Page 29 of Rookie Recovery

And would you look at that! My erection was gone.

Jamie raised a single brow at me. Laughter lines still ghosting his beautiful face.

“Fine,” I said. “You win that round, Dr Sullivan.”

He licked his finger and drew a ‘one’ line in the air. Then, he handed me my shorts, but not my shirt. “Okay, Bowman, let me be serious for a sec.”

“Hmm, are you sure you can pull it off?” I slipped my feet into my shorts, lifted my ass up, and pulled them all the way on. At least now if I got another boner, there’d be one more layer to hide it behind. “That whole serious vibe … it’s not really your jam, is it?”

“Aaaaand he’s back.”

“Sure, okay.” I leant on my elbows so I could keep this new smiling, adorable Jamie in my sights. “I’ll let you be serious. Just this once, though. Don’t want you getting any long-term ideas.”

“Bowman,” Jamie began.

“Nope, I changed my mind. I don’t like where this is going.”

He perched himself on the edge of the table and smiled, softly, as though underneath all the professionalism, he truly cared, not only about the team, or the game, or being really fucking incredible at his job, but about me. Bowie. The silly Brit with no filter. The guy who’d made repeated and unsuccessful—until five minutes ago—attempts to get Jamie’s hands down his pants. Like there was a reason he wouldn’t let me leave without being checked out. Even if he was ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine recurring percent sure I’d been faking it.

“You can’t keep coming in here with fake injuries.” His voice had taken on a gentle-parenting edge. He was letting me know I wasn’t in trouble. “You’re wasting my time. You’re wasting your own time. And what happens when you have a real injury? You come into my office and I don’t believe you. I don’t want you throwing away your dream like that. Our relationship”—I sat up a little straighter, and Jamie tugged at his open shirt collar—“as PT and patient, can only work if there is absolute trust and honesty between us. So as fun as this entire game has been, it’s time to stop playing.”

As fun as this entire game has been.

That was the bit my brain chose to focus on.

He dug it. My prancing around his office like one of those fancy exotic birds with pretty feathers that David Attenbrough talked about. I knew there was a reason Jamie hadn’t kicked me out of here.

Instead of bringing it up, I tipped my head up again to look at the ceiling. Realising, for the first time, how close to naked I was.

“So,” Jamie said. “Honesty, yeah?”

I blew out a breath. “Sounds boring, but okay.”

“Tell me what’s up with your shoulder, then.”

I sat bolt upright on the couch and stared at him. How did he know?

“I’m a PT,” he said, as though reading my thoughts. “It’s my job to notice these things. Did you think you could hide your twitch before every face off? Or how, when you take off your shirt, you favour your right side? Or the way you flinch when my fingers hit that area?”

“It’s nothing,” I said, putting as much off-handedness into my voice as I could muster. “Old injury.”

“How old?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t let him know the full details. The fact that over the summer I’d practically forgotten about the injury, yet since arriving back in America and spending more time on the ice and in the weights room, it had been getting incrementally more painful. Nothing too bad. I could ignore it if I needed to. It wasn’t so bothersome that it affected my game in any way. But my shrug was more asymmetrical than I’d have liked. And Jamie had clocked it.

“How old, Bowman, and how did it happen?”

I stopped myself from huffing like a petulant teenager. “I don’t know, about ten, eleven months ago. And I don’t remember it happening, I just remember one time in the showers it felt … different.”

Jamie ran a hand down his face. “You skated an entire season with an injured shoulder.” It wasn’t a question, more a horrified statement of fact. “Bowie, come on. Don’t you have any self preservation?”

Apparently not, because my brain fixated on the use of my nickname. Bowie. Not Bowman.

“I didn’t want to risk being benched,” I said to my lap.

He was on his feet, pacing. “Fuck, kid. You wanna be benched for life? Does it hurt to hold a stick?”

Jamie took the answer directly from my silence. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, and I couldn’t be sure whether he was talking to me or himself. “I’m going to refer you for some tests. An MRI, maybe an x-ray, and we’ll see what we’re working with here. That’s all. I’ll draw you up a recovery schedule. You might miss training camp. Maybe preseason, too.”

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