Necessary Roughness Read online

  Dedication

  This is for Dr. Milam and his wonderful staff—Jami, Colleen, Sandy, Sally, Julie, and everyone working behind the scenes. Thank you for taking such great care of me. I wouldn’t have made it without you.

  Acknowledgments

  THANK YOU TO my wonderful agent, Sarah Elizabeth Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency, and my equally wonderful editor, Elle Keck. Thank you for the gentle prodding to get my butt back in the desk chair. I also hope the line at Cookie Do in New York City is less than two hours long now.

  Thank you to my husband, Eric. From the night we met [redacted] years ago until forever, I’m still amazed that out of all the people in the world, we found each other. I love you.

  Thank you to Pam Moulton for coming up with such a great title and being a terrific friend! I was so happy everyone loved it. (If you ever meet her, ask her about the world’s most adorable granddaughter!)

  People have physical therapy for lots of reasons, but I hope I portrayed the experience accurately. (I had a tremendous physical therapist once upon a time after a bad car accident. If he knew I wrote a book featuring one, he’d wonder why HE isn’t the hero.)

  Thank you to my friend Christine. I named Tanner’s mom after her because I couldn’t figure out her first name and Christine had just sent me a text. Know an author? Read their books carefully. You may see YOUR name too. Plus, she’s hilarious. Love you! Mean it!

  Thank you to our family friend Anita. When my desktop died in the middle of writing this book, she sent me some software to load on my brand-new laptop. She is the greatest, and I owe her some Godiva!

  Finally: Thank you to every person who’s read and savored one or many of my books. It is a thrill beyond compare for any author to know someone enjoyed their book; we love to read too.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Julie Brannagh

  A Letter from the Editor

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  TANNER COLE GRABBED the remote off the couch cushions and clicked through the two hundred or so channels on his satellite TV. Daytime TV sucked. Even worse: it sucked yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that too. But it wasn’t like he had a lot of choices for entertainment right now. His knee was slowly healing, but mostly, he wanted to be left alone while he tried to figure out how he was going to deal with the rest of his life.

  He was a professional football player. Well, he used to be. He’d torn both his ACL and MCL and broken his tibia after planting his cleats on some shitty turf in Washington, DC, during the last two minutes of a fucking blowout he shouldn’t have been playing in in the first place. His coach had practically begged him to sit on the bench that afternoon and spend a few minutes powering down some Gatorade while his backup took the risk of injury instead. In the coach’s defense, “practically begging” meant he glanced over at Tanner and said, “Why don’t you have a seat, and we’ll finish this one for you?” But Tanner had insisted that cold afternoon in Washington. He’d played anyway. And his career was ended because of a freak hit by a rookie who thought he was making his mark by permanently sidelining one of the best left tackles in the league.

  Winners didn’t sit on the bench. Winners went out there and dominated, in football and in life. He remembered every buzzword and cliché-laden locker-room speech he’d heard in his career, typically when he was lying awake at three AM and wishing he had that thirty seconds or so before his injury back again. He’d wanted to make the decision when it was time to hang it up. That was taken away from him. He wasn’t happy about it.

  People (specifically his ex-girlfriend) were not as willing to put up with his various personality flaws when he wasn’t headline news anymore. He could tick off those shortcomings on his fingers, and he’d done so more than once while alone in the predawn hours. According to his ex, Star, he was too overbearing, too competitive, too impatient, and too insensitive. She didn’t seem to care about his faults when he was ordering $150 bottles of champagne at the club or buying her a little somethin’ somethin’ at the jeweler’s or the latest designer shoes and bags. He’d wanted to believe their breakup was all her fault, but being alone for a few months brought some clarity. He was as much to blame for the end of their relationship. He’d have to man up at some point and make an apology.

  Before he met with the surgeon who was putting his knee back together, Tanner had been told by the team’s doctor that he wasn’t going to play football again.

  “With your age and these types of injuries, you’re not going to be able to pass any team’s physical, even after rehab. I know this isn’t the way you wanted things to end,” the doctor said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Tanner said.

  “Look at it this way: it’s a great chance to get on with the rest of your life.”

  Tanner knew the guy was just doing his job, but he was already sick of people telling him to look on the bright side. He’d be damn lucky if he walked with a limp. Right now, he’d be happy if he could get off the couch and walk to the mailbox without a walker.

  Some of his teammates cried when they came to see him post-op. Like their tears would help. He was their worst nightmare right now: his career was over, and nobody wanted a reminder of how they were going to end up. He hadn’t heard from any of those guys for six months now either.

  The typical career choices of an athlete really didn’t work for him. He’d rather shoot himself than go into broadcasting. He didn’t want to own a restaurant franchise or a car dealership. He’d majored in physical education while he was in college; he had thought he’d enjoy coaching somewhere, but he wasn’t ready to walk back onto a football field in anything but a team uniform yet. He was thirty-two years old. And he was as forgotten as last season’s stats, as a result. His astonishing career would be a trivia question during fantasy-football analysis shows.

