Page 132 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

And realize...

for the first time since the injury, I’m not dreading Saturday quite as much.

Chapter sixteen

Annette

Seven Appointments

I kick off my shoes the moment I step inside my apartment.

Silence greets me. Not uncomfortable silence. Just...empty. I never noticed how quiet this place was until the last few weeks.

Maybe it’s because somewhere along the way I'd grown used to someone filling my afternoons with questions, quiet smiles, and terrible jokes about coffee scoops.

I close my eyes.

This is becoming ridiculous. He's my patient.

An unusually kind, stubborn, frustrating patient...but still my patient.

I hang my coat by the door, trade my scrubs for an oversized Frostholm University sweatshirt, pull my hair into a messy knot, and heat a bowl of leftover soup.

Dinner has become embarrassingly predictable lately.

Soup.

Tea.

An episode of whatever show I'm halfway through.

Bed.

Repeat.

The microwave beeps and I carry my bowl to the sofa, curl beneath my favorite blanket, and reach for the remote.

Before I can press a button, my phone buzzes on the coffee table.

Keisha.

A smile appears before I can stop it. I let it ring once. Twice. Three times. By the fourth ring I'm laughing at myself. I answer with a tap.

The screen immediately fills with Keisha's face.

"Well..." she says without preamble. "Either you've won the lottery..." I grin. "...or you're about to overthink something."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Liar."

"You figured that out awfully fast." "I've known you for a lot of years." She settles deeper into the chair in her apartment back in Riverton, a mug of tea balanced in one hand. "You still make that face."

"What face?"

"The one where you're pretending everything's fine."

"I do not have a face."