I left him standing outside and walked into the locker room.
Seeing my nameplate above my locker never failed to hit me right in the fucking feels. I played the greatest sport on earth at the highest level possible, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was how many years I’d be allowed to keep doing it.
I undressed and hung my gear so it would dry before our afternoon ice session. Then I showered and put on warm-up pants and a Sharks tee before heading out to start stations. Training camp meant we got worked over head to toe—height, weight, labs—the works.
We were the prized ponies of a nearly four-billion-dollar industry.
I found Eric Gentry and Lukas Vestergaard leaning on the boards, watching what looked to be goalie drills on the ice.
“Why aren’t you out there?” I asked, coming to stand next to Gentry.
“Because I already have a jersey,” he answered with a quick smirk. “Open tryouts to fill the secondary slot.”
“You got a horse in this race?”
Gentry was way too tense to not have a vested interest in who was going to back him up.
“Yep.”
“Which one?” I looked over the candidates as they took shots.
“Guess.”
I gave him a look that told him what I thought of this game.
“No, I’m serious,” he said in answer. “I want to see if you can tell. If he stands out.”
With renewed focus, I watched the tryout. There were two players who clearly rose above their competition. The guy in white was lightning fast on the glove. The guy in pale blue wielded his stick like a fucking shield. They were both intimidating. Both at the top of their game. But there was something about the one in white—his reflexes were unparalleled.
“The one in white,” I answered.
Gentry cursed.
“Okay...the one in blue?”
Lukas nodded. “Gentry’s been working with him all summer.”
“Shit. So, I answered wrong.” Well, now I felt like an asshole.
“No, that’s the problem. You’re right. Sawyer is good. He’s got that same drive you do—that work ethic that gives him a nearly untouchable edge…” Gentry sighed.
“Except the other guy is clearly touching it,” I finished.
“Manhandling it,” Lukas muttered.
Gentry glared in his direction, and Lukas shrugged.
“Vestergaard, Gentry, and Noble, you guys are needed at the concussion screening,” one of the med staff told us, armed with a clipboard. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you up.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I told him.
We pried Gentry away from the glass and walked through the tunnel and then up to the conference rooms on the second floor.
“This is so exciting,” the guy in the lab coat remarked as we made our way down the hall. “The advances in baseline screening in the last few years are really making a difference in diagnosing TBI. Since you play one of the brain-injury-prone sports for a living, we’ll be able to tell when your brain starts to turn to mush. At least that’s the idea.”
“How old are you?” Gentry asked. “Eighteen?”
Hey, we’d all been thinking it.
“I’m twenty-five.” The guy bristled. “And a med student.”
“My bad,” Gentry commented.
The med student was only two years younger than I was, and I doubted he knew half as much as I did about Traumatic Brain Injury. Or the way it fucked your life over...before it ended it.
“They’re letting med students examine us now?” I asked Lukas.
The guy stopped at the conference room door before turning around. “Only a few of us are good enough to intern with Seattle Brain Health this semester. And we’re not examining you. We’re collecting data for the neuro team.” His eyebrows rose with that last word before he turned and opened the door.
“I guess he told you,” Gentry whispered.
We entered the conference room, which had been transformed into a multiple-bay exam station. Gage and Rory were already standing in front of two of the beds with two of their own lab-coated data-takers, while Warren and Porter held down two other sections.
“I’ll take this one. At least he’s quiet,” the med-student said, nodding toward Lukas.
Lukas let a wolfish grin slip, and I knew the kid was going to regret that decision pretty much immediately.
“Williamson, if you’ll take this one,” he said, pointing to Gentry before turning back to me. “And you can have Thompson. She’s not even a med student. Just a doctorate.” He finished with a tone that left no guessing about his feelings about the person. “Thompson! This one is yours!”
A girl in a white lab coat looked up from the clipboard she’d been scribbling on, and I was hit with a set of gorgeous, widening hazel eyes I was already familiar with.
“Harper,” I said with a smile and a nod.
“Nathan.” She flushed crimson, which only made my smile widen.
Pre-med boy gawked and then sputtered. “Thompson, do you know him? Like...know him, know him? Because if so, you should switch. Having intimate knowledge of a subject could cause you to be distracted and skew the data.”