Nope, there was no sugarcoating this retirement; she was no longer a firefighter-because of injuries, not by choice. She felt weak and insignificant, and at the age of twenty-nine-and-three-quarters, she wasn’t ready for either. She wanted to be back out there, damn it, doing her thing, going where she wished, doing something she loved and was good at.

But she couldn’t have passed an agility test to save her life. Hell, she couldn’t even touch her toes at the moment.

“Harder, Lily.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and stretched harder, feeling her muscles pull and burn. And yet still, beyond the pain, she also felt…itchy. She needed to be on the move, working with adrenaline as her daily friend. It was a pattern in her life, an affliction. It was who she was, what she did.

Or who she’d used to be anyway-a terrifying thought because…who the hell was she now? “Damn it, ow,” she said to her PT, a gorgeous man who resembled Denzel Washington.

Eric nodded in approval and backed off. “Was wondering if you even had a pain threshold there for a minute.”

“Got it, and we hit it.”

He smiled-because it wasn’t his muscles they were torturing. “Wait here. I’m going to get you some ice.”

She’d spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital since her Screw-Up. Major, life-threatening injuries did that to a person. But she’d still not learned to be a good waiter. In fact, waiting was for sissies who needed a minute, and she absolutely did not. She had things to do, places to go. Rolling over, she pushed up to her hands and knees, still trembling like a damn newborn.

Or a wildland firefighter who’d woken up in the middle of a full-blown flare-up, forced backwards by the flames, where she’d taken a fall off the cliff, hitting a few burning trees on the way down. Forty feet down. An ex-firefighter now, who couldn’t move an inch. She collapsed to her belly, and lay there like a beached whale.

Okay, so maybe she did need a minute.