Chapter 2: The Miracle Worker

Dr. Carrie Vance

The air in the Vance Sports Performance & Recovery Clinic didn't smell of medicine like your average hospital.  There was no scent of industrial bleach or the stale, metallic tang of sickness. Instead, it smelled of lavender and top Italian leather. 

And the best part of it, it all belonged to me. 

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my private office on the thirty-fourth floor, looking out at the sprawling, hazy grid of Los Angeles. Two years ago, I had fled this city in the back of a taxi, a ruined woman with blood on her knees and a name that had been dragged through the digital mud. Today, my name was etched into the frosted glass of the most exclusive clinic on the West Coast.

But it wasn't the name I was born with.

"Dr. Vance?"

I didn't turn around. I kept my gaze fixed on the traffic crawling along the 405. "Yes, Sarah?"

"The 10:00 AM is settled in the hydro-suite. And your 11:30 just called to confirm. It’s the quarterback for the Rams." Sarah paused, her voice dropping an octave. "But there’s a man in the lobby. He doesn't have an appointment."

I finally turned. I had changed. The messy buns and the tired, overworked eyes of Carrie Lowe were gone. My hair was now a sharp, obsidian bob that grazed my jawline. My makeup was minimal but precise—a mask of professional indifference.

"You know the policy, Sarah," I said, my voice steady and modulated. "We don't take walk-ins. I don't care if he’s a Senator or Tom Cruise."

Sarah bit her lip, looking uncharacteristically flustered. She was used to gatekeeping for the elite, but something about this one had rattled her. "I told him that. He didn't seem to care. He’s... he’s in a lot of pain, Doctor. He’s using a cane, and he’s refusing to leave until he speaks with you”

"Who is he?" I asked. 

Sarah looked down at her tablet. "He wouldn't give a name. He just said his reputation preceded him."

I felt a cold, sharp prickle at the base of my neck. Arrogance. Power. The belief that the world stopped spinning just because they walked into a room. I knew this breed of man. I had married one, and I had been disgraced by another.

"Send him in," I said. "I have exactly five minutes before my next session."

I sat behind my mahogany desk, waiting when the front door opened and Jake Slater limped into the room.

He looked different, yet exactly the same. He was still terrifyingly handsome, his jawline as sharp as a jagged piece of flint, his blue eyes as cold as a mountain lake. But the effortless, predator-like grace was gone.

His shoulders were hunched with the effort of walking, and his face was pale, a fine sheen of sweat glistening at his temples. He looked like a king who had been dragged off his throne and forced to walk through the dirt.

He stopped three feet from my desk. He didn't look at the awards on the wall or the high-tech equipment. He looked directly at me.

"Dr. Vance," he said. His voice was the same deep, gravelly rasp that had haunted my nightmares for seven hundred days. It sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated electricity through my spine.

"Mr. Slater," I replied. I didn't stand up. I didn't offer my hand. I kept my expression as flat as a sheet of ice. "You're a long way from the baseball diamond."

Jake’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of irritation crossing his features. He wasn't used to being kept seated while someone else held the floor. "The diamond is a memory. I'm here because my doctors are idiots and my physical therapists are cowards. They tell me I’ll be lucky to walk without a limp by Christmas. And I don't plan on being 'lucky.'"

"And what makes you think I can change that?"

Jake leaned heavily on his cane, his knuckles turning white. "I’ve followed your work in Zurich. The striker for Chelsea? The one who was supposed to be in a wheelchair? He’s back on the pitch. You did that."

"I did my job," I said. "But my job requires a patient who follows instructions. You don't strike me as the type to take orders, Mr. Slater."

Jake stepped closer, the scent of him hitting me like a physical blow. He smelled of cedarwood, expensive wool, and the faint, bitter tang of the painkillers he was clearly overusing. It was the same scent from the Diamond Club, the scent of the man who had called me trash and allowed me get thrown into the rain.

He didn't recognize me.

I could see it in his eyes. To him, I was just another elite specialist, a tool to be used and then discarded. The girl in the emerald dress was a blurred mistake, a footnote in a night he had probably forgotten before his head hit the pillow.

"I'll do whatever it takes," Jake growled. "I have a business empire to run. The Vanguard Group is trying to trigger a morality clause to strip me of my agency because they think I'm 'physically compromised.' I need to be standing, unassisted, in four weeks. Not six months. Four weeks."

I let out a short, dry laugh. "You want a miracle in a month? You’ve been watching too many fantasy movies, Jake."

He glared at me. "Don't call me Jake. It's Mr. Slater."

"In this office, you're a patient," I countered, finally standing up. I was shorter than him, but in my heels, I could look him almost in the eye. "And right now, you're a patient I don't have time for. Sarah told you we don't take walk-ins."

I walked around the desk, my movements fluid and precise. I wanted him to see the contrast. I wanted him to feel the weight of his own brokenness compared to my control.

"I’ll pay triple your rate," Jake said, turning his body with a wince of visible agony. "Quadruple. Just put me on the table. Give me an assessment."

I stopped at the door, my hand on the handle. I looked him up and down, the expensive suit that couldn't hide the way his right leg was trembling, the arrogance that was now flavored with a desperate, raw edge.

"The assessment is fifty thousand dollars," I said. "Non-refundable. And it starts now. Strip to your shorts and get on the table in Room Three. You have two minutes."

Jake Slater

The woman was a block of granite.

I sat on the edge of the examination table, my teeth gritted against the pain blooming in my right hip. I’d dealt with hard-asses before, coaches who screamed until they turned red, owners who threatened to trade me to the minors—but Dr. Vance was different. She didn't scream. She didn't threaten. She just looked through me like I was a transparent pane of glass.

