Page 38 of Rookie Recovery

Bit my tongue to keep from swearing as I popped back up. “Coming in, Bowie?”

Chapter 6

Bowie

If I thought being off skates with a minor shoulder injury from yonks ago would equate to a few lazy weeks hanging around with Kitty, I was sorely mistaken.

Sorely being the operative word.

Dr Sullivan’s recovery regime was, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking brutal. It involved stretching, lifting, stretching, cardio, stretching, massage, and, to nobody’s surprise, more bloody stretching.

Not just normal stretching, oh no. The stretches Jamie had me doing were uncivilised at best, and at worse, probably illegal in several states.

And not only my shoulder. Jamie had me FLEX-ing and EXTEND-ing muscles and joints that were about as far from my shoulder as they could get. Shouting commands at me as though he was my drill sergeant and determined I wouldn’t miss out on the actual agony of training camp.

“It’s about whole body conditioning,” he would say. And then proceed to spend the next two hours demanding I put on a one-man squats, leg press, and hamstring stretching show for him. “Give me ten more. Another ten. Just ten more, and you can rest.”

He would watch the entire thing, brow furrowed in Super Concentration™. Occasionally, he would come over and correct my techniques, which meant sometimes he’d touch my butt … If I timed it right and moved it into his touch, but still.

“Oh, so sorry. Did you accidentally touch my arse again? I’m probably not doing it right.”

I quickly learned to weaponise my incompetence.

“Kitty, I’m not sure about my posture while doing this stretch. Can you check it for me?”

The cat cow stretch. Where you get on all fours and alternate between bending your back in an arc upwards (the cow) and then reversing that arc and popping your butt out (the cat). Which is what I was doing on the mat in the weights room.

“Your posture’s fine. You know it’s fine. You ask me every time. It’s been fine every time,” Jamie said. One hand on his hip, the other on his forehead like he was either a Regency woman swooning, or he was trying to iron out the wrinkles with his fingers. He’d been pacing the gym.

He was always pacing. His brows furrowed, lots of wrist watch checking and unnecessary sighing and calling upon our lord’s son. He looked like a 1950’s father waiting for the birth of his first child.

“Are you sure my spine’s not bent in the wrong way?” I asked, rolling from cow to cat, and really, really sticking my ass out. “Can you get behind me and check how straight it is?”

He did, because, by now, he’d realised it was quicker not to argue with me. Simpler to get it over and done with and shut Bowie up.

“It’s fine. Not ben—Stop looking at me over your shoulder like that.”

I rolled back into cow, and groaned, and Jamie immediately moved to my side as though staring right at my ass was just too much. “This stretch feels great. It’s really opening up my—”

“Don’t.”

“I was going to say chakras, you pervert. What did you think I was going to say?”

I chanced a peek at Jamie, who, despite himself, was smiling. Damn, that smile was everything.

Back into cat, and Jamie didn’t move. He simply stared at me, drifting off into his own thoughts, perhaps. His eyes took on an unfocused glaze, like he was looking, but not seeing. Like his brain was banking up images of me, but his eyes were inactive participants. I let him get his fill.

Until I got bored.

“What’re you thinking about?” I said it in my most bedroom voice because I would have put money on that being the thing he’d been thinking about.

Jamie stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet, practically confirming my suspicions. “That, uh, you should switch stretches. Ten reps of cat cow is enough. You’ve done at least triple that.”

“Good. I need to do my hammies now.” I flipped onto my back, and Jamie passed me a yoga strap, then knelt beside me. “Do you know what’s weird?”

“What?” he groaned, with all the patience of someone waiting for the punchline to a Christmas cracker joke.

“You’re in a gym, and you’re wearing a button-down.”

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