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For some reason, I’d been expecting a woman. Maybe because every therapist I’d ever been to was one. Maybe because another man would see me as weak, I didn't like it one bit, and I came to a halt just inside the door.

He didn’t seem harsh and judgmental, though. Dark hair threaded with early silver, beard trimmed close, eyes tender but sharp enough to notice things I didn’t want seen. Late forties, maybe. Button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows, posture relaxed but confident.

“Jari Lankinen?” he said.

I nodded, throat tight.

“Come in. Sit wherever you feel comfortable.”

Comfortable. Right. I wanted to run. I stepped inside anyway.

Dr. Hale waited until I sat on the edge of the chair with my back to the internal window, too upright, too tense—before he spoke again.

“First things first,” he said, voice steady but not clinical. “I’m Dr. Daniel Hale. But most players call me Dan.”

Dan. That felt… less threatening. Still a man. Still, someone who could cut me open with a question. But softer around the edges. He folded his hands loosely on his knee.

“Coach tells me you made the roster with the Railers. Big congrats on the transition. How’s your head handling all of this?”

My laugh came out wrong—thin, brittle. “Fine.”

Dan’s eyebrows lifted in a way that wasn’t judgmental—more as if he was giving me space to reconsider. “‘Fine’ is a big word,” he said. “Covers a lot of ground. What does it mean for you?”

I picked at one of my bracelets. “Means I’m doing good,” I lied.

“Showing up here counts,” Dan said. “I know you didn't have any choice, but it’s the hardest part.”

I shrugged, eyes darting to the window, the empty stadium beyond it. “Okay.”

He picked up a folder with the Railers logo, my name on the front. JARI LANKINEN. I winced. “So, I've been sent reports from previous teams, three so far, right?” I nodded, and he paused, and I didn't know what to say. “Must be hard, moving so much.”

“I guess,” I said, and I was about to walk, expecting him to start summarizing what they all said, but he opened the folder and showed me that the only thing in there was blank paper. He laid it on the desk, then came around to sit on the chair opposite me, so the desk wasn't between us.

“I never read what others say, and I don't care what anyone else thinks,” he murmured. “So, how about we start from the beginning, and I get to know you so you can stop bracing yourself?” Dan didn’t push. He waited for me to talk as if he had all the time in the world.

My chest clenched. “Does it matter if I just tell you the same things I told them?”

“It matters to you,” he said.

My jaw worked. I glanced down at my hands instead of his face. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“That’s okay,” Dan said, and damn it, he sounded sincere. “We start wherever you want to.”

Fuck.

FOUR

Cam

After a grueling workout, I crossed the empty parking lot at the complex, sweat damp under my fleece despite the cold, and my thoughts kept circling back to Jari. I kept spiraling around this crazy mix of attraction and worry about him. What was it that Kirby was always saying? That it’s not my job to fix everything and everyone on the planet. That I needed to step back and let others solve their own dilemmas, but…

Fuck. He hadn’t seen the way Jari had stood in the corridor, shoulders too rigid, eyes shuttered as if he were bracing for a hit that never came. A week had passed since I’d seen him, but the look in his eyes hadn’t loosened its grip on me. It followed me into sleep, surfaced in the quiet moments. He was drowning in something heavy—I knew that distant, hollow appearance too well. I’d lived it secondhand with Kirby, watched my cousin claw his way through depression until the right meds finally gave him air again.

Jari's expression made me feel as if he was stuck in that same dark place, and it ate at me. I wanted to help, to fix it—but I didn’t know how, and maybe it wasn’t my place. I’d thought of talking to the Railers, but that seemed a massive breach of etiquette. Who was I to shine that kind of light on another athlete? I wasn’t a doctor. Just a guy who’d learned the hard way that sometimes caring is all you can offer, and even that can feel like too much.

The corridor. The way his eyes had gone flat with pain he was trying not to show when I’d asked him about the photo. It hit me low and hard, a visceral punch I hadn’t been ready for. I’d seen injuries. I’d seen fear. This was different. I cared what Jari was thinking about and what he was feeling—more than was sensible because I'd seen something in him that spoke to my need to fix things.

That was all. Nothing about his gorgeous eyes or his soft lips or the insane need I had to tug him into my arms and hug him hard.