  He’d moved to Seattle two weeks post-surgery so he could hang out with his BFF, Harrison. He wasn’t sure if guys had BFFs, but if they did, Harrison was his. They’d known each other since they were eighteen years old. Right now, Seattle matched his mood—overcast with a chance of rain.

  “Fuck my life,” he muttered while moving forward a few inches to grab his vibrating phone off the coffee table. He hit the button to answer it. “What’s up?”

  “I’m at your front gate. Buzz me in.”

  “I’ll consider it,” he said while hitting the security code on his keypad. Seconds later, he heard the scraping sound of the gate opening. Someone needed to oil the damn thing. Maybe he should. He also hit the code to open his front door. It was one of those days he needed help getting off the couch, and he didn’t want his friend to know that.

  “Honey, I’m home,” Harrison called out.

  He and Harrison played on the same team through most of their pro careers too. Harrison had retired a year ago after he’d had a close encounter with a couple of linebackers who left him unconscious on the turf after a bad hit. He’d spent weeks afterward fighting double vision and headaches. Harrison always had a plan for life after football, which meant he was currently Tanner’s worst nightmare. Harrison had become a licensed real estate agent his first year in the league. He’d built a business client by client, and he’d taken the broker’s exam two years ago. He didn’t wake up in a cold sweat over the next
fifty years or so.

  Harrison had nagged Tanner repeatedly about planning for life after football over the past couple of years. Tanner didn’t want to face the fact his playing days would end at some point. Most of the guys in the league weren’t interested in making that plan, either, which is why so many ex-pro football players ended up broke and without options. Tanner wasn’t broke. His bank accounts looked great; at least he’d been smart with his money. He still had options. He wasn’t interested in pursuing them at the moment.

  He wasn’t going to admit he was scared. He’d bullshit and tough it out. His family and his nonfootball buddies wouldn’t be on his jock so much if they were dealing with his injuries. They also would never get why he couldn’t seem to find the motivation to keep going right now. It was all he could do to force himself out of bed each morning. He’d gone from having every minute of his life scheduled to days in which the most pressing thing to do was making sure he got a shower. He realized he was probably depressed, which made him feel worse. There were people in the world with terrible problems who managed to keep going. His issues were a temporary setback. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, but he needed to get over it.

  “What’s new?”

  “Not a lot. How are you doing?” Harrison said.

  “Things are awesome,” Tanner said. He leaned on his foot a bit. He was rewarded by a spike of pain all the way up his leg. He was going to have to come up with some major-league BS to avoid standing up.

  “Weren’t you supposed to go to your physical therapy appointment this morning?” Harrison said.

  “My driver cancelled.” Tanner had fired his driver a couple of days ago, but he didn’t want to discuss it with Harrison. He could have called Lyft or a cab to get to the appointment.

  “That’s interesting,” Harrison threw over his shoulder as he walked into the kitchen. “It’s a good thing I can drive you this morning, then.” He reappeared in the living room a minute or so later with two ice-cold bottles of water.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Let’s go. How about a hand?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” Harrison said. He moved to Tanner’s side, braced his shoulder under one arm, and pulled Tanner to his feet.

  Tanner let out a string of obscenities as the pain roared to life in his bad leg.

  “If my mama was here, she would wash your mouth out with soap, bro,” Harrison said. “She’d whoop your butt.”

  “She’d have to catch me first,” Tanner said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  Harrison burst out laughing. “She’d call your mama. Get your ass in the car.”

  ***

  WHILE MOST TWELVE-YEAR-OLD girls dreamed about being a fashion model or a veterinarian when they grew up, Jordan Mueller had already decided on a career path. Like many other big decisions in life, it happened by accident. Jordan broke her leg skiing the winter she was twelve. It hurt. The recovery wasn’t fun, either. The only positive things were her mom had let her have ice cream every day, her dad put a TV in her bedroom, and she got a hot-pink cast her friends from school all signed.

  A couple of weeks after she got her cast, her mom helped her into the family car and took her to physical therapy.

  “Honey, the doctor told me this will help you as your leg heals,” her mom said. “You’ll do some exercises. It’s about an hour. I’ll be in the waiting room.”

  “Will it hurt?” Jordan said.

  Her mom glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “It might. How about we get a treat on the way home? How’s that?”

  Jordan was assigned to a physical therapist named Stacy, who worked with her twice a week for two months. Stacy gave Jordan a sheet of exercises she could do at home too. PT wasn’t the most fun part of the week, but two months passed quickly.

  At Jordan’s last appointment, she sat down on the weight bench after her final set of exercises and said to Stacy, “Did you always want to become a physical therapist?”

  “I actually wanted to become a software engineer,” Stacy said. “I was in a bad car accident while I was in college, and I spent over a year in physical therapy. My physical therapist helped me learn to walk again.” She sat down next to Jordan on the bench. “It probably sounds corny, but I wanted to help someone else the way she helped me. So, I switched my major.” She reached out to pat Jordan’s knee. “It was a lot of math and science. I kept going to school until I graduated with a doctorate. It wasn’t easy, but I love what I do.”

