Off Balance

Drew

There were a lot of things nobody told you about blowing out your knee.

They told you about the surgery. They told you about swelling and scar tissue and muscle loss, about the weeks on crutches and the months of physical therapy that would follow. My surgeon had walked me through the recovery timeline twice before they put me under, and afterward, I got enough pamphlets to wallpaper my apartment. Everyone had been very clear that rebuilding my left leg would hurt, that progress wouldn’t happen in a straight line, and that there would probably be days when I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Nobody told me what it would feel like to forget how to skate.

That part would’ve been useful.

I pushed off from the goal line and picked up speed, following the line of orange cones Coach Brennan had set along the left side of the rink. The first few strides felt normal. Good, even. My legs were strong again, my lungs were fine, and there was no pain when I drove the blade of my left skate into the ice. For approximately four seconds, I could almost convince myself that the last seven months hadn’t happened.

Then I reached the first turn.

My body shifted before I consciously told it to.

I felt my weight transfer onto my right side, subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed. Unfortunately, the man standing behind the boards had been watching me skate since I was a freshman, and he’d spent the past three weeks studying every move I made like there was going to be an exam on it.

“Again,” Brennan called.

I didn’t answer. I circled back around the net, leaned into my next stride, and tried it again.

The university arena was almost eerily quiet at six thirty in the morning. Our first full team practice wasn’t until eight, which was the only reason I’d agreed to come in this early. Brennan had called it extra ice time. I called it an opportunity to suck in private.

My blades scraped across the freshly resurfaced ice as I accelerated toward the cones. I deliberately put more weight through my left leg this time, trying not to think about the fact that I was deliberately putting more weight through my left leg.

That was the problem.

I’d been skating since I was three. I couldn’t remember learning how to do it any more than I remembered learning how to walk. Skating had always happened somewhere beneath conscious thought. My body knew where my weight needed to go, how deeply I could lean into an edge, how much pressure I needed beneath one blade to change direction without losing speed.

Now I thought about all of it.

The angle of my knee. The position of my hips. The pressure beneath my skate. How far I was leaning. Whether the joint felt stable. Whether the tightness I felt was normal or something I should tell the trainers about.

I approached the turn.

Left skate down. Knee bent. Weight forward.

Trust it.

At the last second, my right leg took over.

“Drew.”

I kept going.

“Drew, stop.”

I carved to a halt hard enough to send a spray of ice toward the boards. Brennan didn’t move when some of it hit the glass in front of him. He simply stood there in his Ridgeview Hockey quarter-zip, one hand resting on the top of the boards and the other holding the clipboard he’d been carrying around all morning.

“What?” I asked.

“Come here.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t feel like yelling across the rink.”

“You’ve been doing a pretty good job so far.”

His expression didn’t change. “Come here, Callahan.”

I muttered something that would’ve gotten me bag-skated a year ago and pushed toward the bench.

Brennan opened the gate before I reached it. I stayed on the ice, resting my forearms against the top of the boards instead of stepping through. Sweat had started gathering beneath my practice jersey despite the cold, and I pulled off one glove with my teeth so I could grab the water bottle he’d set out for me.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

I drank before answering. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

He waited.

I lowered the bottle. “What?”

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

I looked at him. “Is this a quiz?”

“Humor me.”

I exhaled through my nose and glanced back at the cones. “I’m shifting right before the turn.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Your shoulder.”

I thought about it. “Dropping.”

“Every time.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated.

I knew that tone. It meant he wasn’t done.

I put the cap back on my bottle. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to stop doing it.”

“Great. Hadn’t considered that.”

Brennan’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t take the bait. That was one of the more annoying things about him. Three years together had taught him exactly when I was trying to turn something into an argument so I didn’t have to talk about it.

He nodded toward the ice. “You’re protecting the left side before you even load it.”

“My knee’s fine.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You tell me.”

There it was.

I looked away.

My left knee didn’t hurt. That would’ve almost been easier to deal with. Pain was concrete. If something hurt, the trainers could ice it, scan it, tape it, inject it, or tell me exactly how long I needed to stay off it.

There wasn’t a treatment plan for my brain deciding, without my permission, that my left leg couldn’t be trusted anymore.

