The Goalie Bet novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Bet
Dana starts Logan's first empty training-room session and he lays down the bet before she can touch his leg. She takes it.
The training room was empty because I'd asked for it to be.
That was the first thing I got wrong.
I unlocked the door at 4:40 on a warm Tuesday in April.
The rink hummed through the wall, all that cold on the other side of it.
The room smelled like tape and menthol and lemon cleaner.
I flipped the lights. Two tables. A cabinet of cold packs. A whiteboard I'd wiped clean.
I had the plan printed and stapled. Four pages, week one through week four.
I'd spent the weekend on it, which I wasn't going to tell anyone.
I set my bag down and waited.
He was late by six minutes.
I heard him before I saw him, that heavy uneven drag.
Logan Rusk filled the doorway.
Six three, dark hair cut close, clean shaven, navy crewneck and charcoal sweats.
He looked like the poster they sold in the campus bookstore.
He also looked like a man who hadn't slept in two weeks.
"Kline," he said.
"Logan."
"You're the one who told me no."
I didn't answer that.
"Table two," I said. "Sit."
He didn't sit. He walked a slow half circle around the room.
He stopped at the whiteboard and read it. There was nothing on it.
"Cute," he said.
"Sit down."
He sat. He sat the way men sit when they want you to know it's a favor.
I pulled the stool over and washed my hands with my back to him.
The water ran cold for a second.
"You're mine for four weeks," I said.
"I have your scans and the team physical therapist's notes."
"Groin strain, right side, two weeks out."
"You're not cleared for skating and you won't be for a while."
"I'm back before playoffs."
"You're not."
"I'm back before playoffs," he said again, easy, like it was a fact I hadn't been given.
I dried my hands and turned around.
"Take the sweats off."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Your hip," I said. "I need to see it."
He stood and hooked his thumbs in the waistband. He did it slow.
He was watching my face the whole time, and I let him.
I have a face that doesn't do much.
The sweatpants came down to his knees.
Underneath he had on compression shorts and nothing else on his legs.
The right hip was mottled with a bruise the color of an old plum.
"Sit," I said.
He sat.
I put my hands on him.
That's the job. You put your hands on people.
You find the spot, you press, you watch their face for the flinch.
I've done it a hundred times on a hundred athletes, and it has never once been anything but work.
His skin was warm. That was all.
I pressed two fingers into the muscle at the top of his thigh.
I worked down toward the joint.
He didn't flinch. He breathed out through his nose and looked at the ceiling.
His jaw moved once.
"Here," I said, and pressed.
His whole leg jumped.
"There," he said. "Yeah. There."
"Does it pull when you skate out?"
"Doesn't pull. It just doesn't fire."
"I go to push off and there's nothing."
"That's the strain. The muscle's guarding."
"You've been favoring it, so your left side is doing twice the work."
"In about ten days your left side is going to hurt too."
He looked at me then, and something in his face changed.
I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that.
"How long," he said.
"Four weeks if you do exactly what I say."
"Playoffs are in four weeks."
"I know when playoffs are."
"And the final's six weeks out."
He sat up on his elbows.
"I need to be on the ice before the semifinal."
"You need to push off without your leg quitting on you."
"Or you'll be on the ice for one shift and then you'll be gone."
He was quiet for a second.
Then he smiled, and it was the smile from the poster, and I hated it.
"Let's make it interesting," he said.
"No."
"You don't even know what it is."
"I know it's a bad idea."
"I'm back on the ice before playoffs," he said. "That's my side."
"And mine?"
"You say I can't last a week of your plan without begging."
I looked at him.
"Begging," I said.
"Begging. For it to stop, for a break, for anything."
"One week. You run your plan, I don't ask you for a single thing."
He sat up the rest of the way and pulled his sweats back over his hips.
"I'm on the ice before playoffs, I win. I beg inside a week, you win."
"And the loser?"
"Does whatever the winner says."
He said it flat, no joke in it at all.
"Once. Whatever it is."
"That's a stupid bet."
"Then it costs you nothing."
I should have said no.
I knew that, standing there with my hands still warm from his leg.
But he was the one who'd been told no in front of half the campus.
He'd walked in here and put his own body on my table anyway.
There was a version of this where I said no and spent four weeks being polite to him.
I already knew I couldn't stand that.
"Fine," I said.
"Fine?"
"Fine."
I picked the plan up off the table and held it where he could see it.
"Week one, day one. You're going to hate me by Thursday."
"I've hated you since October," he said.
It didn't sound like an insult, and I let it go.
I cracked a cold pack and set it on his hip.
I told him what the next hour looked like.
He listened, and for about twenty minutes it was fine.
Then I asked him for the first set.
He got through nine of the fifteen reps and stopped with his knee in the air.
His breath came hard.
"That's enough," he said.
"Fifteen."
"That's enough."
I looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.
The clock on the wall ticked.
He stared back with his jaw set and his leg shaking.
He did the last six.
Afterward he sat on the edge of the table with a towel around his neck.
The light through the high windows had gone gold.
Down the hall a door banged and a cart rolled past.
"Same time tomorrow," I said.
"Sure."
I started packing my bag with my back to him.
Then I heard the table creak.
"You didn't write it down," he said.
I turned. "What?"
"The plan. You didn't put it on the board."
"It's on the sheet."
"The sheet."
He crossed to the whiteboard and picked up the marker.
I thought he'd draw something stupid on it, but he didn't.
He just stood there holding it.
"Four weeks of that and I'm going to want to die."
"Probably."
He capped the marker and set it back in the tray.
Then he pushed the sweats down off his hips again and stepped out of them.
He stood there in the compression shorts, the bruise dark against his thigh.
"Go on, then," he said. "Fix me."
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