  Jordan walked out of the physical therapy clinic for the last time with Stacy’s e-mail address, in case she had more questions. She’d set goals in life, and she intended on achieving all of them: She wanted her doctorate in physical therapy. She wanted to concentrate on sports medicine because she could help other people who enjoyed sports as much as she did. She also wanted to own a physical therapy clinic someday.

  Jordan’s parents were thrilled that she worked harder in school than she had before. They were a little mystified that their youngest daughter bought herself subscriptions to the New England Journal of Medicine and Perspectives, a magazine for physical therapists. As long as she stayed on the honor roll, it couldn’t be that bad.

  Eighteen years later, it was a typical overcast June morning at Eastside Physical Therapy as Jordan glanced up from her work to see her boss, Marco, limping toward her. Whatever Marco wanted would need to wait for a few minutes. She had a full roster of clients, and her afternoon was booked solid already. She gave him a somewhat apologetic smile as she turned away from him to focus on her patient. Thankfully, she loved what she was doing, so even a busy day wasn’t a hardship.

  Jordan had been working with a ballerina from Pacific Northwest Ballet for the past hour. The dancer had torn ligaments in her right ankle after slipping in some water at rehearsal a month ago. Rehab would be slow, but Jordan was hopeful the ballerina would see significant improvement within a few months.

  “Okay, Chloe, let’s try the resistance exercise for a few minutes.”

  Jordan bent down to help her client loop a thick rubber strap around her injured ankle. Chloe would use the resistance from her healthy ankle while she stretched the injured one.

  “Take it slow. Let’s try ten reps to start.”

  Chloe folded her lips as she moved the ankle that was still painful. She gripped the ballet barre in front of her and checked her posture in the mirror.

  “Good job. Slow and steady will get it done. One. Two. You’re doing great,” Jordan said.

  Marco was on crutches due to the aftermath of a car wreck four days ago. Jordan couldn’t believe he was already back at work, but the clients couldn’t wait while he healed up.

  Marco spoke up. “Got a minute, Jordan?”

  “Sure,” she told him. “I’ll be right over there if you need anything,” she said to Chloe as she indicated a spot about ten feet away.

  The ballerina nodded as she returned to the exercise program Jordan had devised for her.

  “So, what’s up?” Jordan said to Marco.

  “I’m giving you one of my clients,” he said. “The doc says I have to be off my feet for at least two weeks. I’ve divided up the rest between everyone else.”

  “Is there anything else I can do to help?” Jordan said.

  “Keep things running around here.”

  “Will do.”

  “You haven’t asked me who the client is yet,” he said.

  “It’s no problem. Plus, it’s a little extra money.”

  The money was secondary; she always got her reward when any client recovered with her help. Her coworkers made fun of her for being so idealistic, but it was always a good thing to be able to help someone else.

  “Uh, yeah. About the money. I’m not sure it’ll be enough.”

  “I don’t understand. Is the client uninsured or something?”

  “Oh, no. He’s got all kinds of health insurance.” Marco bent his knee to take some of the stress off
what must have been a painful foot. “He’s cranky.”

  “Most of our clients are cranky,” Jordan said. “They’re in pain.”

  Marco scanned the ceiling like there were answers written on it. “He brings a whole new definition to the word cranky. On a scale of one to ten, he’s a twenty-five.” He let out a sigh. “He’s been skipping appointments lately too. I don’t care because I’m still getting paid whether he shows up or not, but . . . ” His voice trailed off as the bell on the front door rang. “I gotta go.” He moved as quickly as possible to a doorway marked Employees Only.

  Jordan wanted to run after Marco and ask why he was acting so weird, but she didn’t want to leave her client. Marco had been a physical therapist for twenty-five years. Maybe he was tired of dealing with the parents of high school athletes who were frantic that their child wouldn’t become an Olympian or professional athlete because of a sports injury. Most of the clients who made their way to Marco’s business were people who’d been in a bad car wreck, hurt themselves skiing, or fallen off a ladder while doing home repairs. They wanted to recover and move on with their lives. She knew he did his best with his clients, but he’d lost his zeal for the job a long time ago.

  She glanced over at the front door as she heard the bell around the inside handle jingle and saw two tall guys edging through it. One was wearing a scowl, limping visibly, and pushing a walker. The other was holding the door so the first guy wouldn’t wipe out in a tangle of limbs and metal. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but from the look on Mr. Grumpy’s face, he didn’t want to be anywhere near physical therapy today.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a patient wasn’t thrilled about going to a PT appointment. Hopefully he’d be a bit happier by the time he was done.

  The grumpy-looking guy clomped up to the front desk, leaned over it, and said something to the receptionist. She shook her head. Jordan heard him say, “He said what?” all the way across the lobby. She wasn’t a mind reader, but she was guessing that this was Marco’s former client, and Britt the receptionist had told the guy Marco was out for a while. The receptionist got to her feet and gestured for Mr. Grumpy and his companion to follow her. They headed in Jordan’s direction.