Seven months ago, I’d gone into the boards with a defenseman on my back and my skate trapped beneath me. I didn’t remember hearing anything pop, even though people always asked me if I had. What I remembered was the sensation of my leg being somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be and the sudden, nauseating understanding that something had gone very wrong.

The MRI the next morning had confirmed it.

ACL. MCL. Meniscus.

Surgery two days later.

Season over.

I’d been twenty-one years old, playing the best hockey of my life, and starting to get serious attention from people whose attention mattered. Then I’d spent the rest of the season watching my team from the press box with a brace locked around my leg.

“You’re thinking too much,” Brennan said.

I gave him a look. “That’s helpful.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Should I just turn my brain off? Because if that’s an option, we could’ve saved a lot of money on physical therapy.”

“Your strength testing is good. Your stability testing is good. Patel cleared you for everything we’re doing out here. Physically, you can make that turn.”

“I know.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

The question irritated me because I didn’t have an answer I liked.

I pushed away from the boards. “I’ll do it again.”

“Drew.”

“I said I’ll do it again.”

He studied me for a second before giving a small nod. “Slow it down.”

I almost laughed. “Slowing down makes it worse.”

“I know.”

Of course he did.

I turned and skated back toward the goal line.

The next attempt was worse.

Without speed to hide behind, every weakness became obvious. I felt the slight instability in my hips, the hesitation before I transferred my weight, the way my right side tried to compensate before my left had even been given a chance.

I made it around the cone anyway.

Barely.

By the time I came back, Brennan was rubbing a hand over his jaw.

“That bad?” I asked.

“I’ve seen prettier.”

“Fuck you.”

“There he is.”

I skated past him and went again.

By the sixth repetition, frustration had crawled beneath my skin. By the eighth, it was sitting in my throat.

On the ninth, I clipped a cone with the back of my skate.

It toppled over.

I stopped and stared at it.

It was a fucking plastic cone.

I’d played hockey in front of eighteen thousand people. I’d been hit hard enough to lose my helmet, taken pucks to the ribs, played through a broken finger for two periods because we didn’t know it was broken yet. I’d spent most of my life doing things on skates that people who didn’t play hockey probably thought looked impossible.

Now an orange cone had me contemplating violence.

I bent, picked it up, and set it back where it belonged.

“That’s enough,” Brennan called.

“No.”

“Get off the ice.”

“I’ve been out here twenty minutes.”

“And you’re done.”

I turned toward him. “I’m not tired.”

“I didn’t say you were tired.”

“My knee doesn’t hurt.”

“Didn’t say that either.”

“Then why the fuck am I done?”

My voice carried farther than I’d intended through the empty arena.

Brennan didn’t react. He waited until I skated closer before answering, which somehow made me feel more like an asshole.

“Because you’re frustrated, and every rep is getting worse. You’re not fixing anything right now. You’re reinforcing it.”

I looked past him toward the darkened stands.

I knew he was right.

That didn’t make hearing it any less irritating.

“I need more time on the ice.”

“You’re getting more time on the ice.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. Six.”

I looked back at him. “Team practice is at eight.”

“I’m aware.”

“And rehab is at seven.”

“I moved it.”

“You moved my rehab?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re working with somebody.”

I waited for the rest.

It didn’t come.

“With who?”

“Brady Sinclair.”

The name meant nothing to me. I ran through our training staff anyway, then the assistant coaches, trying to figure out if we’d brought somebody new in.

“Who the hell is Brady Sinclair?”

“Figure skater.”

For a second, I thought I’d misheard him.

“A what?”

“A figure skater.”

I stared at him.

Brennan stared back.

Then I laughed.

He didn’t.

My laugh faded. “You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“No.”

“Six a.m.”

“No.”

“She already agreed.”

“Then call her and tell her something came up.”

“Something did come up. You forgot how to use your left leg.”

I leaned both hands on top of my stick. “I did not forget how to use my fucking leg.”

“Good. Show her tomorrow.”

“I’m not taking figure-skating lessons.”

“You’re not taking figure-skating lessons.”

“That is exactly what you just described.”

“No, I described working with a figure skater.”

