In all my twenty-six years of life, this is surely the stupidest fucking thing I've ever done, and considering all the messed up shit I've partaken in during my adolescent years, that's saying something.

Glancing around the bedroom, I curse myself at the sight of it. Pink walls, pink bedspread, pink...everything. Hell, there's even a pink stuffed animal giraffe I threw in the cart, thinking it would go along with the decor, but maybe I should have chosen another color to offset all the...pink.

Christ.

It's a lot of pink.

"Wow," Aria muses, standing beside me with grocery bags in her hands. "You weren't kidding, Cal."

"Fix it," I mutter. I'm not a man of many words, but I have to use them in this situation. I've utterly fucked this up–the one thing I thought I'd handle myself. It's a bedroom for crying out loud. It shouldn't be that difficult to decorate, but all I've managed to accomplish is a Hello Kitty hairball. "She's going to hate it."

"She's not going to hate it," she replies. Her lips form a thin line, contemplating. "Okay, she might hate it at first, but that's what makes this arrangement so fun. She'll get to decorate it herself and make it her own."

I'm not sure why I didn't think of contacting my teammate's fiance before I designed this monstrosity of a room. Well, that's a lie. Females and I don't mix. I avoid them like the plague, but Aria is one of the few tolerable to me. Plus, it helps she's a mentor for the fourteen-year-old I decided to foster in my home.

Some might view it as a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it's not their decision to understand. Monique and I previously met before I took the classes I needed to foster, but our history isn't for anyone else's ears. I'm not naive enough to think she hasn't confided in Aria about our past, given they spend at least three afternoons a week together in the Big Sisters of America program. Aria is someone she looks up to, which is partly the reason she's tolerable to me.

"Luckily for you..." Aria distracts me from my thoughts by dragging out some stencils and jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. "I've got some paint buckets in the trunk, too. When does she get here?"

"In two days."

Her eyes widen before she wooshes out a breath. "Okay, then. I'll...I'll stay and paint the room if that's okay with you."

"Really? You don't have anything better to do with Holden?" The two of them are inseparable. Wherever one goes, the other follows. Couldn't pry them apart even if you tried. Normally, displays of affection would disgust me, but Connor Holden—center and team captain of the California Cyclones—is one of the few people I trust. He's the only person on the team who knows about my backstory before I accepted a trade here, and the only reason I told him was that if a situation were to arise and I felt uncomfortable, he'd understand why. He's the captain, and communication on the ice is key. Nonetheless, he kept my story to himself, so I respect the hell out of him. Who am I to judge his happiness if he went and got himself engaged to our team's photographer in less than a year?

"Not today," Aria replies. "He's got some interviews before pre-season starts. Besides, I'd love to help Monique out. And you," she adds in a rush. "I think it's amazing what you're doing for her. Providing her stability and a home she can finally call her own. She's really excited about it. Couldn't stop blabbing about it the other day, actually."

I shrug. "It's the right thing to do." Then, because the conversation stalls, I clear my throat and add, "I'll bring the paint cans up for you. I...appreciate it."

It's odd complimenting a woman. It's odd being nice to one. It's foreign to feel something other than contempt and bitterness while associating with one.

And I'm about to be living with one in less than twenty-four hours.

What the hell was I thinking?

I haven't got a clue how to handle a woman, let alone a hormonal teenager. But after finding her again after so many years of being apart, I couldn't allow her to bounce around from foster home to foster home anymore. I know what that's like, and now that I'm playing hockey professionally, I have the means to provide her with a life she's been robbed of.

"No thanks necessary. It's the least I can do." She begins to rummage through the bags of pillows, a comforter set, and what looks to be notebooks and pens.

"I can stay and help," I offer.

She stifles a laugh, flicking her eyes up to me in amusement. "So you can avoid your physical therapy session? I think not. The team needs you back out there, Cal."

I swallow back my growl of annoyance. After my season ended with a dislocated shoulder last month, I've been undergoing physical therapy sessions with none other than Anastasia Colloway, the woman I tried to escape when I was previously signed to the Nevada Devils. I requested a trade here without realizing her father fucking owned the Cyclones–a stupid oversight on my part, but one I won't make again. Ana decided she missed family, and since our old PT guy went out on paternity leave, her father let her slide into the spot without any questions asked. Now I'm forced to sit through sixty minutes in her presence three times a week. It's almost as excruciating as getting a tooth pulled without novocaine.

But I live and breathe hockey. It's the sport that saved me, and it's the only thing that'll never leave me. When I was a kid, it was my escape from every shitty thing that happened to me, and although it was difficult to play while in foster care, I found ways. Local programs and scholarships got me through for the most part, but I never stayed on the same team for long. I had to learn to adapt to a new team whenever I moved, but it made me a better player because of it.

