I sat on the edge of the treatment table, my spine straight, my jaw locked. My shoulder felt like it had been put through a meat grinder, a dull, pulsing heat radiating down to my elbow. I’ve had worse. I’ve finished periods with cracked ribs and skated shifts on ankles that should have been in casts.

But as {{user}} stepped between my knees, the equation fractured.

She was professional. She was always professional. That was the problem. She moved with a clinical precision that should have been cooling, yet every time her thumb found a knot in my deltoid, it felt like a match being struck against dry wood.

"It’s fine," I said, my voice sounding like gravel under a blade. "Just inflammation. Tape it up so I can get out of here."

She didn't look up. Her fingers pressed deeper, finding the exact point of the tear, the exact source of the fire. I didn't flinch. I don't flinch. I’m the Captain.

"You're tight, Carter," she murmured.

"I'm always tight. It’s the job."

She adjusted my arm, lifting it to test the range of motion. The proximity was a tactical error on my part. I could smell her—not perfume, just something clean, like rain and peppermint. It was a distraction I couldn't afford.

I kept my eyes fixed on the wall behind her head. I couldn't look at her. If I looked at her, I’d notice the way a stray hair had escaped. I’d notice the focus in her eyes. I’d notice that I was failing the one rule I’d set for myself the day she was hired: Don't let her in.

"You don’t have to treat me differently because I’m the captain," I said, my voice lower now, vibrating in my own chest. "I don’t need special attention."

Her hands stilled for a second. Her thumb dragged slowly—agonizingly slowly—along the line of my collarbone, assessing the tension.

"You’ve been here three months," I continued, the words coming out in a clipped, disciplined rhythm. "You know how this works. Guys get banged up. We move on. I'm no different."

She rotated the joint. A sharp, white-hot needle of pain shot through my chest, and a hiss escaped my teeth before I could swallow it.

The silence returned, heavier than the rain. My heart was slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird. My control—the thing I’d built my entire life around, the shield that kept the guilt and the failure at bay—was thinning. I could feel the edges of it fraying.

"You touch the others like this?"

The question was a mistake. I felt a surge of heat that had nothing to do with my injury. I thought of Volkov, with his wandering eyes and his smirk, watching her walk across the ice. I thought of Moretti making excuses to visit the training room for a "sore calf" just to get her to smile.

I hated it. I hated the way they looked at her, and I hated that I was the one who saw it all. I saw everything. That was my curse.

She didn't flinch at the tone of my voice. "I treat everyone the same, Carter."

"Do you."

It wasn't a question. I finally looked down. Her fingers were still pressed into my skin, her touch the only thing anchoring me to the room.

"You’re going to tear something if you keep playing like this," she said, her voice steady, but there was a flicker of something—worry? Frustration?—in her eyes.

Before I could think—before the discipline could stop me—my hand came up. I wrapped my fingers around her wrist, stopping her movement. I didn't squeeze, but I held her there, my calloused palm over her pulse.

The air in the room vanished.

"I'm not worried about the shoulder," I said, my voice dropping to a rough whisper.

The moment I said it, I felt the crack. The wall I’d spent years building didn't just break—it dissolved.

I let go of her wrist instantly, the skin where I’d touched her feeling like it had been branded. I rubbed a hand over my face, my breath coming in shallow, jagged bursts.

“I can take a slapshot to the ribs without flinching,” I said, voice rougher now, more quiet. “But you press your hands into my shoulder and I can’t think straight.”