Slipping On Thin Ice

On the news, Logan Pierce had been in a coma for nearly four months since the rink accident.

But in truth, he wasn’t quite at that stage of oblivion.

He was aware of everything around him—the antiseptic sting in his room, the steady, merciless beep of the monitor by his ear, the subtle shift in the air whenever someone new entered. But opening his eyes meant confronting the grim reality: he might never feel the glide of the blades against the ice again. Hell, walking properly again wasn’t even a guaranteed deal.

He knew when his teammates visited—voices loud with forced optimism, tossing out inside jokes, rehashing plays. Someone even raved about his last goal that sealed the team’s win.

They called it legendary, but wouldn’t touch the truth: he’d played it reckless, putting the puck in the net when he knew the human battering ram, Johnson Abbey, was aiming for his head. Any sane player would’ve ducked, but Logan just wasn’t wired that way. Not when there was the slightest chance of flicking the puck into the net.

He took the hit head-on, slamming into the boards with enough force to knock him out.

Abbey hadn’t left it there. He followed up with some cheap shots. His right leg had taken the worst of it, resulting in a torn ACL and severe tendon damage that had required multiple reconstructive surgeries and now left his career hanging by a thread.

Two days ago, his mum had him transferred from Bethlehem of Christ Medical Centre to Avery Medical Care, a private sports rehabilitation facility. She insisted he needed more specialised care, less chaos, and a whole lot more hope.

And, apparently, Dr Avery Calloway was the right person for the job.

His mum even had unshakeable faith that this doctor could make him whole again. Wave a magic wand or something and mend his knee. Having heard his surgeons’ assessment, though, he wished his mum would stop banking on miracles that weren’t going to happen.

There was one major problem with Dr Calloway that seemed to have slipped off his mum’s radar when she made the decision. The doctor was a rival, officially contracted to treat injured Glazier Titans. So, as he lay in her care, he was basically camped out with his arch-nemesis. Someone could finish what Abbey had started while he was vulnerable.

But one upside to the transfer was the absence of his teammates around him for the two days. Either the memo wasn’t passed down, or none was brave—or stupid—enough to breach enemy territory without a solid insurance policy.

Then again, he wouldn’t put it past Dr Calloway to have slammed the door in their faces if they’d tried. From what he’d gathered, she wasn’t the type to tolerate a rowdy hockey team turning her clinic into an extension of the rink.

Well, the quiet and a chance to feed on his thoughts. That worked for him.

The sound of the door opening filtered into his fogged consciousness. His ears immediately tuned to the footsteps approaching, trying to identify her.

Dr Calloway often came in with a nurse, Rose. He could tell the two women apart by sound—and scent.

Rose always carried a faint Marc Jacobs Daisy.

He quickly ruled her out as the one who just stepped in.

Which left the doctor. Usually, carrying no scent at all. Even to his heightened sense of smell, she was a ghost.

The only reliable way to confirm her was by her footsteps—light, quick, like she moved on tiptoe, as if she really were the dainty fairy he half-imagined her to be.

With the TV on, as it was now, he could barely catch her.

And that was why he wished he could stretch out and switch it off whenever the doctor stepped in—an instinct born of an inexplicable curiosity to pay attention to every small thing she was about. But some well-meaning individuals had decided having the game that ran through his veins blaring in the background might tempt his soul to take the bold step out of the darkness.

And what could he do about it…

Except wake up.

Not yet.

From the tele, the Warrior Ice Arena was deafening. The roar of the crowd was drowning the scrape of blades on the ice—and the light footsteps tiptoeing about his bed.

The game had been against the Ice Vikings. The Beasts had wiped the floor with them with a smug 3-2 victory. It hadn’t been the Titans, sure, but dressing down those losers had still felt damn brilliant. He’d been hoisted onto the shoulders of his grinning teammates and carried off to the locker room like a king.

Those glorious final moments of the game were replaying behind his eyes as he struggled to focus on the doctor in his room.

Her footsteps went dead, then picked up again, this time right by his cot. She had to be tiny—he pegged her at five-foot-two tops.

Until she spoke.

Then, suddenly, she didn’t seem small at all. That threw him completely.

Every time he heard that sultry voice, he itched to crack his eyes open—just a little. Just enough to see if she matched the image in his head.

Like he wanted to do right now.

She started giving him the day’s rundown. Everything that’d been happened around him.

It was getting really tough limping between listening to her and keeping his eyes on the puck he was about to slam past the Vikings’ captain.

“Logan.”

Shit.

The puck flew into the net, but he was missing out on the roar of jubilation that should be following. The authority in her voice had effectively ripped him out of the arena and dumped him back into reality—or into another dream where he could practically feel her leaning over, about to kiss him.

She said his name again, the low raspiness sounding like untold secrets. If voices could take form, hers would be smoke, curling around his senses.

At this point, he was more convinced than ever that Avery Calloway’s real superpower wasn’t her medical expertise, but the smooth, captivating way she spoke. Her voice dripped confidence, seductive, like dark chocolate melting on the tongue or whiskey sliding down slow. No wonder she had his mom—and half the world—believing she was the damn best physiatrist alive.

