Come on! Faster! Keep up the pace.” Lex clapped her hands at the junior high girls running blocking drills.
She had stood up rather than sit in the chair Vince had gotten for her, but it made her lower back ache. The CPM machine had screwed it up even more than before. She arched her back while she watched the girls sprint, block, sprint, block, but the ball of knotted muscle only seemed to twist itself tighter.
“Okay, that’s it! Wrap it up!”
“Already?” Her assistant coach leaned in a little too close to murmur to her. She stepped away.
“I’m… in too much pain.” Lex couldn’t look at him as she admitted it. She dug her fingers into the rough plastic of the chair and damped down a wave of frustration. She had nothing to throw, nothing to hit, nothing to break. She never expected the surgery to impact her ability to coach.
“Lex?”
“Yes?” Lex turned to two of her girls, sisters only thirteen months apart.
“We can’t make it to playoffs this summer.” The older girl sniffled. “We would if we could.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Our grandpa’s sick, and Mom doesn’t want us away from home.” The younger sister bit her lip.
Oh, man. What a summer these girls will have. “That’s okay. You guys should be with your grandpa. That’s the right thing to do.”
After they’d gone to take off their gear, Lex sank into the hated chair. If girls kept dropping out of playoffs, she wouldn’t have a team. She wouldn’t even need Grandma to sponsor them for the summer. She wouldn’t need to find a boyfriend. Lex didn’t feel very loverlike.
She leaned over, trying to stretch her back. She was falling apart. Her team was falling apart.
I’m failing them already.
No, she couldn’t think that way. She had to shake this defeatist attitude. It would turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. She still had six weeks before the wedding.
She’d stretch her back more. She’d go to PT and work to strengthen her knee. She’d make her girls’ team even stronger so they didn’t need the lost players for playoffs. She could do it.
She could do it.
Oh, boy. She needed another ibuprofen.
Lex’s stomach roiled as she waited by the curb in front of her apartment building for Aiden to arrive. She’d taken her ibuprofen on an empty stomach. Stupidity at its finest. Now she couldn’t even contemplate food. Even worse, it had only blunted the edge off her back pain.
Aiden’s car pulled up and she got in. As he drove off, he frowned at her. “What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”
How’d he know that? “My back.”
“You look kind of sick too.”
“I took ibuprofen on an empty stomach.”
“Left your brains in bed this morning, I see.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Here, have some bread.” He reached for the backseat and threw a new loaf into her lap. “I went shopping this morning.”
Lex downed a couple slices, and the desire to hang her head out the open window started to ease.
“So, your back…” Aiden pulled into the PT parking lot. “New injury?”
“Old. Lower back.” Lex climbed out of the car awkwardly. The combination of her brace and her back problems made her as graceful as a waddling duck.
“What’s it from?”
“Bad chair at my old workplace.”
Aiden winced as he punched the elevator button. “The ibuprofen isn’t helping?”
Lex entered the elevator and leaned against the handrail. “Not really.”
He grew very still. He studied her, eyes searching… for what?
Finally he seemed to come to a decision. “I can help you, if you want.”
“How? Painkillers in an IV drip?”
The elevator doors creaked open. “I could give you a massage.”
Lex halted mid-step. Her muscles clenched, making the pain throb in her lower back. She stared at Aiden as he waited for her to exit. The elevator doors started to slide shut again, and he thrust a hand to trigger them open.
She walked out. “I don’t know, Aiden.”
“Look, I don’t need to know why you don’t like it when men touch you, but you’ve gotten used to me handling your leg.”
They entered the gym doors, and Lex signed in at the receptionist’s counter. As she signed the credit card slip to pay for her session, she tried to make her back muscles relax. Her skin had become hypersensitive, feeling the rasp of her T-shirt.
“Oh, Aiden, your friend Spenser called.” The receptionist handed him a message slip. “He said he’d be here in an hour.”
“Thanks.” He frowned at the piece of paper.
Lex tried to peek. “Problems?”
He crumpled the message. “No. Well, what do you think?”
She looked into his eyes, and the calm pooling there made the fluttering in her chest ease. This was Aiden. Her therapist. She had to fight this phobia.
“Okay.”
Lex expected something to explode, or maybe some Hallelujah chorus to erupt. No, none of that. Just Aiden’s slow smile, reassuring and gentle.
He set her up at a table a little apart from where the other therapist worked a shoulder surgery patient. He had her lie on her stomach.
As Lex eased her body down, her shoulder cramped. Then a little pit fire crackled on her lower back. It slowly dulled, but she couldn’t seem to make the rest of her muscles unclench.
“I’ll massage you through your T-shirt.” Aiden’s voice floated over her. He seemed closer to her than he’d ever been, even when stretching her leg. Maybe that’s why she now caught a whiff of soap and fir and musk – just a hint. It soothed her. Her shoulder blades relaxed a tiny bit.