"Ana isn't that bad," Aria says, wariness in her tone.

I've never heard a statement more untrue.

***

Anastasia only reaffirms it when I enter the training center five minutes late and she rolls her eyes. My hands are balled into fists at my sides when she jerks her thumb to the massage table and says, "You're late."

I grunt as I hop up on the table, watching her every movement as she goes to retrieve a hot pack and wraps it in a towel. I've gotten the routine down, but I always keep an eye out to ensure she doesn't try anything different. As always, I take the hot pack from her and apply it myself, refusing to let her hands touch any part of my skin. Then, I rest my weight on my hands, leaning back on the table.

"You know, it'd feel better if you applied it to bare skin."

I glance down at my t-shirt with a scowl. "Feels fine to me."

She gasps in mock concern, but I'm fully aware that Anastasia Calloway doesn't have an empathetic bone in her body when it comes to me. "Wow. A whole four words? That's more than last week. I'm impressed."

My eyes remain trained on the clock above the double doors, watching the hands tick by at an agonizingly slow rate. Fifty-eight minutes and thirty seconds left to go. I can do this.

While my muscles loosen up, Anastasia grabs things we'll need for my exercises. Different bands, weights, and a water bottle. This time, though, she drops the water bottle, cursing beneath her breath before she bends to pick it up. The simple action has my body tightening against its will and heat rushing to places that have me gritting my teeth.

To a stranger, Anastasia would be what they might consider a knockout. Long, brown hair that falls to the middle of her back, with facial features that resemble a porcelain doll. Her body is thick and curvy–the type where her thighs touch and her hips seem made for placing hands there.

Not that I think that, but I assume a stranger might.

The most distracting part about her is the tattoos and freckles that decorate both her arms. I never look too closely, mainly because it's the one thing we seem to have in common. My arms are covered in ink as well, and I've caught her studying them on multiple occasions.

I don't intend on doing the same.

This feeling I get around her is exactly why I requested the trade. It's a spike in the hum of my blood. A rush of pleasure that I despise with every ounce of being. Being around her reminds me of everything bad that's ever happened to me. Those memories I've locked in the deepest parts of my memories come flooding back with the flare of recognition.

So the next forty minutes are spent in silence, which is how these sessions always play out. I don't speak to her, and she tries to make conversation and fails. I've never been more thankful for an interruption when Brian, her father and the team's owner, opens the door and strides into the room.

But even though I'm thankful, my body still goes on full alert.

Instantly, I sit up straighter, and Ana lifts a brow at the sudden change in my posture.

"Cal. It's good to see you," he says with a warm smile. "Think you'll be back on the ice this season?"

"Doing everything in my power to make that happen, sir."

Ana scoffs. "Really, Cal?" I shoot her a death glare, which she promptly ignores when she adds, "He refuses massage therapy every session, and that's one of the most integral parts of his healing process."

Snitch.

The word is on the tip of my tongue, but I withhold it as Brian darts his eyes between us. I could have easily avoided physical therapy with her by seeking help outside of the team, but that would mean having a conversation with her father about why I didn't want his daughter to conduct my therapy. The last thing I need is to get kicked off the team because he assumes I think Ana is incompetent and can't do her job. I just found Monique again. I can't get traded, so I've sucked it up and come to these stupid sessions against every ounce of my being pleading for me not to.

"Why are you against the massage?" Brian tilts his head to the side, studying me. "We need you back on the ice this season."

"I know, sir," I reply with a clipped nod.

"So I need you to be accommodating to whatever Ana suggests to make that happen."

My jaw ticks, but I dip my chin in agreement. "Yes, sir."

"Meet me in my office when you're finished," he says to his daughter. "I thought I might take us out for lunch."

A genuine smile falls onto her face, and I wish I hadn't seen it if only to avoid the punch to the gut it brings me. "That sounds like fun." And because she's somehow always capable of sensing my irritation, she sends one of those smiles in my direction, too, and for a split second, my heart falters at the sight.

The silence overwhelms us when we're alone again, and I drop the band after my last set of exercises, annoyed that I'm wincing from the pain in my shoulder. Although it's improved immensely since I've started working with her the past four weeks–not that I'd ever admit that– there's still a long way to go, and maybe she speaks the truth when she claims massages will help, but I didn't expect for them to happen so soon.

I'm not ready.

But as if the universe is trying to play a sick, sick joke on me, Ana takes a step back and says, "Alright, you heard him. Massage time."

I try to fight the way my airway starts to constrict, but I push past it. There's no way I can fight her on this when she's going to Brian's office when we're finished. She'll tell him I refused, and I can't risk his wrath. I won't. "What all are you going to do?"

