Ethan hated mornings, resistance bands, blueberries, and me.

By the end of our first week, I had documented all four facts.

“Again,” I said as he balanced on his right leg on a foam pad.

Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt. His injured knee shook while he reached toward the marker I held. “You enjoy this.”

“I enjoy correct movement.”

“You moved the marker farther away.”

“You noticed. Your brain is functioning despite the lack of bacon.”

He gave me a murderous look and reached again. His fingertips brushed mine. The contact lasted less than a second, but his balance shifted.

I caught him with both hands at his waist.

His palms landed on my hips.

Neither of us spoke.

Under my hands, his abdominal muscles tightened. His breath warmed my temple. I could feel every hard line of him, all that controlled power held inches from my body.

“Your core is late,” I said.

His thumbs moved once against my hips. “That’s your professional opinion?”

I stepped back. “My professional opinion is that flirting won’t get you out of the last set.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“That’s worse. Again.”

He did the set.

I controlled his diet, his sleep schedule, his strength progression, and eventually the number of minutes he was allowed on the ice. He fought me on almost everything, but he never missed a session. The first time he completed a full rotation on the stationary bike, I caught him staring at the screen like it had announced a miracle.

“You’re allowed to be pleased,” I told him.

“It’s just twelve minutes on a bike.”

“It’s twelve minutes you couldn’t do last month.”

He looked away, but the corner of his mouth moved.

Two weeks later, I was reviewing Ethan’s force-plate results when the receptionist called. She said Logan appeared at the Wolves’ training facility.

My stomach tightened before I even reached the lobby.

Logan stood beneath the giant silver wolf emblem in a camel coat and sunglasses, looking like he had arrived for a fashion shoot.

“You blocked me,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“No.”

He removed his sunglasses. There were shadows beneath his eyes. “You took a job with Boston to punish me?”

I almost admired the size of his ego. “Marcus offered me a position. I accepted.”

“They’re our biggest competition.”

“I treat injuries, Logan. I don’t steal playbooks.”

“You’re helping Blackwood come back.” His voice dropped. “Do you know what that does to me? To the Titans?”

“You didn’t care what your interview did to me.”

“That was business.”

“And this is my career.”

He reached for my wrist. Before his fingers closed around it, a larger hand caught his forearm.

Ethan stood beside me in gray training pants, his expression flat and lethal.

“She stepped away,” he said.

Logan pulled free. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“You came into my facility to bother my therapist. That makes it my concern.”

My therapist.

The possessive words sent an inconvenient current down my spine.

Logan’s gaze moved between us. “So that’s what this is?”

“This is you leaving,” I said. “You don’t get to claim me after pretending I didn’t exist.”

His face reddened. “I made one mistake.”

“You made a decision. You came here just because my work might help someone beat you.”

For once, Logan had no polished answer.

Security escorted him out.

When I turned, Ethan was already walking away, favoring his right leg more than he had that morning.

I found him in the darkened video room. He sat in the back row with his knee extended, an ice pack balanced over it.

“You overdid the treadmill,” I said.

He did not look at me. “Go away, Avery.”

I sat beside him instead. “Thank you for stepping in.”

“You didn’t need me.”

“No, but I appreciated it.”

He stared at the blank screen. “Pierce is right about one thing. If you get me back, I’ll be in his way.”

“That’s the job.”

“And if I fail, he’ll enjoy that too.”

There it was—the fear beneath the arrogance.

I took the ice pack from his knee and checked the swelling. “You think you’re not worth the risk.”

His laugh was humorless. “My team built a season around me. I went down in the first game.”

I placed his foot against my thigh and supported his calf. “Your value is not the number of goals you score.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“No. It isn’t.” My fingers moved along the scar, firm enough to assess, gentle enough not to hurt. “I tied my value to someone else’s recovery. When he erased me, I felt like I disappeared too. I won’t let you make the same mistake in reverse.”

His gaze dropped to my hands on his leg.

“What if I’m not the player I was?” he asked.

“Then we build the player you’ll become.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “You really believe that.”

“I don’t waste six a.m. on lost causes.”

After that, something shifted between us.

Ethan started bringing me coffee—black, one sugar, exactly right. He stopped complaining about blueberries. When I demonstrated lateral movement, he watched with an intensity that made my skin warm. Sometimes his hand lingered at my waist while I corrected his stance. Sometimes my fingers stayed wrapped around his thigh a second longer than necessary while checking muscle activation.

Neither of us named it.

I told myself attraction was a neurological event. I had confused proximity and gratitude with love once. I would not do it again with another hockey star.

Then I got sick.

I woke on a Thursday with a fever and tried to go to work anyway. By noon, I was sitting on the rehabilitation-room floor because the walls would not stop moving.

