“You did.” Coach holds a hand up in my direction. “When you signed the recovery agreement, you checked the box for top-tier specialized care. She’s it, Callahan. The best. And the Southern Knights are paying triple her usual rate to make sure you get seen. You can thank me by getting your ass back onto that field.”
“I checked a box on a form I barely read because I was high on painkillers and desperate.”
Coach rambles on, but I’m lost in my own madness. I didn’t request her. I would never have fucking requested her. I didn’t need the coffee on my shirt to know that having her in charge of my future would be a terrible idea.
But it’s worse than that. I’m looking down the barrel at twelve weeks of her touching me while hating me.
My mind snaps through images of Jess, with her hands on my knee. Her voice telling me what to do and how to move. Jess coaching me on when to push through pain. Her scent filling whatever room we’re in while I lie on a table and pretend I’m not dying inside.
Coach squints at me, and I’ve seen the look before. I need to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately for me, that’s never been my strong suit.
“I wish you would have let me give some input on this decision.”
“Dammit Callahan, you’d better get real grateful, real fast after all the chances I’m taking for you. You’ll do what she says and get better. Or you’ll walk away with nothing. No job. No money. No contract. Now, do we have a problem?”
I shove my hands in my pockets. Looking at her face now, I realize something with sudden, devastating clarity. Jess might be the last person who should be treating my knee, but she’s also the best.
And right now, she’s my only shot at saving my career.
“No sir.”
I think about all the things I missed and my head spins.Did she cry when she found my note? Did she wait for me to call? How long before she stopped checking her phone, stopped hoping I’d come back and explain? How long before she started hating me?
She didn’t crumble when I left. She built all of this from the wreckage of what I did to her. Her clinic... Her reputation. This life she mentioned, the good one she made on her own. She didn’t fall apart.
She became the best in the fucking state.
Meanwhile, I lost everything.
“When do I start?” I ask.
“Tomorrow morning. Seven a.m. sharp.” Coach’s eyes bore into mine. “Don’t screw this up, Callahan. I don’t know what history you have with Dr.Hartwell, and I don’t want to know. What I know is that your career, your entire future, depends on that knee. And she’s the one who can fix it.”
I close the folder. “Understood, Coach.”
He nods, dismissing me. I stand, folder tucked under my arm, and head for the door.
“Callahan.”
I turn.
“Whatever you did to piss that woman off? Fix it. I need my quarterback healthy, and I need him focused. No distractions.”
I think about Jess’s face in that coffee shop. The fury and the hurt and the something else I couldn’t quite identify. I think about the note I left her years ago. I blew up my life with three sentences and destroyed everything we had.
I’m sorry. I have to go. Please don’t follow me.
Three sentences. That’s all I gave her after three years together. After she’d given me her trust, her future, and herwhole heart laid bare. She put it all on the table and I was careless.
But standing here now, seeing what she’s built, knowing she did it while carrying the weight of what I did to her?
“I’ll do my best, Coach,” I say.
But as I walk out into the southern heat with my knee throbbing and my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my shoes, I wonder if my best will be anywhere close to enough.
Tomorrow morning. Seven a.m. Her hands on my knee. Her voice in my ear. Me trying to focus on anything other than the fact that I’d burn this whole city down just to hear her say my name without hatred in it.
Twelve weeks of physical therapy with the woman I destroyed.
