My resolve to focus on work lasted exactly three days.
Three days of arriving early, staying late, and throwing myself into medical protocols with the fervor of someone trying to outrun her own thoughts.
Three days of treating legitimate injuries, reviewing player files, and pretending I didn't notice Jay Callahan watching me from across the training facility with that particular intensity that made my skin prickle.
On the fourth day, he appeared at my office door with a bruised knuckle.
"Doc." He held up his hand like a child presenting a minor scrape to a parent. "I think I might need medical attention."
I stared at the injury—if you could call it that. A faint purple shadow across his middle knuckle, barely visible unless you were looking for it. The kind of bruise that happened a dozen times during any given practice and warranted nothing more than ice and ibuprofen.
"Sit down," I said flatly, reaching for the first aid kit.
He settled onto the treatment table with obvious satisfaction, watching me work with more interest than the situation warranted. I cleaned the non-existent wound, applied antibiotic ointment that wasn't necessary, and wrapped his knuckle in athletic tape that served no medical purpose whatsoever.
"This is the fourth time this week," I said, not looking at him. "Monday it was a jammed finger. Tuesday, a mysterious hip flexor strain that miraculously healed the moment I finished examining it. Wednesday, you claimed you'd pulled something in your shoulder that I couldn't find any evidence of. And now this."
"I'm injury-prone." His voice carried absolutely no conviction. "It's a dangerous sport."
"You're wasting my time." I released his hand with more force than necessary. "And you're wasting medical supplies. Do you have any idea how much athletic tape costs? The budget for this department isn't infinite."
Jay shrugged, entirely unbothered by my exasperation. His eyes tracked my movements as I returned supplies to their proper places, and I could feel the weight of his attention like a physical touch.
"I know what you're doing," I said, turning to face him directly. "You're manufacturing reasons to come here. Creating excuses to see me that give you plausible deniability. And I'm telling you right now—it needs to stop."
Something in his expression shifted, the playful mask slipping to reveal something more serious underneath. He didn't interrupt, didn't deflect with humor the way I'd expected. He just listened.
"I'm here to do a job, Jay. A job I actually need, a job that matters to my career. I'm not here to entertain your curiosity or stroke your ego or be whatever distraction you've decided I am this week."
The words came out sharper than I intended, fueled by days of tension I'd been pretending didn't exist.
"You want to talk to me? Fine. Use your words like an adult. But this," I gestured at his perfectly healthy hand, "this stops now."
The silence stretched between us. Jay's gaze moved slowly around my small office, taking in the cluttered desk, the medical supplies lining the walls, the single window overlooking the parking lot. Then his attention fixed on the door.
He stood. Moved toward it with unsettling calm.
My heart stuttered as I watched him position himself at the doorframe, his right hand splayed flat against the heavy metal edge. His fingers spread wide, vulnerable, deliberately placed in the exact spot where closing the door would crush them.
"You need a serious injury?" His voice was quiet, stripped of its usual charm. "Fine. You'll have a serious injury. Then you'll have to treat me. Then you'll have to talk to me. Then maybe you'll stop pretending you don't feel whatever this is between us."
He looked at me with an expression that was half-challenge, half-desperation—the face of someone willing to hurt himself just to stay in my orbit a little longer.
I lunged before I could think.
My hands closed around his arm, yanking him away from the door with enough force to send us both stumbling. His back hit the opposite wall, and I stood there gripping his wrist, my breath coming in sharp gasps, my heart pounding with genuine fear.
"Are you insane?" The words came out raw, almost a shout. "Do you have any idea what that would do to your hand? To your career? You could lose mobility in those fingers permanently, you could need surgery, you could—"
"But you'd have to treat me." His voice was soft, serious in a way I'd never heard before. "You'd have to be near me. You'd have to actually look at me instead of pretending I don't exist."
The desperation in his words cracked something open inside my chest.
This wasn't a game to him. This wasn't the casual pursuit of a bored athlete with too much ego and not enough entertainment. He was genuinely willing to destroy his own body just to have a reason to be close to me.
I released his wrist like it burned, stepped back, tried to remember how to breathe.
"You can come by," I heard myself say. "Without pretending to be hurt. We can talk. Have tea. Whatever keeps you from doing something genuinely stupid."
The tension that had been coiled between us like a spring began to slowly unwind, replaced by something quieter, more uncertain. Jay moved to the chair across from my desk and settled into it with the careful movements of someone afraid of spooking a wild animal.
I sat down in my own chair, the desk between us like a negotiating table.
"Why?" The question escaped before I could stop it. "Why go to such extremes? There are dozens of women in this city who'd be thrilled to have your attention. Women who don't make you manufacture injuries or threaten self-harm just to get a conversation."
Jay was quiet for a moment, his expression thoughtful in a way that looked almost foreign on his usually cocky features. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost its flirtatious edge.
"It's not just that you're beautiful. Though you are—undeniably, devastatingly beautiful in a way that makes it hard to think straight. It's something else."
He ran a hand through his hair, frustration flickering across his face.
"The way you look at me like you're daring me to prove I'm worth your time. The fire in you, the sharpness. Most people see me and they see the jersey, the contract, the family name. They see what they want to take from me."
His eyes met mine, and the honesty in them was almost unbearable.
"You look at me like none of that matters. Like I'm just a person who has to earn his place in your attention like everyone else. And there's something about that—something about you—that makes me feel more awake than I've felt in years. I can't explain it, Summer. I just know I don't want to stop feeling it."
The words settled into the space between us, heavy with implications I wasn't ready to examine.
Then the corner of his mouth quirked up, and a ghost of his usual grin returned.
"Maybe you should slam my hand in that door after all. Then you'd have to keep treating me for weeks. Physical therapy, follow-up appointments, the whole thing. Maybe somewhere in there you'd agree to dinner."
"I don't date patients who use self-harm as a pickup strategy," I said sharply. "It's a personal policy. Very strict."
But even as the words left my mouth, I saw the flicker in his eyes. The consideration. The brief, terrifying moment where I realized this idiot was actually calculating whether dinner with me was worth a crushed hand.
"Don't even think about it." I leaned forward, making sure he could see how serious I was. "I mean it, Jay. You walk out that door with all ten fingers intact, or I swear I will personally ensure you never play hockey again. I know things about the human body that would make your trainers weep."
He laughed—a real laugh, warm and surprised, and something in his posture finally relaxed. "Fine. All ten fingers, intact and accounted for. You drive a hard bargain, Doc."
"I mean it."
"I know you do." He stood, and for a moment I thought he might try something—lean across the desk, reach for my hand, push his luck the way he always seemed to. But instead he just looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"Same time tomorrow? I'll bring the tea. No fake injuries, no threats to my extremities. Just conversation."
I should have said no. Should have maintained the professional distance that was already crumbling between us. But the memory of his hand against that doorframe, the desperate honesty in his voice when he'd tried to explain what I made him feel—something in me couldn't push him away again.
"Tomorrow," I agreed. "But if you show up with so much as a paper cut, I'm banning you from this office permanently."
His smile was different when he left—softer, more real.
And as I sat alone in my office listening to his footsteps fade down the corridor, I realized something had deepened between us. Something that went beyond flirtation or attraction or the complicated history we'd never fully addressed.
Something that terrified me far more than any almost-kiss.
________________