Ethan found me there.

“Avery?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re on the floor.”

“New mobility drill.”

He crouched and pressed the back of his hand to my forehead. His palm moved to my cheek, cool and broad. “You’re burning up.”

“I have three appointments.”

“You have none.”

He lifted me before I could argue—one arm beneath my knees, the other around my back.

“Your knee,” I protested, clutching his shoulders.

“Is strong enough to carry one stubborn woman.”

His chest was solid against me. Each step tightened his arms, drawing me closer. I could smell clean soap and the sharp winter scent of the rink on his skin.

He took me to his townhouse because it was closer than my apartment. He put me in his bed, called the team doctor, filled my prescription, and made soup that tasted suspiciously like it came from a restaurant.

At midnight, I woke to find him asleep in a chair beside me, his long legs stretched out and one hand resting near mine on the mattress.

I moved, and his eyes opened instantly.

“Water?” he asked.

“You stayed.”

“You stayed for Pierce.”

The comparison cut deeper than he intended. He saw it and leaned forward.

“That came out wrong.” His fingers closed gently around mine. “I mean you shouldn’t have had to beg someone to stay. I’m here because I want to be.”

The fever loosened every defense I had.

I touched the rough shadow along his jaw. He went completely still.

“Avery,” he said, my name almost a warning.

I leaned toward him. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and his hand slid behind my neck. For one suspended second, I thought he would kiss me.

Then he pressed his forehead to mine instead.

“When you’re not sick,” he murmured. “When you can decide without a fever.”

My breath caught.

He pulled the blanket higher around me, but his thumb stroked once over my pulse.

It was the most careful refusal I had ever received.

And somehow, it felt more intimate than a kiss.

When I returned to work three days later, Ethan was waiting in the rehabilitation room with two coffees.

“You’re early,” I said.

“You’re late.”

“It’s six fifty-eight.”

“You usually arrive at six forty.”

I took the cup he offered. “Were you worried?”

“No.”

“Terrified?”

“Drink your coffee.”

I smiled into the lid.

His final return-to-play test was that afternoon. Marcus, the team physician, two coaches, and I watched while Ethan sprinted, cut, pivoted, absorbed controlled contact, and completed repeated skating intervals. Every number exceeded our target.

When he stepped off the ice, his chest heaving, he looked only at me.

“Well?”

I made him wait three cruel seconds. “You’re cleared for full practice.”

His teammates erupted behind the glass. Ethan closed the distance between us, caught me around the waist, and lifted me off the ground.

A laugh burst from me. “Put me down.”

“You did it.”

“We did it.”

His face was level with mine. Joy had stripped away his usual control, and the man beneath it was devastating. His eyes dropped to my lips.

This time, neither of us had a fever.

He kissed me in front of the entire medical staff.

His mouth was warm and certain. One of his hands spread over my lower back while the other held my thigh against his hip. For a few reckless seconds, I forgot the cameras in the rink, the cheering players, and every promise I had made to myself.

Then fear returned.

I turned my face away.

Ethan set me down at once. His hands remained at my waist, steadying but not trapping me. “Too much?”

“I can’t be your reward for getting healthy.”

His expression sharpened. “You think that’s what this is?”

“You might mistake gratitude for love.”

“I’m not Pierce.”

He released me, and the loss of his warmth felt immediate. “Tell me what you need.”

“Time.”

He nodded. “Then time.”

He returned to competition two weeks later with limited minutes. Boston won. He did not score, but he assisted on the deciding goal and survived his first hard collision without hesitation.

After the game, I found him alone in the tunnel, breathing through the crash of adrenaline.

“How does the knee feel?” I asked.

“Like a knee.”

“Excellent medical terminology.”

He reached for my hand and pressed it against his chest. His heart hammered beneath my palm. “This is worse.”

I swallowed. “Postgame elevation is normal.”

“It happens when you walk into a room.”

The words were direct, almost severe, because Ethan did not know how to make vulnerable things pretty.

I curled my fingers into his jersey. “You said you’d give me time.”

“I am. I’m also telling you the truth while I wait.”

Over the next month, the Wolves fought their way through the playoffs. Ethan regained speed with every game. We developed rituals. After victories, he found me before the press. After losses, he sat on my treatment table while I worked the tension from his hips and listened to him say almost nothing.

One night after an overtime win, his hand closed around the back of my neck while I checked a bruise along his ribs.

“You can’t keep looking at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you want to climb onto this table.”

Heat rushed through me. “I’m assessing an injury.”

“Your eyes are nowhere near the bruise.”

He was right.

I stepped between his knees. “And if I do want you?”