“Those are the same thing with different wording.”

Brennan finally smiled. “Are you worried she’s going to make you wear tights?”

“I’m worried you’ve lost your mind.”

He stepped through the gate and onto the rubber flooring beside the bench. “She has some of the best edge control in this building. Better than yours even before the injury.”

“That feels unnecessarily insulting.”

“It’s also true.”

I followed him off the ice and dropped onto the bench. My skate guards were sitting beside my bag, and I reached for one before looking up at him again.

“What exactly is she supposed to do?”

“Work on your edges. Balance. Weight transfer. Single-leg control. All the things you’re currently trying to compensate for with speed and strength.”

“So things our skating coach can do.”

“Things our skating coach has been doing with you for three weeks.”

I didn’t have a response to that.

Brennan leaned against the boards. “You know how to skate like a hockey player. Nobody’s questioning that. But right now, every time something feels wrong, you fall back on the same habits you’ve had since you were a kid. You go faster. You push harder. You muscle through it.”

“And that’s bad?”

“When you’re using it to hide the fact that you don’t trust your left leg? Yeah.”

I started untying my skate.

The laces had somehow become fascinating.

Brennan was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “You’ve done everything we’ve asked of you, Drew.”

I kept working at the knot.

“You didn’t miss rehab. You didn’t rush the recovery. Your numbers are where we need them. Your knee healed.”

“Congratulations to my knee.”

“Your head hasn’t caught up.”

My hands stopped.

I hated how simply he said it.

There was no pity in his voice, which helped. Brennan wasn’t the kind of guy who tried to turn everything into some inspirational sports movie bullshit. He’d sat beside me in the hospital after surgery eating stale vending-machine pretzels and complaining about our power play. When I’d started walking without crutches, he hadn’t told me how proud he was. He’d asked if that meant I could finally start carrying my own equipment again.

It was probably why I trusted him.

Didn’t mean I had to enjoy this.

I pulled the first skate off. “What if she’s annoying?”

“She probably will be.”

“You know her?”

“I’ve met her.”

“That isn’t reassuring.”

He pushed away from the boards. “Six o’clock. Don’t be late.”

“I’ve never been late to anything in my life.”

“You were twelve minutes late to film last month.”

“That was one time.”

“You had Starbucks.”

“There was a line.”

Brennan started walking toward the tunnel.

“I don’t even know what this girl looks like,” I called after him.

He glanced back. “You’ll figure it out.”

“Very helpful.”

“See you at practice.”

I watched him disappear through the doors.

Then I looked down at my left knee.

The compression sleeve disappeared beneath the leg of my shorts, but I could still trace the scar without seeing it. I knew every inch of the thing. I knew the places where sensation had come back and the small patch beside my kneecap where it hadn’t. I knew which mornings it would feel stiff before I even got out of bed.

I also knew Brennan was right.

That was the worst part.

I finished unlacing my other skate.

Tomorrow morning, apparently, I was taking figure-skating lessons.

I was going to kill him.

At five fifty-six the next morning, music was already playing inside the arena.

I’d slept like shit.

That wasn’t unusual anymore on nights before I knew I’d be skating. I wouldn’t have admitted that to Brennan if somebody put a gun to my head, but there was always a low-level restlessness now. I’d lie in bed thinking about things I hadn’t thought about before the injury. Whether my knee would feel stiff when I woke up. Whether I’d make it through practice without thinking about it. Whether the first real hit I took would put me right back in the operating room.

By five fifteen, I’d given up on sleep, showered, grabbed coffee on the way to the arena, and spent ten minutes sitting in my truck wondering how much shit I’d get if I simply drove away.

Enough, probably.

So here I was.

I pushed through the doors from the locker-room hallway with my bag over one shoulder and followed the music toward the rink.

Someone was already on the ice.

I stopped near the opening in the boards.

The first thing I noticed was the speed.

I’d seen figure skating before, obviously. Everybody had. The Olympics came around every four years, and my mom loved it enough that it had been on constantly in our house when I was growing up. But I’d never watched somebody train from twenty feet away.

There was no sparkly dress or spotlight or crowd. Just a tiny blonde woman in black leggings and a fitted blue jacket cutting across an empty sheet of ice like she owned every inch of it.

Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail that reached halfway down her back. It swung sharply when she changed direction, the movement almost a beat behind the rest of her. She moved backward through a series of turns I couldn’t name, changed edges, and accelerated toward the opposite end of the rink.

Then she jumped.

I knew enough to know it wasn’t one rotation.

Beyond that, I had nothing.

She landed on one foot with her other leg extended behind her and continued moving without so much as a stumble.

I stood there longer than I meant to.

Not because she was pretty, although she was. Even from a distance, that wasn’t particularly difficult to figure out.

I was watching her feet.

Her blades seemed to become part of her body in a way mine hadn’t felt like part of mine in months. She didn’t look down. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t seem to think about where her weight was going before she put it there.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d skated like that.

The thought soured my mood almost immediately.

As if she sensed me standing there, she glanced toward the boards.

Our eyes met.

She didn’t stop.

She finished another pass first, skating the length of the rink before curving back toward me. When she finally came to a stop on the other side of the boards, she did it neatly, barely disturbing the ice.

Up close, the size difference between us was almost ridiculous.

She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall. Her cheeks were flushed from skating, and a few pale strands had escaped her ponytail and stuck to the side of her face. Her eyes were blue. Really blue, actually. The kind that would’ve been the first thing I noticed if she hadn’t immediately looked at the clock behind me.

Then at my skates.

Then back at me.

“You’re Drew.”

It wasn’t a question.

I adjusted the strap of my bag. “You’re Brady?”

“Yeah.”

I waited.

She waited too.

Apparently that was the introduction.

“Nice to meet you,” I said finally.

“Sure.”

I stared at her.

She turned and skated toward the gate.

Okay.

Brennan hadn’t been kidding.

She stepped off the ice and slid guards over her blades before walking toward the bench. As she got closer, I realized my original estimate had been generous. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder.

This was the person Brennan had assigned to teach me balance.

There was something deeply insulting about that.

Brady picked up a water bottle and took a long drink. When she lowered it, she caught me looking at her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

I glanced toward the rink. “You’re shorter than I expected.”

There was a pause.

“How tall did Brennan tell you I was?”

“He didn’t.”

“So you invented a height for me?”

“When somebody tells you you’re meeting an elite athlete, you don’t generally picture…” I gestured vaguely at her.

Her eyes narrowed. “Finish that sentence.”

I considered it.

“No.”

“Smart.”

I smiled despite myself.

She didn’t.

“You’re five feet?”

“Five-two.”

“Right.”

“Why did you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t.”

“I have no emotional investment in your height, Sinclair.”

“Good. Because I’m five-two.”

I took a sip of coffee to hide the fact that I was dangerously close to laughing.

She looked at the cup in my hand.

“What is that?”

“Coffee.”

“I can see that.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“I can smell it from here.”

I glanced down at it. “Vanilla latte.”

“At six in the morning?”

“That’s traditionally when people drink coffee.”

She screwed the cap onto her water bottle. “That’s not coffee.”

“I don’t remember asking.”

“Brennan said you’d be difficult.”

“He told you that?”

“He used the word stubborn.”

“That’s nicer.”

“He also said you don’t like being told what to do.”

I set my bag down on the bench. “And yet he sent me to you.”

“I didn’t volunteer.”

That surprised me enough that I looked at her.

Brady shrugged out of her jacket, revealing a fitted black long-sleeve shirt beneath it, and folded the jacket over the boards.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You keep saying that after very obviously thinking something.”

“You don’t want to do this?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just said you didn’t volunteer.”

“My coach asked me if I’d work with one of the hockey players for a few weeks. I said fine.”

“Very enthusiastic.”

“I was promised extra private ice.”

There it was.

“Ah.”

“Exactly.”

“So you’re using me.”

“For ice time? Absolutely.”

I nodded. “Good to know where we stand.”

She finally smiled.

It wasn’t much, but it changed her whole face.

Then it disappeared.

“Brennan sent me your rehab notes.”

My mood went with it.

“Of course he did.”

“I needed to know what I was working with.”

“You could’ve asked me.”

