Page 17 of Thunderstruck
He shrugs. “The usual kind?”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Mel says from the other side of the room. She’s wrapping ice around Gator’s shoulder but watching me at the same time.
Sounds like I need to get here early enough tomorrow to catch the team’s warmup routine. With my hands still clamped around Bean’s leg, I smile up at him and say, “I could rub it out for you, but you’re not going to like it.”
He snorts. “You? No offense, but you’re tiny.”
“So are you,” I shoot back. Compared to the rest of the team, anyway. “Maybe you shouldn’t judge me before giving me a chance to prove myself,Bean.”
Something sparks to life in his eyes as he matches my stare. “You making fun of my name, Rizzo the Rat?”
“Do you want my help or not?”
“I’d like to see what you can do.”
Twenty minutes later, Bean and I arebothin tears, though mine are of laughter while his are from pain. I’d be worried about him if he wasn’t giggling at the same time while he lies face down on the padded table and I dig my entire elbow into his hamstring to try to work out the most stubborn part of the knot in his muscle.
“For heaven’s sake,” I say with a grunt of exertion. “Do youeverstretch?”
Mel, who has since sent Gator to the locker room, sips from her water bottle and watches me with a satisfied smirk. “He pretends to,” she says lightly.
Bean growls and grips the edge of the table. “Are you trying to crush my leg, woman?” Then he’s back to laughing, which I’m guessing is a defense mechanism against the pain. When he can breathe again, he twists to look at me. “Or is this payback for underestimating you?”
“The second one,” I tell him, still trying to get at the ridiculous knot in his muscle. Finally something comes loose, and I switch back to my hands and run my fingers down the length of his leg, from just below his glutes to his knee. There’s still a lot of tension, but hopefully it won’t bother him nearly as much.
“Is the torture over?” Bean asks.
I wipe a layer of sweat from my forehead with my arm. That was a serious workout, but it feels good to be back at the job. Even if this looks a lot different from what I’m used to. Plenty of my patients cried back in Pennsylvania, but none of them ever threatened to punt me into the stands. I also learned a couple new words from Bean today, though I don’t plan to use them.
“Tell you what,” I say to Bean, digging my fingers into his thigh again so he knows I’m serious. “Promise me you’ll start stretching before and after practice, and I’ll let you get off the table.”
Scoffing, he lifts up on his elbows as if to get up without making any promises.
I roll my knuckles over the most tender spot of his leg.
He collapses with another unmanly yelp and starts laughing again, sprinkling in some colorful curses to go along with it. But once I let up, he tilts his head and gives me a genuine smile. “You don’t play, Carissa Paxton. I admire that in a woman.”
“Ahem.” Two men stand in the doorway with matching expressions of disappointment and concern. Cole is looking anywhere but at me, while the other studies me. Moxie, the captain.
Moxie looks at Mel, who smiles, and turns his attention back to me. “What’s going on in here?”
“Torture,” Bean grumbles.
“I’m still waiting on that promise,” I say forcefully. To Moxie, I keep my voice soft. “I was helping him with a tight hamstring.”
“Still?” Cole’s eyebrows drop low as he looks at Bean, who rolls his eyes back at him. “You’re supposed to be—”
“If I wanted your opinion,” Bean snaps, “I would ask.”
I take a step back in surprise. No matter how angry Bean was at me while I worked his leg, his threats never felt real. But his antagonism toward Cole puts a chill in the room.
Moxie sighs, but Cole doesn’t seem surprised. Putting a hand on Moxie’s shoulder, he mutters something into his ear and disappears. While I still feel the frigid tension between him and his teammate, Bean relaxes as soon as he’s gone.
Moxie doesn’t. “You know that’s not helping anything,” he says to Bean.
Ignoring the comment, Bean looks at me. “I promise to stretch. Can I get up now?”
I probably shouldn’t love the way he seems afraid of me, but I figured out quickly that the best way to help people heal was to show them I meant business. And with this team being full of men who are so much bigger than me, I need to make sure they don’t get the wrong idea about me. I may be small, but I’m not one to be pushed around.
