We’re officially six weeks into the season and the female Hounds are kicking ass and taking names. Which is a saying that never really made sense to me but it’s basically my slogan so I can’t stop myself from saying it now.

I’m finally back to light training, which means basically walking fast on an incline while Trainer Beatrix shouts at me to let her know when the pain gets too much, while looking at me with the kind of gleaming eyes you find in cats confronted by a Christmas tree—chaotic good in those green orbs of hers.

“It’s starting to hurt now,” I say, and then shout out a number on a ten-point scale. Trainer Beatrix lets me slide and reduces the incline so I can walk on a flat-like surface without straining my leg. It’s weird how your body can just give up on building muscle once you stop doing the whole exercising thing.

“Have you been swimming?” she asks.

I groan. “No, the men’s team is constantly in there, and I really don’t feel for their commentary and start to feel like shit when I know that I’ve scored more goals than the top three players combined last season.” I punch the air for emphasis, imagining pretty-boy faces, their numbers memorized in my head.

“Well, when they built this place, no one thought that there would be a women’s professional team and we’d be playing season-round, filling up those seats, too.” She grins at that and tells me to hop off the treadmill. Just when I think I’m free for the rest of the day to go bug Jesse, Trainer Bee gives me a side-eye and starts a conversation that’ll make my skin clammy.

“There’s been a rumor going around that you and Jesse Windmeier are a thing. I don’t care, not at all, but if you scream out ‘Windy’ when you’re having sex, I’m going to throttle you.”

It was in that moment when I was sucking back some Gatorade to replenish me that Trainer Bee said those words, causing me to snort the blue Gatorade through my nostrils, cough hard enough that tears blurred my vision and begin choking for long enough that I swear I saw my life flash before my eyes.

The montage featured a football pitch prominently and nothing much else—I haven’t really made my mark on the world yet, and that made me sad enough that I felt like I was kicked in the chest. Or maybe those were my lungs finally kicking in and demanding oxygen.

Who knows?

“What? What?” I sputter, wiping my face after I got the breathing thing down pat again, and stare at her through streaming eyes. “Who told you that? I demand answers!” I croak the words against my sore throat, trying to look pissed when I’m so so happy to be breathing air and not blue raspberry-flavoured electrolytes.

“You’ve been seen hanging around with him,” Trainer Bee says, writing something down on a clipboard, mouthing words to herself.

“Is that a crime?” I clear my throat, cough a few more times to get whatever’s left in my throat out, showing it the door. I’m never drinking blue Gatorade around Trainer Bee again. She wants to kill me, I know it. She’s just being sneaky. I’m obviously not her favourite player, I get it, but did she have to take it so far?

She shakes her head, dark bangs moving left and right in a hairstyle that’d drive me mental from all the pins and crap I had to put in to keep it out of my face while on the field. She’s a looker, though, in the way that all female athletes are. We like eating food because our bodies need the fuel, and we train hard so we lose whatever bit of fat that makes us ‘curvy,’ but we’re cool as shit and extra loyal. Plus, there’s the whole being awesome at a sport, so yeah.

God, who am I kidding? Must be the lack of oxygen to the brain for those precious few seconds.

“He’s a professional football player, Maddie. Why would you want a life like that?”

“It’s my dream,” I say, not negating the fact that Jesse Windmeier and I are not a thing. I also don’t want people to know that I need his help, funny enough.

“And please, I wouldn’t date him. He thinks he’s the king of the castle. You know what happens to the kings of those castles? They get their heads cut off.” I slash a hand across my throat for emphasis. “I just bumped into him, said hello, introduced myself. It was the polite thing to do, honestly. You English are all about manners,” I say, grinning, hoping my explanation is enough.

“And you Canadians are all about apologizing.”

“Excuse you,” I say, jabbing my index finger where shoulder meets collar bone. “I haven’t apologized for anything lately. Name one thing. I’ve been in this country for a whole year, I’ve lost all my Canadiana. My dad still cries about it.”

Trainer Bee snorts and smacks me with her clipboard, my stats and her thoughts written on those neat pages with the team logo printed on the right-hand corner—very official looking.

“So what do you think? How many weeks until I can play?”

She frowns at me, and my stomach hollows out. I look up at the ceiling and pray for patience to the great Football God above. “You need to take your time, as I’ve said to you, multiple times. Multiple times. You’re ready when I say you’re ready.”

“But you haven’t said anything!” I flail my arms about, encompassing all that Trainer Bee has not said in the training room around me.

“And I’m not going to if you keep hounding me.”

“You’ll break, eventually. They all do.”

She narrows her eyes at me just before she tells me to get into the cryo chamber for a solid three minutes.

I whimper and practically cry all the way there.

While in the cryo chamber being blasted by cold air a hundred and ten degrees below zero, my brain goes into sluggish thinking mode while I concentrate on making sure my nipples don’t freeze right the hell off.

I keep getting stuck on the whole me and Jesse thing. On the one hand, he’s a giant asshole, and on the other hand he’s an amazing footballer with talent to spare so that I can take some and he’d still be a giant asshole.

Who would want to date that? Honestly.

Not me. Nope.

Definitely not.