The Neighbor Trap

He's my patient. My neighbor. And the grumpiest man I've ever met.

Ethan Ward just won the Stanley Cup — and it might be the last game he ever plays. He's brooding, brutal with his silence, and determined to push everyone away. I'm his physical therapist. I'm supposed to fix his knee, not notice the way his jaw tightens when I touch him. Not think about his hands. Not lie awake knowing he's right on the other side of my bedroom wall.

But the man everyone warned me about? He sees me. The real me. Not the version I perform for everyone else. And when he lets his guard down, I realize the grumpy, closed-off defenseman is the safest place I've ever been.

I fall. Hard. Recklessly. The kind of falling I swore I'd never do again.

Then he shatters me. And the worst part? He does it by saying the same words every man in my life has already used.

He tells me it's for my own good.

I didn't move a thousand miles to hear that again.