My Hockey Star Betrayed Me, So I Healed His Greatest Rival

Six months of my life disappeared in one televised sentence.

Thirty-year-old Logan Pierce lifted the championship trophy and called another woman his girlfriend.

Then he thanked her for helping him walk again.

I was twenty-nine, the therapist who had carried his weight when his legs could not.

I was the woman who had loved him when the cameras stopped coming.

And in front of twelve million viewers, he erased me.

The arena shook with the roar of New York Titans fans, but all I heard was the reporter asking Logan who had made his impossible comeback possible.

Logan grinned, sweat shining on his beautiful face. He pulled his assistant, Sloane Hart, into the frame and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“My girlfriend,” he said. “Sloane never let me quit. I owe this championship to her.”

The champagne bottle slipped from my fingers and struck the concrete floor of the medical corridor. It did not break. I almost wished it had.

On the giant screen above me, Sloane covered her mouth with a perfectly manicured hand. Then she leaned into him as if she had every right.

I remembered Logan screaming the first time I bent his reconstructed knee. I remembered sleeping on the floor beside his hospital bed because he was afraid he would wake up unable to feel his feet. I remembered bracing his body in the hydrotherapy pool, his hands gripping my shoulders while I promised him he would skate again.

He had kissed me for the first time after taking three steps without support.

Now those six months belonged to Sloane.

I found him twenty minutes later in a private celebration suite. Music pounded beyond the door. When I entered, his teammates fell quiet one by one.

Logan still held the trophy. Sloane still stood too close.

“Avery.” His smile tightened. “Can we do this later?”

“No.” I shut the door. “Tell them the truth.”

Sloane glanced at him, then at me. “I should probably—”

“Stay,” I said. “You accepted the credit. You can hear what it cost.”

Logan’s jaw flexed. He set the trophy on the table. “It was an interview. The sponsors love the comeback-couple angle. Sloane has a growing social platform. We’ll get more exposure, better campaigns, maybe a documentary.”

“And calling her your girlfriend?”

“It’s branding.”

Sloane’s hand drifted to his sleeve with unconscious familiarity. Logan did not move away.

That tiny touch told me more than his entire explanation.

“How long?” I asked.

He exhaled through his nose. “Don’t make this ugly.”

“How long have you been sleeping with her?”

A teammate near the bar looked down. Another suddenly found the ceiling interesting.

Logan stepped toward me. He had always known how to soften a room—warm brown eyes, easy smile, a voice made for commercials and apologies. “You’re upset. I understand. But tonight is the biggest night of my career. We can talk at home.”

I stared at the man whose body I knew joint by joint. “There is no home.”

“Avery.”

“You can let Sloane pack my things. Apparently, she did everything else.”

His charm cracked. “You’re seriously walking out over a publicity line?”

“No. I’m walking out because you looked into a camera and stole my work while holding your mistress.”

Sloane flinched. Logan’s face hardened.

““Don’t pretend you cared about me. You only got close to me because I’m a star.”

” he said.

I laughed once, although nothing was funny. “You couldn’t stand six months ago. I washed you when you were too ashamed to let a nurse do it. I rebuilt your career, and you think I’m here because you’re a star?”

His silence was the last answer I needed.

I removed the thin gold key to his apartment from my ring and placed it beside the trophy.

“Congratulations, champion.”

I left before he could see my tears.

Three days later, I was sitting across from Marcus Grant, general manager of the Boston Wolves, in an office overlooking their practice rink.

Marcus was silver-haired, broad-shouldered, and kind enough not to mention the scandal trending online. “Dr. Bennett, I’ll be direct. Ethan Blackwood tore his ACL and damaged his meniscus four months ago. Surgery went well. Rehabilitation has not.”

“Because?”

“He fired two therapists.”

“Did they deserve it?”

Marcus’s mouth twitched. “One told him pain was mostly mental. The other tried to film him for social media. So, yes. Unfortunately, now he assumes every specialist is either incompetent or opportunistic.”

He slid a contract toward me. The salary made me blink.

“I don’t need charity,” I said.

“It isn’t charity. Logan Pierce returned faster and stronger than any projection. I’ve seen your protocols. Ethan needs the best.”

Through the glass wall behind him, a lone player moved across the empty rink on crutches.

At thirty-one, even injured, Ethan Blackwood was impossible to mistake. Six foot four, black practice clothes, dark hair, shoulders that looked carved to absorb collisions. He stopped near the boards and glanced up.

His gaze found mine through two layers of glass.

Cold. Assessing. Unimpressed.

“That is not the face of a man excited to meet me,” I said.

Marcus sighed. “He doesn’t know you’re here.”

Ten minutes later, I stood in the rehabilitation room while Ethan leaned against a treatment table with his arms folded. Up close, he was more arresting and more exhausted. A pale scar crossed his right knee. The muscle loss in his injured leg was obvious to me, though he had dressed to hide it.

He looked at my hand but did not shake it.

“I don’t need another therapist.”

“That explains why your extension is still limited by eight degrees.”

His eyes narrowed. “You diagnosed that from the doorway?”

“From the way you avoid fully loading your right heel.” I set my tablet down. “You also rotate your hip when you walk, which means your back will start hurting if it hasn’t already.”

A muscle shifted in his cheek.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Avery will oversee your rehabilitation.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Marcus said pleasantly. “Because I sign your checks, and because you want to play next season.”

Ethan’s stare returned to me. “How long until you sell our sessions to a reporter?”

The question hit the bruise Logan had left behind.

I stepped closer until only a foot separated us. “I spent six months rebuilding a man who just publicly gave my work to someone else. I have no interest in stealing yours.”

Something changed in Ethan’s expression. Not softness. Recognition, perhaps.

He sat on the edge of the table. “One evaluation.”

“That isn’t how rehabilitation works.”

“One.”

“And when I prove you need me?”

“You won’t.”

I moved between his knees and crouched, my fingers settling around his calf. His entire body went rigid.

“Relax,” I said.

“I am relaxed.”

“Your quadriceps is trembling.”

“Because you’re pressing on a nerve.”

“I’m nowhere near a nerve.”

For the first time, color touched the hard line of his cheekbones.

I hid my reaction and guided his leg straight. The heat of him seeped through my palms. When I tested the joint, his hand came down on my shoulder, instinctive and firm. His fingers spanned almost to my collarbone.

Our eyes met.

The room seemed to contract around the point where he touched me.

“Pain?” I asked, and my voice came out lower than intended.

“Not in my knee.”

His hand lifted immediately, as if honesty had surprised him.

I rose, forcing myself to focus on measurements. “You have strength. What you don’t have is trust—in the joint, in the process, or in anyone trying to help you.”

He released the edge.

I handed him my assessment plan. “Seven tomorrow morning. No food after nine tonight except the meal plan I send you. No alcohol. No unsupervised skating.”

“I didn’t agree.”

Marcus opened the door. “Your one evaluation ended twenty seconds ago. She proved it.”

Ethan looked from the plan to me. “You’re going to be a problem.”

I picked up my tablet. “Only if you keep trying to ruin my work.”

As I walked out, I felt his gaze follow me.

For the first time since Logan’s interview, I was not thinking about what had been taken from me.

I was thinking about the injured man behind me—and the dangerous spark that had passed between us when his hand touched my shoulder.