Pucking Around: Chapter 38

I blink, the words ‘pop culture’ dying on my lips. “Oh—umm—yeah, sure. We can talk about groin pulls if you want.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “Are you…” I glance down. Big mistake. Now I’m looking at Ilmari Kinnunen’s groin. I clear my throat, eyes darting back up to his face. “Do you—are you worried you might have one?”

“I’ve had several in the past,” he replies. “It’s one of the most common injuries in hockey.”

“Especially for goalies,” I add.

I’ve been doing my research since the moment I was first offered the Barkley Fellowship. All the major joints take a beating in ice hockey. For goalies especially, it’s the hips and knees that end careers. Meniscus and ACL tears, strain on the hip flexors, groin pulls. It’s brutal.

“So…how would you treat one?” he murmurs.

I know I’m pushing him out of his comfort zone by making him talk to me. But it struck me as I’ve watched him over the past several weeks that I might just be the only one pushing Ilmari Kinnunen. The coaches push him in practice, sure, but it’s also clear they think the sun rises and sets out of his ass. Hard to argue the point when he makes a shutout look as easy as breathing.

“So, groin pulls,” I begin. “You say you’ve had them before?”

He nods.

“How bad?”

“With one, the whole inside of my groin and upper thigh turned black and blue, tender to the touch for weeks. I lost almost three months of my season before they cleared me to skate again.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a bad one. Unless there’s a total tearing of the muscle that requires surgery, it just has to clear up on its own. I always hate feeling like my hands are tied, but it’s really on the athlete to put in the work—or in this case not work—and let the body heal itself.”

He nods, listening intently.

“What did your team doc prescribe at the time?” I ask. “What was your treatment plan?”

“I was benched,” he replies. “Ice for twenty minutes every four hours for the first week until the inflammation went down, compression bandage on my thigh during the day.”

I take a sip of my Diet Coke. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Do you have a good stretching and core strengthening regime in place? You like the work Doctor Avery is doing with you?”

He goes still, his expression turning placid, wholly unbothered. I have a feeling this might be an Ilmari-ism. Something about Avery or this line of questioning is bothering him.

I glance around. Most of the guys wear big, noise-canceling headphones and either sleep or play games on their phones. No one is paying attention to us. “Do you wanna talk about it?” I murmur, leaning closer.

“No.”

“Mars—”

“I said no,” he repeats, his expression now cold as ice. “Avery is fine. Everything is fine.”

“Ilmari, you don’t have to—”

“You made me do this,” he growls, pointing a finger in my face. “You made me ask you a question, and now we’re finished. Move seats if you must.”

I know what he’s doing. He’s in full goalie mode, shutting me out. But I’m not a puck he can just bat away with a flick of his wrist. Oh no, I am soooo much worse. I’m Doctor Rachel Watch-me-beat-this-dead-horse Price. And this conversation is not finished. Not even close.

We’ve got a pretty good system in place for when we return from away games. We all mingle in the big multipurpose room that doubles as a sort of cafeteria. The chef service preps a big brunch for all the players and staff with egg bake casseroles, fresh fruit, and pancakes by the stack. It’s cheat day for the guys, so they stuff their faces with double and triple helpings of everything.

Meanwhile, PT and medical staff stay on hand to do check-ins. We’ve set up in the corner with a massage station. Several of the guys start a rowdy soccer circle close by, and more than once I’m forced to duck from a flyaway ball.

“Oops—sorry, Doc!” Langley yells, chasing after the ball with one of J-Lo’s little girls hard on his heels.

I try to keep my eye on Ilmari as I examine a few bruised knees and help the PT intern strap an ice pack to Karlsson’s shoulder. “Yeah, just like that,” I murmur, holding the end of the bandage down as Teddy winds it around. My gaze darts left as I watch Ilmari slip out of the room. “Yeah, then just tape it down—hey, you cool to finish up?”

“I think so,” Teddy mutters, all his concentration on his wrap job. He’s not quite over the starry-eyed, I-get-to-touch-professional-athletes magic of the job.

I pat his shoulder. “You’ll do great. Karlsson, Teddy’s gonna begin the amputation now, okay? Just breath it out.”

“What?” Teddy squawks as Karlsson huffs a laugh.

I wander off, trying to avoid making it look like I’m stalking Kinnunen. I snatch some grapes off the buffet table before slipping out the same door he went through. This is a massive practice complex. He could be anywhere. I snoop around, slowly working my way back towards the gym.

The soft hum of music has my ears pricking up in interest. I follow the sound as it gets louder. God, it’s intense, some kind of death metal. They’re shredding the guitars as a man with a deep voice growls and shrieks into his mic.

I turn the corner into the stretching studio and pause in the doorway. Only one row of lights is on, giving the room a dark, cozy feel. It’s framed in with mirrors on three sides, and a range of stretching tools are stacked on racks by the door—balance balls of various sizes, rubber bands, weighted medicine balls, straps, rollers.

