I grab the hem with my good hand and start to work the jersey up. The second the fabric drags across my bad shoulder, fire lances down my arm, but I grit my teeth and keep going.
I’m fine again until the jersey catches at the sleeve, and my vision flashes white at the edges for a second.
Maybe it’s out of respect, or maybe because she knows alphas like me bite first when they feel cornered, but she lets me handle it without offering to intervene or help. At least I'm not wearing the sling: that would have been really fucking embarrassing.
I manage to push through and force the jersey over my head. I drop it beside me on the table harder than I need to, and the room goes quiet.
She reaches for a pair of gloves, pauses, and then seems to change her mind, letting them fall back into the box. Her hand hovers just over my upper arm, close enough that my skin heats under the proximity as her eyes meet mine.
“Okay?” she asks.
I give a short nod, and finally, she touches me.
Her fingers land light on the muscle and start moving across the joint, pressing into all the places that have felt wrong for weeks. Her hands are small, but there’s strength in them. She’s testing tension and hunting the edges of pain, reading my body in the way good PTs do.
I don’t flinch, but I feel every second of it. Not just the pain—though that’s there, deep and rotten—but the focus, the attention.
The way the air between us thickens with shared silence and unspoken boundaries.
“Range of motion?” she asks, breaking into my thoughts.
“Limited,” I say through my teeth as she lifts my arm gently.
“Yeah, I can see that. Any numbness? Tingling?”
“No. Just pressure. And the occasional stabbing.”
She snorts under her breath.
“Ilovean occasional stabbing.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. She doesn’t look at me, but something in her voice is just a fraction lighter when she continues.
“Alright: I’m going to move your arm through a few positions, see where the restrictions are. Tell me the second anything feels sharp, wrong, or like it’s about to make you punch me on reflex.”
“I don’t hit people who are helping me,” I mutter.
“Let’s keep that streak going, then.”
She starts moving my arm. Her touch is clinical, her focus all business, but the tension doesn’t go anywhere; it just shifts shape.
Her hand slides from my shoulder to the top of my bicep, fingers pressing into the muscle as she rotates the joint. Pain flares, and I grind my molars, keeping my breath steady.
“Okay?” she asks without looking up.
“Fine,” I grind out.
It’s not, and we both know it.
Her palm skims across the front of my shoulder, thumb brushing the head of the humerus. She knows exactly how deep to press, how far to lift, which angles to test and which to avoid.It’s irritating how good she is at feeling what I’d rather hide. Almost as irritating as the way I feel every inch of it.
The heat of her skin. The grounded weight of her hand. The fact that she doesn’t back off when I tense.
Her fingers slide to the back of the joint, finding the ridge of my scapula. She pauses, her thumb hovering over a knot that feels like a live wire.
“Here?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I rasp.
