Page 35 of Rookie Recovery

“I am not prudish,” I protested, and half-turned to find him grinning again. Always. Dammit, even when I was playing games, he was the one getting to me.

“... Between prudish doctor,” he continued like I hadn’t spoken, “and rock star tattoos.”

I rolled my eyes hard enough to see the cerulean sky through the trees. “They’re not rock star tattoos.”

“Okay, so.” He fell into stride beside me again as the trail leveled out. Birds chirped overhead. Our boots crunched underneath. Warm wind lifted sweat off my forehead, ruffled his blond hair, bringing with it the scent of his shampoo and shaving cream. “What are they?”

His gaze dropped to trace the unbroken lines of ink stretching from around my left wrist up into the sleeve of my T-shirt.

“I was young once.” Celebrated every victory and wrote every pain in my skin to wear forever. “Did stupid things, same as any kid.”

“You think they’re stupid?”

“No.” I shrugged, held my hands out, turned them over palm-up to expose the ink on the insides of both wrists, crawling up my forearms and elbows and the swell of my biceps. Let them drop to my sides again. “I like them. A lot, actually. But they belong to a different life.”

When I looked up, he met my gaze with big, unreadable green eyes. “A different person.”

“Yeah.” Surprise softened my voice to barely more than a breath. “A person I used to be.”

“Well, I think they’re—”

“Hot?” I lifted a brow at him, trying to bring back his flirtatious smirk. Someone had to lighten the mood. “Sexy?”

That smile blossomed across his face like a bright spring day in the middle of winter. “I mean, yeah. But I was going to say, beautiful.”

I nearly tripped on a root, but kept my feet under me. Being a pro athlete—even an ex pro—came with its perks. Some of which didn’t include constant aches and a Tylenol habit. “You waxing poetic on me, Bowman?”

“Would that ruin your impression of me?”

“Kinda, yeah.” I aimed half a smile over my shoulder at him. “I might think you take things seriously.”

“I’m starting to wonder if you don’t take everything seriously.“ He surged ahead of me to pounce up onto a mound of rock protruding from the right side of the trail. “Like, maybe there’s a person hiding under the doctor’s coat.”

I climbed up after him. The land fell away in a tumble of low bushes and jutting rocks to reveal the lake stretched beneath us. Wide and blue and bright. Pines curled around the shore to cup it in a soft green embrace.

“I don’t wear a doctor’s coat.” My arm brushed his good shoulder through my T-shirt, and the warmth of him burned like a brand into my skin.

“The button-downs then. It’s okay, though. I enjoy the button-downs.” His gaze shifted back towards me. “Especially if there are tattoos underneath. Shit, Kitty, your sex appeal just doubled.”

I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my gym shorts and reminded myself, in very stern words, that we were here as friends and he was a cocky kid and well, there were probably other things I should remember too. “Not happening.”

“Of course not.” He turned away, so I only caught the edge of his grin as he tossed it out over the lake. Then he folded his legs down under him in a cross-legged seat. “Can we stop for a snack? I’m starving.”

“We’ve been walking for thirty minutes.”

“I’m a pro athlete.” He shrugged—just his one good shoulder, and something snagged inside my chest. “And I’m twenty-five. My metabolism is insane.”

“Oh, youth,” I sighed, crouching down next to him, on his left. Trying to keep my knee straight without being obvious about it. Trying not to let the leg of my shorts ride up high enough to expose the scars. Five surgeries, and they hadn’t fucking fixed it.

“C’mon, Kitty.” He beamed up at me, clearly not looking at my knee. “You’re like four hundred pounds of muscle. You can’t tell me you don’t have to eat a lot.”

“I’m thirty-seven.” I shrugged the backpack off into his lap. “All yours.”

He fished a power bar out of the front pocket and dug in. “So, what’s the story with the tattoos? Did you not always want to be a physiotherapist, then?”

My fingers clenched with the suddenness of the question, but if I kept my eyes on the lake, I could answer. “Does any kid want to be a PT?”

“No, probably not. What made you do it?”

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