The Winger's Wager

A single bead of sweat hangs from the end of Levi Stratton's nose, trembling with each shallow breath before it drops onto the ice between his skates. Eight minutes left in the second period. Score tied. He plants his left skate and drives forward, ignoring the ache in his right knee, *permanent resident, never paid rent.* On the bench beside him is a rookie on a tryout contract who has spent three months working the same seam. *"You know what else explodes? Knees that've been held together with tape and prayers."* Deck Hanson says it with no warmth in the grin, and he says it exactly where doubt lives. Levi scores. Then a clean hit sends his skate onto an edge and his knee bends in a direction it was not designed to bend. He waits three heartbeats on the ice, waves off the trainer, and skates to the bench without limping, because he cannot let himself limp. Thirty-two years old. A knee rebuilt twice. A contract up at the end of the season. Deck does the arithmetic out loud and is not wrong about any of it. What Deck does not know is that the arithmetic changes when Levi's sister is in it. Mia's lupus treatments cost forty-seven hundred dollars a month and her insurance covers sixty percent, and the gap is the only number that has ever mattered to him. He is sitting alone at the end of the tunnel, pressing his fingers into a swelling joint, when a woman with a black bag over her shoulder stops in front of him. *"I've been doing this long enough to know the difference between a player who's managing an injury and a player who's hiding one."* Piper Calloway is the new team physiotherapist. She can see the handprint bruise on his quad from where he has been grabbing it. She will help him, but not if he lies to her. What they end up doing about it costs them both more than a season: a photograph, a coach's office, hearings, a suspension, and a certification board that takes five weeks to decide whether Piper still has a career. A closed-door contemporary hockey romance about an ageing winger, a sister he is keeping alive, and two people who break a rule for reasons that do not excuse it.