I hated her. And I wanted her.

There was something about the way she moved. Something familiar in the line of her shoulders, the way she held her head. But I couldn't place it. My brain was a fog of rehab schedules and legal threats from the Vanguard bastards.

The door opened, and she stepped in. She had traded her blouse for a fitted white medical coat. She looked like a clinical badass.  

"Lie back," she commanded.

I did as I was told, the movement sending a fresh wave of agony through my leg. I let out a hissed breath.

"Does it hurt?" she asked. She didn't sound sympathetic. She sounded like she was cataloging data.

"I've had worse," I lied.

"Liar," she murmured.

She poured a pool of oil into her hands. The scent of sandalwood filled the small room, thick and cloying. She rubbed her palms together, the sound of skin on skin unnervingly loud in the silence.

Then, she touched me.

Her hands weren't like any other therapist I’d had. They weren't soft, and they weren't tentative. They were firm, strong, and impossibly warm. She started at my ankle, her thumbs digging into the fascia with a precision that made my vision blur.

"You're guarding," she said, her voice a low hum. She moved her hands up to my calf, her fingers sliding beneath the muscle, pulling, stretching, finding the hidden knots of tension I didn't even know were there.

I gripped the edges of the table, my knuckles turning white. The pain was intense, but beneath it, there was something else. A jolt of heat that had nothing to do with my injury.

She moved higher. Her hands slid over the scar on my knee—the jagged, ugly reminder of the night my career ended. She didn't flinch. She traced the line of the incision with her thumb, her touch almost... possessive.

"Who did the surgery?" she asked.

"Dr. Aris at Cedars."

"He’s a butcher," she said flatly. "He left too much scar tissue in the lateral compartment. No wonder you’re limping."

She leaned over me, her chest nearly brushing my shoulder as she reached for my hip. I could smell the peppermint on her breath. I could see the pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat.

"Relax, Mr. Slater," she whispered, her hands sliding dangerously high up my inner thigh.

I choked back a groan. My body was reacting to her in a way it hadn't reacted to a woman in two years. It was primal. Violent. I wanted to reach out, to grab her by that hair of hers and pull her down to me. I wanted to know if her lips were as cold as her eyes or as tender as they looked. 

"I can't... relax... when you're doing that," I managed to rasp.

"Then you're wasting my time," she said, pulling her hands away abruptly. She stood up and wiped the oil from her fingers with a white towel. "Your hip flexors are locked. Your glutes are firing out of sequence. And your surgery was a mess. You aren't just injured, Jake. You're broken."

I sat up, the pain flaring again, but my anger was hotter. "That's why I'm here. Fix it."

"I don't just 'fix' things," she said, walking to the counter and tapping something into a tablet. "I rebuild them from the ground up. And that requires a level of commitment you aren't ready for."

"I told you. I'll pay whatever—"

"I don't need your money," she interrupted, finally looking at me. "I have a waiting list that stretches into next year. I have the starting lineup for the Lakers and half the Olympic track team on my roster. Why should I move them for a man who thinks he can buy a miracle?"

I stood up, gripping my cane until my hand cramped. I stepped into her space, using my height to loom over her. Usually, this was when people started stuttering. Usually, this was when they gave me what I wanted.

Dr. Vance didn't blink. She didn't even lean back.

"Because, if you don't fix me, the Vanguard Group takes my agency. And if they take my agency, they liquidate the sports charities I fund. Hundreds of kids lose their scholarships. Thousands of people lose their jobs. I’m not just a baseball player, Doctor. You’re looking at a one man economy. And right now, I’m an economy in a tailspin."

She looked at me for a long beat. For the first time, I saw something in her eyes. It wasn't pity. It was something sharper. Something that looked like... recognition?

"Sarah," she called out, not looking away from me.

The door opened instantly. "Yes, Dr. Vance?"

"Tell the quarterback to wait. Mr. Slater and I are discussing his... intake."

"Actually, Doctor," Sarah said, checking her tablet with a nervous glance at me. "The board of the hospital just called. They’re asking if you’ve seen the news. Something about the Vanguard Group filing for a preliminary injunction against Mr. Slater’s board membership."

Jake’s jaw went stone-cold. "They're moving faster than I thought."

I looked at Dr. Vance. "Well? Do we have a deal?"

She didn't answer immediately. She walked to the window, her back to me. The silhouette of her body was sharp and uncompromising against the golden sun peering through the windows, 

"I have a condition," she said, still looking out at the city. "If I take this case, I am in total control. Of your diet. Of your sleep. Of every move you make. You don't go to clubs. You don't do interviews. You don't even breathe without my permission."

"Fine," I said. "Anything."

"And," she added, turning back to face me, a cold, predatory smile touching her lips, "you have to wait. I’m booked solid for the next two weeks. I’ll fit you in for your first real session on the fourteenth."

"The fourteenth?" I snarled. "That's too late. The board meeting is on the sixteenth. I need to be walking by then."

"Then I guess you should have been more professional two years ago," she said.

I froze. "What does that mean?"

"It means that treatment takes time, Mr. Slater," she said, her voice as smooth as silk. "And you’ve run out of yours."

She walked past me, her shoulder brushing mine. The contact sent a jolt of heat through my body that felt like a brand.

"Sarah, show Mr. Slater out. He knows the way."

I watched her go, my heart thudding in my chest. I was the legend. I was the man who had everything. And for the first time in my life, I had just been told to wait in line.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my black card. I didn't look at Sarah. I looked at the closing door.

"I don't care about the two weeks," I said, my voice carrying through the office. "I'll buy the clinic. I'll buy the building. I'll buy your entire schedule for the next month. Tell Dr. Vance to name her price."