“I am asking you.” She leaned one hip against the boards. “Does anything hurt today?”

“No.”

“Stiff?”

“A little when I woke up. It’s fine now.”

“Swelling after yesterday?”

“No.”

“Any instability?”

“No.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied. “And you’re cleared for everything except contact?”

“Yeah.”

“Your PT doesn’t have any restrictions I need to know about?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

That was it.

No sympathetic head tilt. No I’m so sorry that happened to you. No questions about whether I’d been scared when I got hurt.

Just information.

I found myself relaxing slightly.

Brady pushed away from the boards. “Get your skates on.”

“They’re on.”

She looked down at the guards.

I looked down too.

“Technically.”

“Are you going to be annoying about everything?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, decide faster. We only have an hour.”

I pulled the guards off and stepped onto the ice.

She followed.

For the first few minutes, she barely spoke.

That surprised me.

I’d expected instructions immediately, maybe cones or some ridiculous balance drill. Instead, she told me to warm up however I normally would and skated toward center ice.

So I did.

I took two easy laps first, gradually building speed as my legs warmed. On the third, I started working through transitions and crossovers, conscious of her somewhere behind me.

Being watched had never bothered me before.

I’d played in packed arenas. I’d had scouts in the stands and cameras in my face. I’d spent half my life being evaluated by somebody.

This felt different.

Maybe because I knew what she was looking for.

I rounded the far end of the rink and caught sight of her near the blue line. She wasn’t watching my upper body. Her eyes were on my skates.

I turned harder.

My left knee held.

I came back around.

“Again,” she said.

I almost laughed.

“You and Brennan rehearse that?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Her expression suggested she was beginning to hate that word.

I went again.

This time she asked me to change direction. Then skate backward. Then transition forward without building speed first.

The slower she made me go, the worse it felt.

After ten minutes, I understood exactly what she was doing.

“You’re taking away my speed.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re hiding behind it.”

I came to a stop in front of her. “I’m not hiding behind anything.”

She glanced at my left skate.

There was something about the look that irritated me.

“Say it.”

“You want me to?”

“Clearly you want to.”

Brady took a second before answering. “Every time you have enough speed, you use momentum to carry you through the turn. When I slow you down, you have to actually load the edge.”

“I know how to load an edge.”

“I know.”

The lack of sarcasm threw me.

She skated closer, stopping a few feet away.

“You know how to do all of this, Drew. That’s not the problem.”

I looked down at her.

It was the first time she’d used my first name.

“You drop your right shoulder before you put your full weight on the left side,” she continued. “Then your hip shifts. It’s tiny. If I wasn’t looking for it, I probably wouldn’t notice.”

“But you noticed.”

“Yeah.”

I looked away.

She gave me a moment before she spoke again.

“Can I show you?”

My eyes returned to hers. “How?”

“I need to touch you.”

That caught me off guard.

Brady must’ve seen something on my face because her brows pulled together.

“Not like that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I was going to say sure.”

“You took too long.”

I laughed quietly. “Go ahead.”

She skated behind me.

A second later, one of her hands settled against my right hip.

Her hand was fucking tiny.

That was my first thought.

My second was that I should probably stop having thoughts about the size of her hands while she was trying to fix my skating.

“Relax,” she said.

“I am relaxed.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m standing here.”

“Very tensely.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Are you always this critical?”

“Yes. Face forward.”

I did.

She put her other hand lightly against my right shoulder blade. “When you turn, this comes down before you’ve committed your weight to the left side. Then this—” She tapped my hip. “—shifts right. You’re basically preparing to catch yourself before there’s anything to catch.”

The humor went out of me.

She removed her hands and skated back around.

“Your knee isn’t giving out,” she said. “You’re just expecting it to.”

I stared at her.

The arena suddenly felt too quiet.

She didn’t soften the statement or rush to fill the silence afterward.

I appreciated that.

Eventually, I looked down at my skates. “So how do I stop?”

“We make you uncomfortable.”

I raised my head.

Brady smiled.

That should’ve worried me.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re going to slow everything down until you can’t compensate anymore.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“Probably.”

“And then?”

“Then you do it until your body figures out you’re not going to die.”

