She doesn’t apologize. Instead, she presses deeper.
“Breathe through it,” she instructs.
Her other hand braces my elbow as she rotates the arm outward. Pain spikes, sharp enough to blur my vision, but I hold still.
And I focus on her face instead.
Her brow is furrowed, her lips parted just slightly as she watches the movement of my shoulder as opposed to my reaction. Freckles dust her cheeks, and her lashes throw shadows when she glances down.
I look away before I stare too long, and before my instincts start misreading her focused attention as something else.
She steps closer to get a better angle, and her knee bumps mine.
Neither of us moves.
“You’re guarding,” she says quietly.
“No shit.”
Her mouth twitches into the ghost of a smirk.
“Try to relax.”
I speak through gritted teeth as I respond.
“You’re literally digging into the worst part of my body right now.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to clamp down on everything like a vice.”
“You saying I’m tense?”
“I’m saying your shoulder is locked up tighter than a vault,” she huffs. “And probably for the same reason.”
That pulls a short, rough laugh out of me before I can catch it. She looks up, clearly surprised, and for a second, we’re just…stuck there.
Her eyes are darker in this lighting, and there’s awareness in her gaze. Of me. Of what I am, and of what she is.
Of how close we are and how thin the line is between professional and something else if either of us looks away at the wrong time.
The room hums around us, but she blinks, then breathes. Her attention shifts back to my shoulder as the moment passes, but the static stays.
Eventually, her hands still.
“Alright,” she says, stepping back a half-step. “That’s enough for today.”
I exhale slowly. My arm hangs a little looser now—less like a locked door and more like a stuck one she’s just started to pry open. I turn my head in time to see her scribbling notes on her clipboard, jaw tight in concentration.
“Mobility’s limited,” she says, eyes on the paper. “Inflammation’s high. You’re compensating through your pecand upper trap, which is why everything feels like it’s on fire when you move past ninety degrees.”
“Good to know,” I mutter, flexing my fingers.
“So: you’ve been skating.”
“Not hard,” I remind her. “Just light drills.”
“And you’ve been rehabbing ithow, exactly?”
“Rest. Ice. A few stretches I remembered from the last trainer.”
