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“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“Isn’t it?”

He shifted his weight. His hip pulled slightly. I noticed.

“I brought it because I wanted you to know I care about you. Not Dr. Lundrig or the person who fixed me. You. Ellie. Who needs coffee to function and loves donuts. The Ellie who found a way to see past the male I project to the one beneath.”

He walked over and set both instruction sheets on the treatment table between us.

“I kept these,” he said. “But not because they’re about the stretches. Just look.”

I picked up the original. My handwriting filled the printed text. 3 sets, hold 30 sec, no cheating. But in the margins…

His handwriting.

She smelled like flowers today.

I blinked and kept reading.

She laughed at something Veskar said. I wanted to laugh like that with her.

She stayed late again. I should tell her to go home. I won’t because she’s her own person, and that’s up to her.

“You—” My voice broke. “You wrote about me.”

“Every day.” He wasn’t looking at me. His gaze stayed fixed on the instruction sheet. “I told myself I was tracking my progress. But I was really trying to remember what it felt like when you were close.”

I found another note, this one squeezed into the margin beside the adductor stretches. Her hands are magic. Not because she’s fixing me. Because they’re hers.

My chest split wide open.

“The 9:41 texts weren’t really about the ice photos,” I whispered.

“They were about not disappearing.” He finally looked at me. “If I texted you every night, and you responded, then I still existed to you. Even when I felt like I was disappearing everywhere else.”

“You set an alarm.”

“Every night.”

“Even the nights we weren’t talking.” I pulled out my phone. Showed him. Screenshots of every single 9:41 text, saved in a folder I’d labeled Someone special.

I stared at the instruction sheet between us, his handwriting mixing with mine in the margins. Evidence that we’d been building something together before we even knew we were doing it.

“I don’t know what to do about Denver,” I said, my shoulders curling forward.

“What do you want to do?”

“That’s the problem. I want both.” I traced one of his notes with my finger. “Denver is everything I thought I needed. Prestige. Working with high-ranked athletes. Proof that I’m good enough.”

“You are good enough.”

“But Patty suggested something when I first got here.” I looked up at him. “She wants to co-author a rehabilitation protocol. If it works, it could be implemented league-wide. Every team in hockey would use it.”

His eyebrows rose. “That’s huge.”

“It is. It’s a long-term project. Years of work. I’d have to commit.”

“And Denver?”