This was Aiden. She trusted him.
He started on her arm – a safe place. She couldn’t stop herself from flinching. He continued his gentle kneading motion up her shoulder.
A brief flash of memory. Her date’s breath against her neck, her apartment carpet burning her elbows and hands as she tried to scramble away. His hand on her arm, pinning her down, pressing her face into the carpet where she breathed in the wine she’d spilled, mold, rancid cooking oil.
She jolted. Aiden paused. “Do you want me to stop?”
“N-no.” She had to fight this.
He continued. “Long, deep breaths.”
Lex complied. Fir and that thread of musk. She imagined it cleansing her as it filled her lungs.
She focused on his hands, kneading slowly. His patience amazed her, but then again, she always moved at breakneck speed.
He massaged up her arms, and then she realized both his hands touched her shoulders and she didn’t flinch, she didn’t mind, she didn’t fear. He rubbed circles in her neck. Oh, that felt nice. The tension at the base of her skull dissolved away. She never noticed the ache behind her eyes until it eased. He hadn’t even touched her back, but the knotted ball at the base of her spine loosened a little.
His fingers pressed, circled, pushed. She barely noticed when he moved down toward her trouble spot. Her back unkinked, the burning cooled. Cool like fir, relaxing like a thread of musk.
“Okay, you’re done.”
The ache hadn’t completely gone away – she still felt tender in that area – but she moved more fluidly than she had in weeks. Her spine didn’t feel like a creaky mass of bones rubbing together.
She sat up. “Thanks, Aiden.” A world of meaning in those words.
Lex knew he heard everything she didn’t say, because his eyes locked with hers for a moment. She felt this strange stretching -almost a physical sensation – like Play-Doh being rolled together. She blinked, and it disappeared.
Besides, she hated Play-Doh.
She started to climb down from the table.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not off the hook. Now that you’re feeling better, we’ve still got your exercises to do.”
Aiden knew he was being irrational, but he hurried Lex through her gym exercises like a drill sergeant. She had to be gone by the time Spenser arrived.
He glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes. If he pushed her a little harder, she’d be done with her ice and stim a few minutes before he came. Hopefully he’d be late, as usual.
She couldn’t meet Spenser. She belonged to him.
There he was, being irrational.
He’d waffled about giving her the massage. He’d given dozens of massages, so the procedure itself didn’t make him uncomfortable, but he knew it would be different with her. He knew that he’d be feeling like this – stronger than King Kong, victorious like an Ultimate Fighting Champion – if she overcame her fear with him.
Aiden didn’t often touch people casually like gregarious Spenser did, but he stared at the nape of her neck as she sat in the machine, wanting to smooth the taut skin. To be comforting, encouraging…proprietary.
He never bonded with any of his patients – he kept his professional distance. But he had liked being with Lex even before he tore her ACL. He didn’t know why. He always seemed to catch her at her worst. She created chaos like a tornado through his controlled, ordered world.
“Five more.” His voice sharpened as he drove her on this last rep, but she smiled at him. She complained and whined, but he heard the note of teasing in her tone, the glimmer of mischief in her eyes. She appreciated how he pushed her. She had never mentioned it, but he knew the raging determination in her that rushed her on, focused on her healing and rehab. He could see that rage in her even now, as she grunted and strained to finish the set on the machine.
Why this connection with her? He’d been physically attracted to Trish, but he’d never been tempted by her, and he had rejected her advances without regret. Lex and Trish had too many similarities -face, family, religion. The last one had set his back up every time Trish mentioned it, especially because her actions contradicted the morals she claimed to follow.
Lex switched to the leg press and paused before starting. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“At the – ” No, she never saw him at the coffee shop – “grass tournament?”
“Yeah. You asked me about church. What did you mean by that?”
Had she read his mind, bringing up the subject he wanted to avoid? “Just curious.”
She grunted as she performed a set. “I’ve been thinking lately.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
She glared at him, but his bland expression seemed to amuse her. Then her mood shifted, and her eyes skittered away. “Trish… came on to you.”
He kept his face impassive, but a burst of tension rippled over his skin at the sound of her name. “Who told you?”
“Richard.”
“Oh. Let’s go, another set.” He tapped the machine. He had to get her out of here.
She sweated and groaned through another fifteen reps. The weights clinked as she finished. “Trish and I became Christians in college.”
He didn’t want to hear this. “Really?”
“But the past few years, she’s been… wild. She stopped going to church regularly. With this current boyfriend, she stopped going to church completely.”
This affects me, how? “And?”
“The way you talked about church… after what she said about dating non-Christians…” Lex sighed.
“Last set.” Aiden leaned against the foot of the machine.
Lex strained through the set, breathing hard as she finished.
“Ice and stim.” Aiden headed to the patient area, Lex trailing behind. Maybe he could distract her and she wouldn’t -“You’re not Christian?”
