The question I’d been waiting for.
I’d barely slept after watching that game last night. His condition was impossible to hide unless some real work started, and that was the easy part. His commitment to the plan is what everything boiled down to.
“I’ll give you rehab to correct your shoulder,” I said then. “In private, obviously.”
Something flashed behind his eyes and even though I couldn’t read it, my stomach felt all weird and flipped over. I cleared my throat. “Taping you up before games is a short-term solution. Rehab guarantees you heal up and get stronger for finals.”
“And you’re okay to keep this from Coach, from everyone?” I didn’t look right at him when I nodded. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
For the first time since he’d walked in, I became physically aware of our isolation back here in the med bay. Door closed, and on the other side of it, everyone packed up and gone for the day. Behind his eyes were about a million thoughts, all of them aimed right at me.
“A promotion.” I spat it out. Wanted nothing more to do with it swimming around in the back of my head. “Van der Berg’s leaving, and they’re looking at me to take over as head trainer for The Surge. Don’t look at me like that. This isn’t funny. Stop smiling.”
He laughed softly. “What can I say, Hopper? Ulterior motives look good on you.”
“Shut up, and listen,” I said, swatting away his attempts at making light of this. “In order for this to work out for either of us, there has to be rules—”
“Buzzkill.”
“First off: I’m gonna need full transparency and commitment. No exceptions.”
He started unbuttoning his shirt. “You see me half-naked all the time as is, but okay.”
“I said you need to listen.” I put my hand over his, and he stopped what he was doing. “No outside treatments. I’m your physio, and I’m the one who works on that shoulder. Daily checks, for rehab and monitoring. And of course, finally, ultimate discretion. Nobody can know about this, Bouchard. Not even Hunter. I’ll snap your arm off myself.”
A slow smile crept onto his lips. “I can’t tell if you just really want the job, or really want to have your hands on me. Either way, I’m liking this bossy thing you’re doing.”
“Good,” I said, and took a step back. “Now take off your shirt.”
His eyes shot to mine. We were in the deepest shit, and I was taking conscious steps to bury us further down, but still. I kinda liked that I had this effect on him.
Theo didn’t make a meal of the shirt thing, which somehow made it worse. He just peeled it off his shoulders and set it beside him, palms braced on the exam table like he’d climbed onto some execution block of his own choosing. I hated the little twist in my stomach when he did that. Hated even more that I knew exactly why it was there.
“Lie down, chest to the table.”
He obeyed, stretching out with an ease that didn’t match the tension bunching across his upper back. The overhead fluorescent caught on the sweat-damp line of his spine, and I swallowed once before snapping on a pair of gloves I didn’t strictly need.
“This gonna hurt?” he asked, turning his head just enough to see me.
I touched his jaw to guide his face back down. “Probably.”
“Awesome,” he sighed. “I always preferred pain to Marvel movies anyway.”
I planted my hands on his right scapula first, the injured side, pushing gently to assess. The muscle twitched hard, making the purple bruise look like it was dancing under my thumbs.
“Relax,” I murmured.
“Trying,” he muttered into the table. “It’s kinda hard to breathe when you’re driving a spear through me.”
I ignored that. My fingertips skimmed along the border of his shoulder blade, tracking the way everything compensated upward and inward. I moved my hands in rhythm with my breathing, hoping he’d relax enough to match it. It turned into a kind of hypnosis. Nothing but the slide of my palms over taut muscle, the quiet push and pull, and the almost imperceptible sway of his shoulders under my touch.
“Your supraspinatus is locking up.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re a— a super… califragilistic—”
“Shh.” He clammed up, but not without enjoying his lame joke first. His upper body skittered with it for a few seconds, until my thumbs dipped into the bull’s eye.
He let out a muffled groan, his body tensing to the tips of his toes. I reminded him to relax again, to breathe, and the sound that came out of him was a mixed bag of effort, relief, discomfort. It almost had me feeling bad for him.
