Damn it, Summers!

Ronan's POV

Let me tell you something about pain.

It doesn’t just sit in your knee. It crawls up your spine, settles behind your eyes, and whispers every single thing you’re about to lose.

I stared at the ceiling of my apartment long after the physio session ended, counting the cracks like they were a scoreboard I couldn’t beat. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight if I squinted hard enough at the corner near the light fixture.

The ice pack strapped to my knee had gone half-melted, damp against the brace, but the throbbing underneath hadn’t gotten the memo.

On the TV across the room, a replay of last season’s playoffs looped silently. Me in full gear. Mask on. Dropping into butterfly, glove snapping shut as the crowd exploded. The broadcast cut to slow motion, the commentators’ voices muted but familiar in my head anyway.

Unbreakable Ronan Hale.

I grabbed the remote and killed the screen.

Silence rushed in, thick and heavy.

And then, like a penalty I couldn’t kill, a name slid into the quiet.

Ivy Summers.

Bright smile. Steady hands. That ridiculous playlist humming in the background like rehab was supposed to be fun. Who the hell brings music to physical therapy like it’s a party?

She’d talked the entire session—bad puns about “goalie goals” and “ice-breaking” that should’ve made me want to fire her on the spot. Instead I’d laughed. Once. A rusty sound I hadn’t heard from myself in weeks.

Pathetic.

I shifted on the couch and instantly regretted it. A sharp bolt of heat shot through the joint, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I gripped the cushion until my knuckles bleached white and rode it out the way I’d learned to ride out slapshots to the ribs.

Six to nine months, the team doctors had said.

If everything goes perfectly.

Perfect.

One hit from Boston’s enforcer and suddenly the career I’d built since I was five years old balanced on scar tissue and hope. Retirement at twenty-eight wasn’t supposed to be a real sentence. It was something that happened to other guys. Guys who didn’t train harder. Didn’t push further. Didn’t make impossible saves in overtime.

My phone buzzed against the coffee table. The team group chat lit the screen in a blur of notifications.

Memes. Encouragement. Old clips of my saves.

A GIF of me smashing my stick after a loss last year.

We need you back, wall.

Miss you, man.

You’ll be back before playoffs.

I opened the chat. Typed a reply. Deleted it. Typed again.

Deleted.

Leave me the hell alone.

Instead I tossed the phone aside and pushed myself upright, crutches biting into my armpits as I hobbled toward the kitchen. The fridge light spilled across the floor when I opened it, revealing rows of protein shakes and meal prep containers. No beer. No takeout. Just the nutritionist’s version of recovery.

I slammed the door harder than I meant to.

Tomorrow. Same time.

She’d be there again with resistance bands and relentless cheer. Part of me wanted to skip it just to prove I could. To prove I didn’t need anyone.

The smarter part—the part that still dreamed about standing between the pipes with twenty thousand fans screaming my name—knew I couldn’t afford that kind of pride.

I made my way back to the couch and dropped down, exhaling slowly. My hand flexed unconsciously, memory flashing sharp and unwanted.

Her wrist in my grip.

I hadn’t meant to hold on that long. Hadn’t meant for it to feel like anything at all. Just a reflex. A goalie’s instinct to grab whatever was in front of him before it slipped away.

But for one stupid second, I hadn’t felt pain.

I’d just felt her.

Warm palms. Firm pressure. The faint citrus scent that cut through antiseptic and sweat. The calluses on her fingers that said she worked as hard as the athletes she bossed around.

I hated it.

Hated how she’d looked at me like she could see straight past the growls and the walls. Like the attitude didn’t scare her. Like quitting on me wasn’t even an option.

Most people quit eventually.

Coaches when you stop winning. Fans when the streak ends. Girlfriends when the season runs longer than their patience. The last one had packed her things two weeks after the playoffs, leaving a note on the counter about “needing someone who was actually present.”

Apparently, being present didn’t count if you were exhausted, bruised, and chasing a championship.

But Ivy Summers hadn’t looked like someone who was planning an exit.

I’ve got nowhere else to be, she’d said, like it was simple.

The apartment felt too quiet now that she wasn’t in it.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the song from her playlist kept playing. Something about fighting through the dark. Cheesy as hell.

A laugh scraped out of my chest before I could stop it.

“Damn it, Summers,” I muttered to the empty room. “You’re not supposed to be good at this.”

The knee pulsed under the brace, reminding me exactly why I needed her. Why I couldn’t push her away completely. Not if I wanted any shot at getting back on the ice.

But the way she’d refused to back down… the way her eyes met mine without pity or fear…

That part scared me more than the injury ever could.

Because walls didn’t just crack on their own.

Someone had to swing the first hammer.

And Ivy Summers looked like she’d brought the whole damn toolbox