Cross My Heart

He’s the last man I should touch. Unfortunately, touching him is literally my job. Jay Cross is the campus golden boy—hockey captain, annoyingly charming, and the same cocky idiot who once tried to pick me up with a line so bad it killed a part of my soul. I turned him down. He forgot to try again. I moved on… mostly. Now I’ve been assigned as the physical therapist responsible for fixing the adductor strain he refuses to take seriously. Twice a week. Hands on him. His eyes on me. Forced proximity with the one man I swore I’d never want. The problem isn’t that he remembers me. It’s that he looks at me like he remembers everything. Jay plays like he’s invincible. I work like he isn’t. He wants to blur the line between treatment and tension. I want to pretend I don’t think about his mouth when he’s supposed to be focused on recovery. If I lose control, I lose my professionalism. If he pushes any harder, I might lose more than that. Because the worst part isn’t that I hate him. It’s that I don’t hate him nearly enough.

He’s the last man I should touch. Unfortunately, touching him is literally my job. Jay Cross is the campus golden boy—hockey captain, annoyingly charming, and the same cocky idiot who once tried to pick me up with a line so bad it killed a part of my soul. I turned him down. He forgot to try again. I moved on… mostly. Now I’ve been assigned as the physical therapist responsible for fixing the adductor strain he refuses to take seriously. Twice a week. Hands on him. His eyes on me. Forced proximity with the one man I swore I’d never want. The problem isn’t that he remembers me. It’s that he looks at me like he remembers everything. Jay plays like he’s invincible. I work like he isn’t. He wants to blur the line between treatment and tension. I want to pretend I don’t think about his mouth when he’s supposed to be focused on recovery. If I lose control, I lose my professionalism. If he pushes any harder, I might lose more than that. Because the worst part isn’t that I hate him. It’s that I don’t hate him nearly enough.