“The world won’t wait forever for you, Logan. You’ve got to get a move on yourself,” she muttered. “I know you can hear me, so wake up already.”

Her presumption that he might respond made him want to grunt. Lucky for him, it had been so long since he’d used his throat, the sound flat-out refused to come out.

She moved to the foot of the bed, testing his stimulus response by tapping his right knee.

Two days ago, he would’ve felt nothing. Now, it hurt like hell. He was certain the best doctor in the world was significantly cutting down the painkillers he’d relied on at Bethlehem of Christ to be blissfully insulated from reality. His face must have contorted into a scowl at the sheer cruelty because he actually felt his facial muscles move—or maybe that was also not perceptible. What made him suspect she noticed anyway was her hand sliding over the sore spot, rubbing it almost… soothingly.

The doctor’s phone rang. She stepped aside to take the call. From the lightness in her tone, it sounded personal—probably a friend.

“Sounds like fun, and after the kind of day I’ve had, I’d love nothing more than to party, but...” She sighed. “It’s that day of the month. The summons have been issued. You know how grumpy my mum gets when I skip. I’d rather avoid the long lecture on the importance of family unity.”

A pause.

“No, I can’t use work as an excuse. She already thinks little of mine. I don’t build planes like Jennings, or send men to space like Jeffrey, or even contribute to some freaky, world-renowned team doing God knows what like James does.”

She chuckled. Whatever her mum thought of her career clearly wasn’t a bother for her.

It was laughable that someone who sounded like she could sweet-talk her way out of a parking ticket came from a family of intellects. Then again, nobody ever imagined the likes of him who entertained sports enthusiasts came from his type of family either. The most dreadful in that league was his own dad, a retired Harvard president, whom, if you talked along the caliber of Stephen Hawkins, he would rank there somewhere.

His mother, for her part, broke grounds in law. Currently a supreme court justice.

His eldest brother was one of the most sought-after neurosurgeons in the country.

The second was a Harvard professor with a prestigious name going up to Stockholm.

Then you come to him. The hockey player who carried the ghost of a computer engineering degree from Harvard.

Oh, his dad never let him forget what a waste his first class honors was in his hands. So what if what he’d chosen for himself was raking in bigger bucks than all of them combined? No matter how wildly successful he turned out to be, not making a mark in academia meant failure in his father’s book. The only reason he was even allowed to run around with the family name was because he was his mum’s pet and his dad dared not infuriate her more.

Dr. Calloway walked out after her call, leaving him alone with a strange, unexpected sense of comradeship toward her.

A while later, she was back.

Had it not been at an hour he was sure Rose had closed for the day, he might have assumed she was the one walking up to his bed. The footsteps were a little different this time. Still light and quick, but with a clicky in the mix, as if she was cartwheeling in sky-high heels that could double as weapons.

And the scent.

He frowned.

Odd.

He caught it the moment she stepped through the door—Chanel Aurélia Rose Grand Extrait. Pure luxury in a bottle.

He knew the brand well because his high-maintenance ex had practically bathed in it, insisting everyone remember her name along with it.

He hated the fragrance, and yet, it was impossibly alluring.

She stopped.

No movement to help him figure out what she was doing.

If her plan was to bait him into opening his eyes, it was working. He could barely keep his lids sealed. His brain, alight by the scent, went rogue, conjuring images to match.

Big, round brown eyes. Full, pouty lips—coated in red. The kind of red that belonged on silk sheets.

Or on him.

“Logan.”

That voice again.

Like a slash of authority through his mentality.

Did she see his eyes flutter and knew he was on the edge? He was desperately clinging to the dark world, but the oblivion was gradually expelling him.

When he didn’t respond, she let out a heavy breath—frustration, or resignation, or maybe a mixture of both. Then, the click of heels began again, fading away.

Probably heading for that family reunion. And if his guess was right, if she really was the family black sheep in hers too, she was about to show up there in something that would make her mum’s jaw hit the floor.

Something naughty.

Something to pair with those heels.

God, he was dying to see it.

Maybe...

Maybe he was ready.

His eyes fluttered open, meeting the stark white ceiling.

For a moment, he just breathed, adjusting to the sudden flood of awareness.

Then, slowly, very carefully, he turned his head toward the sound of the click-clack, just in time to glimpse a very feminine figure with a sway that was downright sinful slip through the door.

She was not tiny.

Slender, yes, but also noticeably tall with a pair of long legs that deserved appreciation.

And his guess about the naughty dress had been spot on. Wearing the skimpiest black skirt that did as much job as a strappy set would have accomplished in her play to be provocative. Layering it with a shirt that might be making up for the trashed modesty, but any effort to that effect was ruined by the curtain of honey-blond hair bouncing wildly down her back.

He’d be lying if he didn’t describe the figure he saw as to kill for—a clean-cut hourglass with curves in all the right places, enough to make a man question why she bothered with a doctorate when she could be every guy’s dream. If her face complimented the rest—and he was certain it did—he could easily imagine the fights she’d caused among boys.

What the fuck was he doing, imagining his doctor strutting toward him in nothing but her heels?