“Can you tell him I’ll be out in a minute?”

“Sure thing. You need help?”

“I’m good.”

Nolan leaves me to manage getting my ass out of bed. I notice that my bathroom looks a lot cleaner than it did last night. It takes me a full ten minutes to get ready. Kingston is sitting at my kitchen island, drinking a glass of milk.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“It’s no problem. I came early since I know you’re not moving fast these days.” He finishes his milk, rinses out the glass, and puts it in the dishwasher. “You ready to go?”

“Yup.” I pocket my wallet and phone. Since I’m on crutches, King takes my to-go coffee, and we head for the elevators. I glance at Stevie’s door; the paper is gone, which means she’s already left for work. I wonder if we’ll still have our morning underwear competition now that she’s helping me with PT. Guess I’m not going to find out today.

“How was practice yesterday?” I ask once we’re in Kingston’s SUV. He drives the speed limit dead on and keeps his hands at ten and two, like he was taught in driving school. While he may be a rule follower, he doesn’t expect that of anyone else. He accepts people for who they are—rule breakers and all.

“Okay. You getting injured shook the team up, though. You know how it is: some of the guys are superstitious. How you handling things?”

I wish I wasn’t one of the superstitious ones, but losing team captain and being out with an injury after the first exhibition game is shit luck. “I’m not happy, obviously. I don’t want to miss the beginning of the season.”

“I get it, but that’s a bad pull. You don’t want to rush it and reinjure, either.” King flicks his blinker on a full block from where he has to turn.

“I know. It hurts like hell. I’ve never done this kind of damage before. I wish they hadn’t put me on defense. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been playing forward.” I lift my hat and run a hand through my hair. “I can’t afford to have a bad season, you know? I only have a two-year contract, and if I screw this season, I could be sent somewhere else—or worse, the farm team.”

“You’re too good of a player to get sent back to the farm team,” Kingston says.

“I’m only good to the team if I’m on the ice. Warming the bench for five mil a year isn’t going to get a contract renewal. I need a few more years at least to make bank, especially if Nolan keeps living his life like it’s going to end tomorrow.”

Kingston knows about my brother’s health issues. “He’s not taking care of himself?”

“Not the way he should.” I blow out a breath. “I’m worried about the long game, you know?”

“I get it, but you’ll only be out for the first few weeks of the season, so you’ll have lots of time to prove your worth to the team.”

“I really hope so.”

We pull into the parking lot, ending the personal conversation. The team meeting is a whole lot of morale-building bullshit. The GM, Jake Masterson, is well respected despite being young for his role. He and Waters will be pumping up the team, so it’ll be a lot of rah-rah crap today, which I’m not in the mood for, considering I get to watch all the action from the bench.

Apparently Waters is going to be hosting a party for the team prior to the official start of the season. I’m not big on parties, or lots of people and socializing outside of the rink, but I can’t exactly avoid these kinds of things when it’s pretty much the only way I can mesh with my team.

After the meeting there’s a training session I can’t take part in, so I’m sent to work with one of the team physiotherapists instead. I will say that Stevie is much nicer looking and smelling than the guy I’m dealing with. He’s professional and efficient, and those are the only good things I can say about him.

We go through range-of-motion exercises, and he pokes and prods me for a good forty-five minutes. By the time he finishes his initial assessment, the verdict is that I’m going to need intensive sessions, starting tomorrow.

I head to the locker room, where the rest of the team is suiting up for ice time. I’d like to call an Uber and take my ass home, since my groin feels like it’s on fire again from all the unpleasant attention, but I realize I need to stick around. If I can’t play, I should be watching my teammates, getting a sense of how they work together.

I take a seat on the bench while the guys do warm-up drills. This is fucking depressing.

Waters drops down beside me. He’s dressed in a suit, which is pretty much what he wears all the time unless he’s in the gym training with us. He’s a hands-on coach, in the middle of everything. Super friendly and just . . . nice. It’s irritating since I’m in such a shit mood. “How you holding up?”

“I’m all right. Not happy about the situation, but we’re starting rehab tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll beat the six-week healing time.”

Alex claps me on the shoulder. “Just don’t push yourself too hard, too fast. I know when I screwed up my shoulder, I wanted to be back on the ice for playoffs. Injuries like this can mess with your head and your morale.”

“I remember when you took that hit. It was bad.” I’d been playing in the minors, waiting to be called up, and it was all the hockey world could talk about. The top player in the league being out for the end of the season because a rival player had had a beef with him and took him out of the game. Cockburn has since retired from the league, although maybe retired isn’t the right word. At the end of the season that followed, his contract expired, and no one would renew.

Waters nods his agreement. “If I’d pushed rehab the way I wanted to, I wouldn’t have had the last few years of my career, and the only reason I didn’t was because my best friend was there to keep me from being an idiot. So listen to your body and make sure you don’t do more damage than good when you’re pushing the recovery angle.”

I don’t want to hear all the ways I can ruin my career, even though I get what he’s saying. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

He cocks a brow. “I know it’s been a rough start, but one injury doesn’t have to dictate the rest of the season for you.”

I track Rook on the ice, watching him move seamlessly between players as he heads for the net with the puck. He’s flawless out there, quick and fluid. He manages to slide it past Kingston. He skates around behind the net, coming to a stop in front of him. King gets along with everyone, and nothing really ever seems to rile him up. We’re pretty much opposites, apart from both liking routines. Rook puts a hand on Kingston’s shoulder, and they talk for a few seconds. King nods, probably eating up whatever advice he’s being given.

I should hate Rook less, knowing that he doesn’t have a sidepiece living across the hall from me, but I find I loathe him more. He acts like a golden boy, when really he was the furthest thing from it at the beginning of his career.

He skates over to the bench and grabs his water bottle. “How you doin’, Winslow?”

“All right.”

“It was a good save the other night.” He tips his head back and squirts water into his mouth, eyeing me from the side.