Page 1 of Keeping the Score

1

FORD

“You’re not done! More! More!”

Sweat stings my eyes and my muscles burn. I hop laterally onto my left leg, bending that knee, and touch my right knee to the mat. Then the opposite. One side, then the other.

“Explosive!” Victor yells. “Explodeup from the mat!”

I push harder.

“Faster!”

“Motherfucker!” I’m dying.

“Two more!”

Hop-bend-explode. Hop-bend-explode.

“Last one!”

Oh, fuck, yeah. I finish, my legs trembling like cranberry sauce that just slid out of a can. I drop onto the floor, flat on my back, arms spread wide. “You’re trying to kill me,” I gasp.

Victor, the evil fucker, laughs. “And you’re paying me to do it.”

I huff out a laugh too, staring at the ceiling of the Long Island warehouse that holds Victor’s training facility. He’s not wrong. I’m paying him a lot.

“The faster you are, the more coordinated you are, the more conditioned you are, the more shutouts you get.”

“I get lots of shutouts.” I smirk.

“How many last season?”

“Six.”

“What’s the most an NHL goalie has ever gotten in a season?”

Fuck. He knows I know this. “George Hainsworth. Twenty-two.”

“Uh huh.” He crosses his arms and grins. “Something to work towards.”

“That was in 1929!”

“Still. Lots of goalies have gotten more than six in a season.”

“I can do more than six this season.” I was proud of six shutouts last season. It was the most in the league, and I only played about half the games. Damn him.

“Cocky bastard.”

I grin. “Just confident.”

He nudges my leg with the toe of his running shoe. “Okay, we’re done for today. Go eat some protein and hydrate.”

I’ve been coming here five days a week for the last three months, pretty much the whole off season after our playoffs ended in May. Victor trains elite hockey players—I’m not the only one here, but I’m the only goalie. Victor has his own unique philosophy about training. He watched me play and analyzed my biomechanics and movement patterns, and designed a program specifically for me. We’ve been working on it all summer and now it’s only a few weeks until training camp starts. I swear he’s rewired my brain. In a good way.

I roll over and climb to my feet as a woman walks into the gym. She’s pretty and blonde and carrying a baby on her hip. She waves at Xander, one of my training companions, just coming out of the locker room. He breaks into a big smile at the sight of his wife and baby.

“Hi, Sage.” I’ve met Xander’s wife a couple of times.

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