Page 34 of Player Misconduct
The orgasm count, though? That I know. Five. Maybe six if you count the one that blurred into the next without clear borders.
I've had more in the last few hours with Aleksi than I had in the final year of my marriage.
That thought sobers me like ice water down my spine.
I need to say it now. Establish boundaries before this goes any further than it already has—before I start believing in things that will only hurt worse when they end.
"Aleksi," I start, voice hoarse from overuse.
"Mmm?" He's half-asleep, fingers still playing idly with my hair streaming down my back, his pinky brushing down my spine every once and awhile, making me squirm against him. And he likes it.
I push up on one elbow, putting space between us even though my body protests. "We need to talk about what happens next."
His eyes open, suddenly alert. "Next?"
"When we leave here. When we go back to Seattle." I force myself to hold his gaze. "This was amazing. But it can't happen again."
The lazy circles on my shoulder stop. "Hold on—"
"Listen." My voice shakes despite my best effort to steady it. I sit up fully, pulling the sheet across my chest like armor. "I'm the team doctor. You're a player. The medical board has explicit rules about fraternization between medical staff and athletes. If anyone finds out about this, I could lose my license. You could be suspended. Traded. The Hawkeyes could face sanctions."
He sits up but the confidence in his shoulders he had while he did unspeakable wonderful things to me, have deflated a little. And I hate that I’m responsible for that.
"I don't care." he counters.
"You should care." The words come sharp but maybe they have to. "You're in the playoffs, Aleksi. You finally made the NHL after years of working for it in Europe, in the AHL, the farm team before they moved you up to the Hawkeyes. I won't be the reason you lose that."
His jaw tightens. "You haven't even asked me about what I want."
"What either of us want or don't want when it comes to this isn't part of the equation." God, it physically hurts to say it. "I've been down this road before. With Tarron. It starts with promises and ends with me picking up the pieces while he moves on to the next thing, leaving me with credit card debt and a foreclosure on a house. Yes, the flirting has been fun but we're talking about our career for a one-night stand."
"You're not a one-night-stand to me, and I'm not him," Aleksi says, low and certain.
"I know you're not." And I do know that, somewhere beneath the fear. Not that I know what Aleksi really wants. This could still be a cat-and-mouse game. After all, I was off limits. A fun pursuit that he may never have considered the consequences for. How could either of us have predicted what would happen tonight on our flight?
Penelope's advice that hockey players wouldn’t play the sport if breaking the rules wasn't part of the game has me considering that maybe the idea of us was more exciting then the reality. The rings are made out of athletic tape after all and the fear of death makes people do crazy things.
"But I also know what it looks like when a team doctor gets involved with a player. I've lived it. The rumors start, a complaint gets filed with the board, then the medical board investigates, and suddenly everything you've worked for is questioned. I almost lost my license once. I can't—" My voice cracks. "I can’t go through that again. It took everything I had to get through med school, to crawl out of where I came from, to defy every statistic stacked against me."
God, I can hear how selfish that sounds. But I’ve had to be selfish—otherwise I wouldn’t have survived this far.
And truthfully? I don’t even know what Aleksi wants.
He said he had a crush, but a crush isn’t a promise. And that thing he said about marrying me—well, that was underfluorescent lights with a CDC official holding a clipboard. People say wild things when they think the world’s ending.
Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe he just wants something temporary, a fling to carry him through the season before he disappears back to Finland like so many players do.
A fling with Aleksi isn’t worth my license. No matter how life-changing the sex is.
The silence stretches, long enough that I can hear the air conditioner rattle and my own pulse thudding in my ears.
He runs a hand through his disheveled hair. "We could be careful," he says finally. "Wait until the season ends. Talk to Penelope about protocol. Do it the right way. I don't want to pretend this didn't happen."
A terrible, traitorous hope blooms in my chest. I could kiss him right now, curl back under the sheets with him and get lost in the idea of making this work, but instead, I kill it fast. Penelope knows better than anyone that it can't happen while I'm the team doctor.
"Doing it the right way means not doing it at all." I wrap my arms tighter around my sheets. "Not while I'm the doctor making decisions every day about your health. Not while you're playing. The risk is too high for both of us."
He studies me and I see the moment he understands this isn't just caution. It's terrifying. The kind that makes you choose safety over everything else.
