Chapter 3
She pinched the torn edge of his knuckle, inserting the needle with practiced, mechanical precision. The thread pulled through with a faint, wet friction. August watched every motion of her scarred hands with an unreadable, burning focus, his jaw set, his pulse beating steady and slow against the rubber table beneath them.
The league gave him three games for the hit on Vance.
Three games without pay, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine donated to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund, and a mandatory referral to the league’s behavioral health panel. Coach Miller had slammed the office door so hard the frosted glass shook in its frame, but August had sat through the entire Zoom hearing with his camera centered, his hands flat on the desk, his dark eyes level and blank as slate.
He didn't appeal. He didn't offer a defense. When the commissioner asked if he understood the severity of reckless contact along the boards, August simply said, “Yes, sir.”
Two days later, the team boarded the charter flight for a four-city road swing through the Midwest.
Fallon claimed the seat across the narrow aisle from him, lugging a heavy leather tote packed with resistance bands, therapeutic ultrasound wands, and three separate files marked *BENNETT, A. — REHABILITATION & DISCIPLINARY PROTOCOL*.
"Rule one," Fallon said, leaning across the armrest as the Boeing 737 climbed through the grey cloud cover over Detroit. She tapped a freshly printed sheet on his fold-down tray table. "No unmonitored lifting. Rule two: ninety minutes of dedicated soft-tissue therapy every evening on the road. Rule three: you attend every film session with the defensive coach and you sit next to me on the bench during your scratched games. No lurking in the runway."
August looked down at the paper. His dark hair was still damp from the morning skate, curling slightly over the collar of his charcoal team-issue polo. The three stitches on his right knuckle were black against his skin, neat and tight where she had set them forty-eight hours ago.
"Rule four?" he asked, not looking up.
"Rule four is the one that keeps you in this league," she said, her voice dropping so the backup goaltender two rows ahead couldn't hear. "You do not drop your gloves. You do not finish a check two seconds late. You do not hunt down forty-year-old veterans who haven't scored a goal since the Obama administration. You play the puck, August. If someone baits you, you skate away. If someone cross-checks you in the crease, you let the referees do their jobs."
August tilted his head, studying the tidy, bold handwriting she had produced with an ergonomic gel pen.
"What if the referee is blind?" he asked softly.
"Then you let him be blind," she snapped. "Because the next suspension won't be three games. It’ll be twenty. And the front office will terminate your deal before you can cash your next per diem check."
She held out a pen. Her knuckles gave that small, stubborn click as her fingers curled around the barrel.
August didn’t take the pen. Instead, he reached over, took her wrist between his thumb and forefinger, and gently guided the pen back down to the paper. His thumb rested directly over the radial pulse point at her wrist. His skin was furnace-hot, smelling faintly of citrus soap and ice water.
"Give me the pen," he said.
"Sign at the bottom. It says you agree to the medical intervention plan."
He scribbled his initials—*A.B.*—without reading a single clause. He didn't look at the mandatory breathing exercises, the anger logs, or the required mobility checkpoints. He just signed it, handed the pen back, and let his fingers linger against hers for a heartbeat longer than professional boundaries allowed.
"Whatever you want, Fallon," he said.
Her breath hitched in her throat. She snatched the clipboard back, willing the sudden rush of heat in her neck to dissipate before the plane leveled off at thirty thousand feet.
"You're impossible," she muttered, shoving the clipboard into her tote.
"I signed the paper."
"You didn't even read rule five."
A ghost of a smile touched the corner of his split lip. "Didn't need to. You wrote it."
***
The team hotel in Chicago was an old brick landmark near Michigan Avenue, full of polished mahogany, low ceilings, and heating radiators that clanked throughout the night.
Fallon had requisitioned a small hospitality suite on the sixth floor, converting the dining area into an auxiliary treatment station. She had dragged a portable massage table between the credenza and the window, spreading crisp white hotel sheets over the vinyl top.
At 10:15 PM, a heavy, measured knock sounded at the door.
August was standing in the carpeted hallway wearing grey sweatpants and a black long-sleeve compression shirt that outlined the thick slabs of muscle across his chest and shoulders. He carried a tall cardboard takeout cup with a green sleeve.
"Room service was closed," he said, stepping past her into the suite without waiting for an invitation. "Got this from the bakery across the street."
He set the cup on the desk. It wasn’t team-issued electrolyte mix. It was chamomile tea with a generous dollop of clover honey, steaming hot, accompanied by a small ceramic mug he must have borrowed from the front desk.
"You don't drink chamomile," Fallon said, locking the door behind him.
"You do," he replied. "When your wrists act up."
Fallon stared at the mug. The ceramic handle was thick and wide—an oversized, chunky loop that required almost no grip strength to hold. Her usual travel thermos had a narrow metal handle that sent dull, electric spikes into her scarred palms after an hour of carrying it.
She swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat. "Lie on the table. Face down. We're starting with thoracic mobility."
August kicked off his slides and climbed onto the table. The frame groaned under his weight, but held.
Fallon rubbed a dollop of arnica and peppermint cream between her palms, warming it until her hands felt supple. She stepped up to the table, took a steadying breath, and placed her palms flat against his upper back.
Under her hands, August was a landscape of athletic trauma. His trapezius muscles were dense as cured oak, knotted with old scar tissue from countless cross-checks, boarding incidents, and high-speed collisions. When her fingers dug into the junction between his shoulder blades, his breath hissed through his teeth.
"Breathe into it," she instructed, leaning her body weight forward to compensate for the weakness in her right metacarpal. "Don't fight the pressure. If you lock up, the tissue won't release."
"Not fighting," he grunted into the face cradle.
"You are. Your scapula feels like a manhole cover."
She worked methodically, sliding her thumbs along the erector spinae, working out the toxic knots of lactic acid. Outside, the Chicago wind rattled the vintage windowpanes, throwing spatters of sleet against the glass. Inside the room, the radiator hissed, the scent of mint and menthol filling the warm, dim air.
"How does the right shoulder feel on the slap shot?" she asked, smoothing her thumbs toward his rotator cuff.
"Fine."
"Coach said you were favoring it during power play drills yesterday."