But my eyes focus on the man in the middle of the room. Ilmari is alone on the mats, down on all fours, hips pulsing to the beat of the music. I know what he’s doing, it’s a groin muscle strengthening exercise. All the players do it. But I’m not gonna lie, watching Ilmari Kinnunen doing it alone in the dark feels almost pornographic.

He glances up and our gazes catch in the mirror. “Mitä helvettiä,” he curses, pausing the music as he pops up to his knees. “What are you doing in here?”

His back is to me, so I’m holding his stormy gaze in the mirror. The silence between us is deafening. “Looking for you,” I admit.

“You found me,” he mutters. “But I would like my privacy.”

I nod, crossing my arms as I lean against the open doorway, not leaving. “Show me.”

He raises a brow. “What?”

“Your stretching routine. Show it to me.”

“You’re not my physical therapist.”

My mouth curves into a smile. “Maybe not…but I am a physical therapist. I have degrees in kinesiology and sports medicine, an M.D., and a license to practice physical therapy. I specialize in sports injuries to the hip and knee, and I’ve spent the last two years working at one of the top private sport rehab centers in the country. I’m not asking to watch you hump the mats because it turns me on, Kinnunen. I’m telling you, as a trained doctor paid by this team to protect the players to show me your damn stretching routine.”

Our stand-off continues as his reflection glares at me in the mirror.

I inch further into the room, kicking the door wedge out. The glass door whooshes softly shut behind me. His eyes track my movement. “I’m going to ask a few questions now,” I murmur. “You answer if you feel like it, okay?”

He makes no reply. He’s wearing a Rays tech shirt and a pair of Nike shorts. His trainers are the team style with his number embroidered on the heel: No. 31. He’s acting like prey, but we both know that’s not true. He’s all predator all the time. Three times my size and nothing but muscle. And I’ve cornered him. The fox has the bear on his guard. One wrong step, and he’ll eat me alive.

“On a scale from 0-10, what is your current pain level?”

He swallows, his eyes darkening. “Four.”

I nod. “And during your last game…what was your pain level then?”

“Eight.”

“Is the pain isolated to any specific spot?”

“Yes.”

I drop down cross-legged to the mats behind him. I let my eye trace the broad roundness of his shoulder, down his cut back to his hips. “Which side is it?”

Slowly, he shifts his hand, his palm splaying over his right hip.

I nod. I knew it had to be the hip. He wouldn’t be so casually perched on his knees if he was having meniscus or ACL pain at an eight. “How long?” I say, holding his reflection’s gaze.

“A while.”

“Goddamn it,” I mutter. “Have you told anyone? Or have you just been lying and compensating on your own?”

He says nothing, which is answer enough.

“Will you let me examine you?”

“No.”

I grit my teeth, frustration flashing across my expression in the mirror. “Mars, you—”

“I said no,” he snaps, snatching up his phone and getting to his feet. “I’m fine, and this conversation never happened.”

I scramble to my feet. “Oh, no you don’t!” I snatch for his arm as he dares to brush past me. “You’re gonna stay in this room, and you’re gonna talk to me.”

“No, I’m not,” he mutters, moving towards the door.

I chase after him. “Mars!”

He reaches for the door handle. Without thinking, I leap.

“Saatana—paska—fuck—” he grunts. “Let me go—”

“No,” I grunt, my arms around his neck as I lock my legs around his waist. Jeez, this man is a tree of solid muscle.

He pries at my legs with his iron fingers, and I squirm, practically choking him as I wrap my legs tighter. “Get off—”

“You walk outta here, you’re gonna have to explain to everyone why you’re wearing me as a koala,” I grunt.

“You’re a mad woman—”

He turns, knocking my hip into the rack of weighted exercise balls. They quickly go tumbling across the mats, rolling in every direction.

“Ouch—shit—I’m tryna help you, asshole!”

“I don’t need your help—”

“You’re injured, you idiot! Stop fighting me!”

He stills, chest heaving like an angry bull.

I look at us in the mirror and can’t help but burst out laughing. He’s got one hand at my arms around his neck and one on my ankle where he was trying to pry my legs apart…my legs that are currently wrapped all the way around him tighter than bark on a tree.

“You need help,” I pant. “Let me help you. Let me do my job.”

He closes his eyes. “I can’t,” he whispers, shaking his head. “I can’t do this. The pressure is too high. Everything I wanted…everything I’ve worked for…I can’t let you take it all away.”

He sounds so deeply broken. He’s not an angry bear ready to maul me. And he’s not an immortal athlete, untouchable in his pads and his face mask. He’s just a man. And he’s scared.

Tears spring to my eyes. “Oh, Mars.” My grip on him softens. “I swear to you…hey, look at me,” I plead.

Slowly, he locks his steely gaze on my reflection.

“I will do everything in my power to help you…but you have to let me. You have to trust me. Give me a chance?”