“Here, let me.” I shifted onto my knees to massage the area.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” I said. Hands on him now, I started to knead the tension in the joint and felt him tense beneath my fingers.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to—”
Too late. I saw it before he could move away. Tiny puncture marks, faint but unmistakable, around the joint. The moon ushering in through the slit in the curtains might as well have been a spotlight. I knew what they were because I’d made some of them myself.
But this. This was way more than what happened in my med bay.
My stomach dropped. My mouth went dry. My voice was nothing but a pinched whisper. “What have you done?”
“Nothing. I told you I’m—”
“Theo. I swear to God. Stop lying to me.” I was shaking, although I wasn’t sure why.
And had I subconsciously known this whole time and just refused to acknowledge it? Because I was the one closest to him and his injury. I’d seen the damage, and knew there was no way he could perform the way he had been even with all the cooling spray and anti-inflammatories in the country.
He swung his legs off the bed, and pulled on his boxers. “I did what I had to do. If I wasn’t a hundred percent, the team wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“You lied. You went behind my back. You took a risk that could ruin everything—your body, my job—everything!”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said, hands dragging through his hair. “I wasn’t getting better, and I needed to play.”
I clutched the bedsheets so there’d be something to hold in my fists. “The whole point of me helping you was to get you back in the game, Theo. The right way. Nerve blockers are a facade. Don’t you see?”
“Don’t you?” he snapped. “The rehab was too slow. It wasn’t working.”
“So you go and do the stupidest thing you could’ve done in your position?” My voice rose, and somewhere in the back of my throat, a lump formed.
His nostrils flared as he looked at me, refusing to back down. “This isn’t just a game for me, Reese. Who knows if I’ll play after this? I had to get out there. I’ll pick up rehab after it’s over. Take the time to heal like I should.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to steady my voice. “It’s going to take more than that. You need surgery.”
His eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open. “What?”
“I lied about the MRI,” I said, the words cutting on their way out. I hated it, and I hated myself for doing this to him in the first place. But in the spirit of laying everything bare… “Theo, you have a partial tear. Fixing it takes you out of the game for months. And even then, your shoulder might never be the same.”
“You… what? Why?” He backed up until the closet stopped him, looking at me as if I was a complete stranger.
I probably deserved it.
“I thought I could help you enough to get through this series without ruining everything.” I sank down on the bed, thumbing the sheet to avoid looking at him. “I knew how desperate you were to play, and I thought I could get you through it.”
The decision was also a selfish one. Because labral tears don’t happen in a bubble, and coming clean about that would’ve meant I had to come clean to management about my involvement in covering it up all season.
His hands dropped, shoulders slumping. “So you lied to me about my own body?”
“Not to hurt you,” I said, voice trembling. “To protect you… to protect us. I didn’t expect you to go this far on your own.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get to make that call. It’s my shoulder! My game!”
“And you’re not taking care of it!” I shouted. “You’re destroying it! You think nerve blockers from backdoor clinics are helping? You’re risking everything for what? Pride? Glory?”
He pressed his palms to the bed, leaning over me. The advance was so quick, so intimidating, I rocked back on my knees. “How is it different from what you’d do for your job, huh? You’ve been in this, right along with me. Making stupid decisions, as you called it.”
“I fucked up,” I said, looking at him now. “But what you’re doing—”
