I straighten. Vow tightens like new tape. Eyes on the game. Don’t touch the door that hurts when it closes.
“Wrist,” I say, offering the most dangerous thing I own into the space between us.
Riley snaps a glove into place, powder dusting the air between us like frost. She doesn’t waste words. Doesn’t waste me a look longer than necessary. The blue of her eyes is work-cold.
“Shirt off,” she says.
It hits like a puck off the post—loud in my bones. Around us, the room discovers other things to study with the enthusiasm of men who know they shouldn’t study this. A playlist hiccups. Someone coughs. Collins mutters a prayer to the god of not getting punched.
My phone vibrates again:Julia: Cameras nearby. Stay away.
Right. Sure. Absolutely. I hook my fingers in the hem anyway, because staying away isn’t an option when she’s five feet tall and six feet unignorable. Cotton rasps over skin. Cold air bites what the jersey covered. Gooseflesh lifts across my arms—an honest tell my mouth can hide but my eyes can’t.
Riley doesn’t react. Not outwardly. She steps closer, the toe of her sneaker braced against the rubber mat between my skates, all that quick, competent focus aimed at the problem I’m pretending is just a wrist. She studies the tape like it insulted her personally. “You wrapped it too tight,” she says, disapproval honed to a blade.
“I like it tight,” I hear myself say, because I’m an idiot and talking is easier than the quiet where I notice her breathing.
Her gaze flicks up.Really?“Congratulations. You like ischemia.” She peels the edge with careful fingers—precise, impersonal, devastating. Adhesive pops against my skin. Heat climbs from every place she touches and settles under my sternum like a bad idea.
“Flex,” she orders. I do. She watches for the jump I can’t control, thumb testing bone like she owns it—because right now she does. “You’re not going back out unless you can manage the stick without compensating.”
“I can manage,” I say, softer. The words mean the game. They also don’t.
Her lashes lift. For a heartbeat, the room falls away—no lockers, no suits, no rules, just weightless space where two stubborn people balance at the edge of a choice. It lasts one beat. She breaks it herself, practical to the last. “Hold still.”
She cleans. Re-tapes. Pads the stitches I gave her a reason to place. The antiseptic ghosts the citrus I remember until I can’t tell past from present. Somewhere behind me a stick clatters.The two-minute horn bleats down the hall. I don’t move. I could. I don’t.
“Breathe,” she says, almost under her breath, like she doesn’t mean me to hear it. Like she doesn’t remember the first time she said it when there wasn’t a single stitch between us.
I inhale. It hurts less than I expect. More than it should.
She finishes with a neat, ruthless anchor. Her gloved fingers skim my forearm to check circulation—once, twice—then hover, as if there’s one more thing she could fix if she wanted to break us both. She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. Her gaze shifts to my chest, impassive. “Any pain there?”
“Only when I play,” I say. It’s a joke. It isn’t.
Her eyes lift and hold. The playlist clicks off between tracks. Silence stretches taut.
My phone buzzes again—cameras, brand, math—and I force a smirk because that’s the version of me everyone understands. My fingers don’t get the memo. They tremble where they rest on my thigh, the tiniest shake— a tell only she can see from this close.
Chapter 3
Penalties
Riley
The training roomhums like a beehive someone kicked. Fluorescents buzz overhead, relentless and too bright, washing everything the color of paper. Antiseptic sits thick in the air, hummingbirds in my sinuses. I’ve wiped the table twice, aligned the tape rolls like soldiers, and I’m still not ready when Jason walks in and turns the room smaller by existing.
“Door was open,” he says, which is true and also not the point. He’s already in a thin compression shirt, sleeves shoved up. The skin at his wrist is pink around my neat sutures, the padding holding, the locker-room tape still crisp. He flexes once as if to test the world. I pretend not to notice the fabric pulling across his chest.
“Sit,” I say, and he does, because even he knows better than to argue with me in my lab. I glove up and try not to hear my pulse in the latex snap.
He sets his forearm on the table. “Thought I’d get the A-team.”
“You did,” I say, picking up the alcohol swab. “You also get the truth. If you keep chopping at sticks like you’re auditioning for a lumberjack competition, I’m stapling your hands together.”
“Hot,” he says.
“Medical,” I counter, and the corner of his mouth lifts like I handed him a win. I hate that my insides map the motion like it’s a play we practiced. We didn’t. We won’t.