I looked at her for a second. “Very scientific.”

“I charge extra for medical terminology.”

“Brennan’s paying you?”

“No.”

“Then you’re getting ripped off.”

“I told you. Private ice.”

“Right.”

She pushed backward. “Come on.”

For the next twenty minutes, she made me hate her.

Not genuinely.

Probably.

She stripped everything back to movements so basic I hadn’t consciously practiced them since I was a kid. One-foot glides. Slow edge changes. Holding my weight over my left leg longer than felt natural. Bending deeply into the knee without letting my right side take over.

It was humiliating.

It was also harder than it looked.

“Stop rushing,” she said for what had to be the fifth time.

“I’m not rushing.”

“You are.”

“This is how fast I skate.”

“No. This is how fast you avoid doing what I’m asking.”

I stopped.

She stopped too.

“Do you ever shut up?”

“Do you ever listen?”

“I’ve been listening for forty minutes.”

“And yet here we are.”

I rubbed my tongue over the inside of my cheek and looked toward the ceiling.

She waited.

That might have been what finally did it.

Everyone else had been so careful with me since the injury. Even when they tried not to be, I could feel it. Coaches watching my face after a drill. Teammates giving me a little more space than they used to. My mother asking how my knee was before she’d even say hello.

Brady didn’t seem remotely concerned about my feelings.

At the moment, it was refreshing and deeply irritating.

I pushed off again.

“Slower,” she called.

I slowed down.

“More weight left.”

I shifted.

My chest tightened before anything even happened.

I felt it—that stupid, involuntary flash of panic as my left knee bent and my body remembered a hit that wasn’t coming.

My right foot touched down.

“Fuck.”

I stopped.

Brady skated toward me.

“Again.”

“No.”

She slowed.

I bent forward, bracing my hands on my thighs.

I wasn’t hurt.

Nothing hurt.

That almost made it worse.

“Drew?”

“Give me a second.”

She did.

I closed my eyes and took a breath, staring at the grooves carved into the ice between my skates when I opened them again.

“I fucking hate this.”

The admission came out before I could stop it.

Brady didn’t tell me she understood.

I was glad, because she couldn’t.

After a few seconds, she said, “I would too.”

I straightened.

Her expression had changed. Not pity. Something quieter.

I looked away first.

“I know my knee is fine.”

“I know.”

“I know it’s not going to fucking explode because I put weight on it.”

“I know.”

“So why can’t I just do it?”

She was quiet long enough that I looked at her again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

That surprised me.

Most people had an answer.

It takes time.

Be patient.

You’ve been through something traumatic.

All the same things I’d heard enough times to stop listening.

Brady simply shrugged.

“But I don’t think getting pissed at yourself every time your body tries to protect you is helping.”

I let out a humorless laugh. “That’s unfortunate, because getting pissed is kind of my thing.”

“No.” Her mouth tilted slightly. “I think that’s my thing.”

I looked at her.

For the first time that morning, her smile reached her eyes.

I found myself smiling back.

Then she pointed toward the bench.

“Go sit down.”

My smile disappeared. “I’m fine.”

“I know.”

“Then why am I sitting?”

“Because you’re frustrated.”

“I can skate frustrated.”

“I can see that. You’re terrible at it.”

I stared at her.

She pointed again.

“Five minutes.”

“For what?”

“To be pissed.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.” She started counting on her fingers. “You can swear. Throw your gloves. Feel sorry for yourself. Have some kind of dramatic hockey-player existential crisis. Whatever you need.”

“That’s generous.”

“I thought so.”

“And after five minutes?”

“You put your skate back on the ice and try again.”

I glanced toward the bench.

Then back at her.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then I get my private ice early, so honestly, this works out either way for me.”

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

Brady turned away before I could say anything else and skated toward center ice, leaving me standing there.

I watched her go.

Tiny. Blonde. Bossy as hell.

Brennan had assigned me a five-foot-two figure skater who didn’t particularly care whether I wanted her help, had already insulted me several times, and apparently considered my rehabilitation an acceptable trade for free rink time.

I should’ve hated her.

Instead, I skated toward the bench, sat down, and checked the clock.

Five minutes.

Then I went back out.