Page 101 of The Goalie in Room 1

Cash’s tongue slid over his bottom lip.

“Someday, Doc,” he said, cupping my face with a soft, sad smile before grabbing his crutch. “I’m showering.”

My attention snapped back to him. I hated the immediate memory his words dragged up.

Wet blond hair.

Water running over his chest.

His head tipped back beneath my hands.

I choked on a groan that got stuck in my throat.

I watched him walk all the way out of the kitchen, my eyes following his ass in the athletic pants he wore. The way they hugged the globes that bounced under the fabric wiped my mind of everything but the sight of him wet, hard, and moaning…

“Fuck,” I growled, scrubbing my hands over my face.

“Yeah, Doc. I’m doing that too,” he yelled from the hallway.

19

CASH

February

I swung down the hallway of the rehab center on my crutches. Both of them. The faint metal rattle and soft thud every time they hit the floor pissed me off.

Scared the shit out of me too.

When I woke up that morning, something felt off. Not pain exactly. A little swollen. A little less steady.

Memories of every setback after my last three surgeries had kept me sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the second crutch where I’d left it after Matteo dropped me to one last month.

I’d learned what happened when I ignored shit like this.

I grabbed the second crutch and texted Matteo, who’d agreed with me on going back to two until he could look at it.

I shoved the door open with the tip of a crutch, the yelling getting louder now that the door was open and I’d stepped inside.

“I said I’m not fucking doing it!”

A resistance band whipped across the room and smacked into the wall before dropping to the floor.

Every head turned toward the far corner.

A kid sat on the edge of a treatment table, one crutch propped beside him and enough fury on his face to burn the whole place down. Seventeen, maybe. Eighteen at the most. Long legs. Lean build. Black athletic shorts and a gray T-shirt with a goalie mask printed across the chest.

The therapist standing in front of him didn’t so much as flinch.

“You can be angry,” she said. “You cannot throw equipment.”

“I didn’t throw it at you.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”

“It hurts.”

“I understand that.”