, it’s that.