"It's a massage, Cal. It's meant to improve mobility, joint strength, and countless other benefits to help reduce the long-term effects of your injury. So long as you communicate—which I know is a foreign subject to you—it shouldn't hurt. Just take your shirt off and lay down on your stomach."

Fucking hell it feels as if I can't breathe. I've overcome far worse than this, but doing this with her of all people has my heart kicking into overdrive and damn near beating out of my chest. There's no way of getting out of this. I have to suck it up and get this over with.

She sighs at my reluctance and tosses her hands up. "What is it about me that you despise so much? Is it because you're afraid I can't do my job and I'll ruin your precious shoulder for the season? News flash: your shoulder is going to be even more fucked if you don't let me do this."

"That's not the reason—"

"Then what is? Because even when we both worked for the Devils, you despised me. I've never, in my professional career, had a hockey player tell me not to touch them. What gives?"

Giving her a reason would reveal too much, and speaking about my past or my feelings? I'd rather jump off a bridge. So with a leap of faith, I take my damn t-shirt off and toss it to the floor, inhaling deeply through my nose at the obvious perusal she does of my chest. Her gaze lingers on each defined ab, at the body crafted by hockey and weight training, and beneath these fluorescent lights, I'm horrified she's seeing the redness I feel pressing against my cheeks.

If she does notice, she doesn't comment on it. Instead, she drags her eyes up to mine with a satisfied grin. "Was that so hard?" She croons.

But when I roll onto my stomach, facedown on the massage table, I hear the intake of breath that has my stomach rolling with nausea. The deep, jagged fingernail scars are hard to miss, traveling from my neck down to the end of my spine. I'm exposed like this, and even though I should be giving her some made-up excuse for why I have them, nothing comes to mind.

"I...didn't peg you to be the animalistic type in bed," she says with a nervous laugh. "But here we are."

The joke falls flat.

My forehead rests against the mat while I cling to the table in front of me with white knuckles. The scars have nothing to do with pleasure and all to do with pain.

In the silence, Ana clears her throat and takes a step closer to the table. Being this close to her clouds all of my senses. Jasmine mixed with a hint of something fruity, and dammit, I hate that my body never knows what to do with this sensation. Should I like it? Run from it?

The only thing it knows without a doubt is that I'm terrified.

Ana must sense the scars grow deeper than a fun night in bed because she drops her voice down into a gentle whisper, placing one finger on my shoulder, which causes me to flinch. "I'm going to touch your trapezius muscle first. Here." She presses the finger lightly into my skin before she moves it down slightly to the left. "Then your deltoid muscle, here. Okay?" Then, she draws a circle around my shoulder and says, "This is the only area I'm working on."

Why does she have to be so goddamn sympathetic right now? Any other time she's a firecracker who says things before she thinks. She doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks about her, especially me. Regardless, the boundary she creates has my heart recede from a drum to a patter.

The oil hits my back, and when her fingers press into my skin, right into the tight muscles, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding in. Her touch is firm but gentle, and it feels...

"Is the pressure okay?" She asks.

I nod, my free hand clutching the table with enough force to break the thing. My body is on high alert–a bunch of warning bells screaming that I'm in danger, but she remains in the boundary she created, never straying outside of it. Despite how much I wanted to loathe her touch, a massage to my injured shoulder was needed.

What I do loathe?

The fact she was right.

She's never going to let me live it down.

I release a moan of relief when she hits a certain spot, and that one sound has me freezing. The memories slam into my head one by one, and I shoot off the table before she has the chance to finish. My chest is heaving from the imminent panic attack, but I refuse to let her see me like this.

Anastasia Calloway is the reason I escaped to an entirely new state precisely to avoid this feeling. It's a reminder that despite how hard I've tried to keep those moments of pain locked away, Ana seems to hold the damn key to release them.

And she uses it every chance she gets.

My blood is thrumming, heading south even when I don't want it to. Hormones take over, and my eyes zero in on her perky tits outlined by her work polo before darting to her curves and thick thighs.

I'm stuck between pleasure and pain, but at the end of the day, they're both the same thing, aren't they?

"Cal—" She starts, but I'm already striding for the double doors.

The next two months of therapy are going to be fucking hell.

Author's Note

HI HI <3

WE'RE BACK!!!!

How has everyone been?! I feel like I haven't spoken to you guys in years. 

Lots happening on my end. I'm in the process of edits for book two (Maya and Ethan's story), which will be hitting stores in the Fall of 2025.  My biggest request is for patience with this story! I still want to post stories for you to read for free, but it also requires time on my end to cut out to write the chapters. I am (hoping) for once a week updates, and hopefully that's okay with you guys <3 Please bear with me as some weeks may be more difficult than others. 

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this story! Can't wait to write the rest <3

PLEASE COMMENT AND VOTE 

-Deanna <3