His grip tightened, not enough to control me, only enough to show me what control cost him. “Then say it when you’re ready.”

So I did.

“I want you, Ethan.”

He kissed me slowly this time, as if he had all the patience in the world. My hands slid beneath his shirt, finding hot skin and hard muscle. His palms traveled down my back and drew me against him until I felt the full force of his restraint.

“Not here,” I whispered.

His forehead rested against mine. “Dinner tomorrow. A real one. No medical charts.”

“Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

“I’m asking you to let me be your man.”

It should have frightened me. Instead, it felt clean and simple.

“Yes.”

Boston reached the championship final against New York.

The sports networks turned Ethan’s comeback into the story of the season. Logan tried to make our past part of it, telling reporters that he wished me well and had “always supported my career.” I refused every request for comment.

Ethan did not.

When a reporter asked whether I had divided loyalties, he stared straight into the camera.

“Dr. Avery Bennett is the reason I’m playing,” he said. “Her work belongs to her. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

He never mentioned Logan’s name. He did not have to.

The clip went viral before the game ended.

Boston won the series in six games. Ethan scored the final goal.

Confetti fell in silver sheets while he skated toward me, ignoring officials and photographers. He climbed over the boards, pulled me against his sweat-soaked jersey, and kissed me until the arena became noise and light around us.

“This one is yours too,” he said.

“No. It’s yours.”

“Then share it with me.”

That night, in his hotel suite.

He removed my dress with hands that had learned every place I tensed and every place I softened. His mouth followed the straps down my shoulders, then lower, lingering at the swell of my breasts until my breath hitched. I traced the scar on his knee, then the stronger line of muscle above it, and felt him shudder when I kissed the skin I had spent months repairing.

My fingers drifted higher, along the hard plane of his thigh, until I felt him thicken against my palm.

“You don’t have to be careful with me,” he said, voice low and rough.

“I know.” I rose and pushed him gently back onto the bed. “But I want to remember all of you.”

His gaze burned as I moved over him, straddling his hips, letting the heat of him press against the soft, already-slick place between my legs. When he turned us, he paused, giving me room to stop him. I pulled him closer instead, guiding him in with a slow, deliberate roll of my hips until he filled me completely.

“Fuck—” he exhaled against my mouth, the word half a prayer. “You feel—”

“I know,” I whispered, and rolled my hips again, taking him deeper. “Don’t hold back.”

What followed was fierce and tender. He drove into me in long, measured thrusts that still left me gasping, his free hand sliding between us to circle the swollen bud of my clit with exacting pressure. My nails scored his shoulders. His fingers threaded through mine against the pillow. Every time I clenched around him he groaned my name like it was the only word left in him.

“Harder,” I breathed. “I want to feel you for days.”

He gave me exactly that—deeper, faster, the wet sound of our bodies meeting filling the quiet room—until the pleasure crested so sharp it stole my voice. I came first, pulsing tight around him, and he followed with a low, broken sound, spilling hot inside me as his forehead dropped to mine.

When the world finally went quiet, he held me with my back against his chest, still half-hard and nested inside me, his lips resting at the base of my neck.

“I love you,” he said.

I had not expected Ethan Blackwood to say it first.

I turned in his arms, feeling him slip free with a soft, intimate wetness. “I love you too.”

For three weeks, happiness felt possible until Victoria Blackwood came to my apartment.

She arrived in a black town car wearing pearls and an expression that made my modest living room look guilty. Ethan had told me his family owned investment properties. He had not told me the Blackwood family controlled a multibillion-dollar group with holdings in transportation, media, and professional sports.

“You didn’t know,” Victoria said after reading my face.

“No.”

“That is typical of Ethan.” She placed a folder on my table. Inside were photographs of me with Ethan and an article about Logan and me. “My son is vulnerable after his injury. You have already formed one inappropriate relationship with an athlete in your care.”

My stomach turned. “I waited until he was medically cleared.”

“You can explain that to an ethics committee. Or a tabloid.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It is reality.” Her gaze was cool. “Ethan has obligations you do not understand. His future cannot be shaped by a woman who moves from one injured athlete to another.”

The insult landed exactly where Logan had wounded me.

“I never want anything from him.”

“But you took access.” She stood. “Leave Boston. Resign quietly. If you love him, do not make him destroy his life defending you.”

After she left, I didn't call Ethan.

I knew he was on a flight for a charity event, unaware his mother had dismantled my certainty in twenty minutes.

I stared at the folder until dawn.

Then I accepted an offer from the Toronto Northstars, packed two suitcases, and boarded a flight to Canada.

I left no note.

Cowardice sometimes wears the face of sacrifice.

At the time, I told myself I was protecting him.