His lips tightened, but he didn’t face her, so she couldn’t see. “I’m not.”
She didn’t reply, but he knew the topic wasn’t over. She followed him to the patient area and got up on a table. He started attaching the electrodes around her knee.
Lex’s eyes flitted to his face and away, as if she couldn’t quite meet his eyes but she wanted to. “Because of… Did Trish?… Why?…”
Aiden sighed. “Do you really want to get into a discussion?”
“I just want to know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Her candor never stopped surprising him. He rubbed his forehead. “It’s partly because of Trish, but mostly because of another girl I dated a long time ago who said she was Christian. And before you say not all Christians are like that – ” He stopped her as she started to interrupt – “I’ve met a lot of hypocritical Christians.”
But then his friend Spenser’s face flickered before his eyes. Spenser, who never nagged or questioned or argued about religion. Aiden thought he was a little too flirty, but Spenser was always there for him as a friend.
He finished attaching the adhesive pads to her knee.
“Am I…?” Lex asked.
She looked at him now. He realized he’d never thought about it with her. “No. I know a few sincerely loving Christians. But I also know plenty of sincerely loving atheists.”
Lex nodded and looked down, but she didn’t say anything.
He needed to hurry. Aiden got her ice bag, wrapped her knee, and started her stim.
He should have just walked away, but he didn’t want to leave her like that. “Look, I’m not one of those people who loves to argue and try to debunk or fluster Christians. But I won’t lie to you or anyone else who asks about what I believe or don’t believe.”
She didn’t seem terribly upset – he had expected more defensiveness. What had he expected from her? Derision? He knew her better than to think she’d react that way.
Instead, she shrugged. “That’s you. That’s fine.”
Somehow, her disappointment sliced like a razor blade.
He kept watch on the clock. She finished her ice with three minutes to spare.
“I’ll wait for you out there.” Lex headed to the waiting area.
The receptionist entered the patient area as he cleaned up, and he turned to her. “Could you please tell Spenser I’ll be back in – ”
“Hi, there.” From the waiting area, the familiar purring voice carried back to him.
Oh, no.
“I’m Spenser.”
“Nice to meet you. Are you always this friendly?”
Her mildly sarcastic reply made Aiden pause as he turned the corner. Spenser hovered next to Lex, who leaned casually against the receptionist’s counter.
“Spenser, this is my patient, Lex.”
“Pleasure.” Spenser used his infamous double-hand clasp. He didn’t seem to notice when Lex’s shoulders snapped tight and her smile hardened. She snatched her hand away.
Aiden couldn’t resist. Maybe he just wanted to test her, to affirm… what? He didn’t think. He came up behind her, and making sure Spenser couldn’t see it, he placed a gentle touch at the small of her back.
She didn’t react.
Something bloomed in his chest. It felt like when he made a free throw that swished through the net.
Spenser gave a charming smile. “Aiden isn’t pushing you too hard, is he? I’ll school him for you.”
She regarded him with half-closed eyes and a cool expression. “He pushes me hard enough.”
“How dare he push a sweet thing like you? You put Hershey’s out of business.”
She burst into laughter. “Oh, come on. You can do better than that.”
Aiden had to admit Spenser took it in stride with a warm, more genuine smile than before. However, Aiden wasn’t going to let her stay and taste more of his magnetism, much less discover that he had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was Christian. Although to Aiden right now, he was more like the snake in Eden.
Aiden moved away from her, even though he wanted to stick to her like PB and J, but his physical distance would fool Spenser into believing his professional distance from her. “Sorry, Spenser, but I’m Lex’s ride home. I’ll be back in fifteen.” He headed out the door.
He paused outside so Lex could catch up to him, still staggering in her straight-legged brace. “He works at the same pharmaceutical company as Trish.”
Aiden glanced sidelong at her. “He does?”
“I didn’t actually meet him, but you went out to lunch with him that day I went to eat with Trish.”
Now he remembered. “He’s a good friend.”
“You guys are like oil and vinegar.”
“Who’s the oil, and who’s the vinegar?”
She giggled. Giggled. She’d rarely done that with him. “Oh, you’re definitely the vinegar.”
“So, he’s the oil?”
“Actually it fits him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong, he was nice. But he’s also slick. Like my brother Richard.”
Aiden thought he hid his surprise, but she frowned as they waited for the elevator. “What?”
He shrugged. “Most women use words like ‘charming,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘cute.’ ”
Lex guffawed. “Oh, please. I grew up with guys like him. Richard’s the worst out of all my male cousins.” They entered the elevator. “They’re just boys with nice smiles. All my life, I’ve heard what they really think after the girls have gone home.”
Her mobile, expressive face smiled at him. Such a contrast to the slightly cynical mask she had with Spenser. She even looked at him differently than she looked at other guys.
Maybe she was different.