Overtime

Chapter 1: The Contract

The pen felt heavier than it should have.

Reese Larson sat in the glass-walled conference room on the fourteenth floor of the Tidewater Kraken's headquarters, the Chesapeake Bay stretching silver and flat beyond the windows, and stared at the number on the contract. Six figures. Enough to clear the remaining balance on her father's medical debt, pay off the second mortgage he'd taken on the house she'd grown up in, and still have enough left over to start her own practice if she was careful.

All she had to do was spend one season—October through June, playoffs included—as the traveling physiotherapist for a professional hockey team. Living out of suitcases. Sleeping in hotels. Putting her hands on men who were paid millions to destroy their bodies and then expected her to rebuild them overnight.

She could do that. She'd been doing some version of it since she was twenty-two, fresh out of her program, working double shifts at a sports medicine clinic in Richmond while her father's oncologist bills piled up like snowdrifts. She was thirty now, and the debt was the last chain. One season, and she'd be free.

"The no-fraternization clause is on page eleven," said the woman across the table.

Dr. Vivienne Trask—not a doctor of medicine but of sports management, which Reese had learned was a very different animal—was the Kraken's Director of Player Operations. She was tall, Black, immaculate in a navy suit, and had the kind of gaze that made Reese feel like she was being evaluated for structural integrity.

"I saw it," Reese said.

"I need you to do more than see it. I need you to understand it." Vivienne folded her hands on the table. "The Kraken invested heavily in bringing a female physiotherapist onto the traveling roster. There were board members who opposed it. There are media outlets that will be watching. If there is any suggestion—any whisper—that your professional relationship with the players has become personal, this organization will terminate your contract immediately, and I will personally ensure that the story follows you."

Reese met her eyes. "I've worked with male athletes for eight years. I've never had a complaint."

"Good. Then this conversation is just a formality." Vivienne's expression softened, barely. "For what it's worth, your references were extraordinary. Dr. Koenig at the Richmond clinic called you the best manual therapist he's ever trained. I want you to succeed here."

"I plan to."

Reese signed the contract. The pen scratched across the paper with a sound like a match striking.

---

The Kraken's training facility was a cathedral of ice and sweat, built into the waterfront complex like a ship's hull. Reese spent her first morning being walked through the medical suite by the team's head physician, Dr. Piotr Lindemann, a German transplant with a silver beard and the demeanor of a man who had seen every possible way a human body could fail and had stopped being impressed by any of them.

"Your treatment room," he said, pushing open a door to reveal a space that was larger and better-equipped than any clinic she'd worked in. Two hydraulic tables, an ultrasound unit, a cryotherapy chamber, resistance bands in every color, and a wall of windows overlooking the practice rink. "You'll handle soft-tissue work, post-game recovery, and rehabilitation protocols. I handle diagnostics and surgical referrals. We share notes every morning. Questions?"

"The player files you sent over—some of them were incomplete."

Lindemann's mouth thinned. "Which ones?"

"Montoya's hip. The imaging is six months old. If he's still symptomatic—"

"Captain Montoya manages his own body. He has for twelve years in this league." Lindemann's tone had the careful flatness of a man delivering a line he'd been told to deliver. "Your job is to support the players who come to you. Not to chase the ones who don't."

Reese filed that away. She'd learned long ago that the gaps in a medical file told you more than the entries.

"Anything else?" Lindemann asked.

"The anxiety protocols for the goaltender. Bergstrom. His file mentions sports psychology referrals but no follow-through."

"Theo is..." Lindemann paused, choosing his words. "Theo is a special case. He responds to physical intervention better than talk therapy. You'll see."

He left her alone in the treatment room. Reese stood in the center of it, breathing in the smell of clean linens and antiseptic, and told herself this was just a job. A well-paying job with clear boundaries and a definite end date. She would do the work, collect the check, and walk away whole.

She almost believed it.

---

She met Rafael Montoya at three o'clock that afternoon, when the team filed off the ice after practice and she was introduced to them in a loose semicircle of sweaty, skeptical men.

He was the last one to shake her hand. The captain. Thirty-four years old, six-foot-two, with dark hair silvering at the temples and a face that belonged on a coin—strong jaw, Roman nose, brown eyes so warm they bordered on devastating. He moved with the controlled grace of a man who'd spent his life on skates, but Reese's trained eye caught it immediately: the slight hitch in his left stride, the way he shifted his weight to his right hip when he stopped, the micro-expression of pain that flickered across his features when he extended his hand.

"Miss Larson." His voice was deep, accented faintly with the remnants of a childhood in Barcelona. "Welcome to the circus."

"Reese," she corrected. "And I've worked with worse."

His smile was slow and genuine. "I believe that."

Their handshake lasted one beat too long. His palm was rough, callused from years of gripping a stick, and warm enough that she felt it after he let go. She catalogued the sensation clinically—elevated skin temperature, possible inflammation indicator—and moved on.

Maksim Orlov was second. He didn't wait for an introduction; he materialized at her elbow like a magic trick, all sharp cheekbones and ice-blue eyes and a grin that should have come with a warning label.

"So you're the one who's going to fix us," he said. His accent was Russian, softened by years in North America but still present in the way he dropped his articles. "I hope your hands are strong. My shoulder is a disaster."

"I've read your file," Reese said. "Rotator cuff repair, eight months post-op. You're ahead of schedule on range of motion but behind on strength. We'll fix that."

Maksim blinked. Then he laughed—a real laugh, surprised and delighted. "I think I love you already."

"Don't," Reese said, and meant it more than he could possibly know.

Theo Bergstrom was the one she almost missed. He was standing at the edge of the group, half-hidden behind a defenseman built like a refrigerator, peeling off his gloves with the careful precision of someone performing a ritual. He was tall—six-foot-four—with sandy blond hair that fell across his forehead and the kind of face that was handsome in a quiet, Nordic way: high cheekbones, a straight nose, gray-blue eyes that seemed to be looking at something just past the surface of the world.

When Reese approached him, he startled slightly, as if he'd been somewhere else entirely.

"Theo?" she said. "I'm Reese. Your new physio."

"I know." His voice was low and careful, the Swedish accent gentle. "I read the email."

He offered his hand. When Reese took it, she felt the tension immediately—his fingers were curled tight, the tendons in his forearm rigid, his grip locked in a pattern of chronic muscular guarding that she recognized from years of working with anxiety patients. His body was holding on to something his mind couldn't let go of.

She didn't squeeze. She just held his hand, steady and warm, until she felt the faintest release—a millimeter of give in his fingers.

"We'll work on that," she said quietly.

Theo looked at her. For a moment, something raw and startled moved behind his eyes, like a man who'd been holding his breath and had just been given permission to exhale.

"Okay," he said.

Reese walked back to her treatment room and closed the door. She pressed her back against it and stared at the ceiling.

Three players. Three sets of damage. Three men who'd looked at her like she was something more than a pair of qualified hands.

One season. One clause. One very firm line she was not going to cross.

She was so fucked.