“How long have you been doing that?” I asked.
He blinked. “Pushing?”
“Managing your body,” I said. “Toeing the line between functional and falling apart. Performing like everything’s fine while tracking your symptoms.”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked past me, like he was trying to calculate whether I was worth the truth or another clipboard trying to flag him.
When he finally spoke, his voice was lower. Less performance. More weight. “Since college.”
My chest tightened—not from surprise but from recognition. That was the first real thing he’d said.
“What’s your threshold for asking for help?” I asked, twirling the pen in my hand. His gaze followed the movement, slowly moving up my arm and back to my face. Something warm reflected in his gaze, yet I wouldn’t even let myself finish that thought.
When he met my eyes, his gaze hardened, and his jaw flexed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“No,” I said. “You weresenthere. That’s different.”
He leaned back in his chair, slow and controlled, like he was retreating into a stance he often did. His eyes lifted to the ceiling, then dropped back to me with something sharper behind them.
Tension flexed along his jaw. His hands rested on his thighs, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm that didn’t match the casual pose he’d adopted earlier.
This wasn’t a guy who didn’t care. This was a guy who’d learned not to show it.
“I’m not here to pull you from the game, Oliver,” I said, softer now. “I’m here to make sure the game doesn’t take more from you than it already has.”
He scoffed, stood up as he cleared his throat. “I’m good, Doc. I’ve worked my ass off to be here, to start. I’ve got a kick-ass deal and have too many people counting on me. My sister, the guys… I get overheated sometimes, but who doesn’t?”
Interesting.He placed his hands on his hips, his tone never raising as he eyed my desk. “Ask what you need to help the coaches feel better, but I’d rather be out there then in heretalking.I’m not broken. I don’t need fixing, and I don’t want you in my head.”
With that, he sighed, his lips flattening into a frown as he walked toward the door. “Mark that down, alright? Oliver James, good to go.”
Then, he left.
2
OLIVER
The weight room always smelled like rubber and heat. Burned chalk, old sweat, iron plates that never quite stopped rattling. It was the only space in the building that didn’t demand anything from me. It didn’t care if I was starting this week, didn’t ask about protocols or vitals or how many steps I took before my chest tightened. It didn’t pretend, and I needed that.
I wiped my palms on my shorts and loaded another forty-five onto the bar, checking the grip grooves without looking up. Everything in here had a place, a rhythm, a purpose. That was what I liked most—no room for interpretation. You either moved the weight or you didn’t. You either showed up or you didn’t. Nothing vague or unsure like my daily life.
I pulled the bar off the rack and let it settle across my shoulders. The familiar bite of pressure steadied me, quieted everything else. I didn’t want to think about a dozen things: the way Sloane looked at me yesterday like she already knew the truth, the file I knew she’d read, the cold clinical log of my problems. But under the weights, none of that mattered.
I did four reps. Five. Then I racked it and leaned forward, breathing through my nose, hands braced on my knees. I wasn’t tired. Not physically. But my head wouldn’t quit. It hadn’t since college, since the symptoms started, since the cardiologist saidyou’ll need to keep an eye on thislike it was a privilege and not a countdown.
I didn’t tell my mom for three months, and when I finally did, she looked at me like she was waiting for the punchline. My dad said nothing at all—walked into the kitchen and refused to talk about it. I was twenty. I told myself I didn’t need them to understand. My sister was the only one who grieved with me, that the life I wanted wasn’t an option. But if I talked about it with my parents, they wouldn’t hear it. That was the first time I learned how to bury something deep enough it stopped getting in the way.
“Early start today,” Ivy said from behind me. Her voice didn’t surprise me—she always had this way of entering a room like she’d been there the whole time. She wasn’t sharp with me. She never was. Not unless I deserved it. Which I sure had a few times in our eight years of friendship.
I turned, grabbed my towel off the bench, and gave her a small nod. “Beats traffic.”
She raised one brow and stepped into the room like it belonged to her. Because it did. Clipboard under one arm, Rampage-logo thermos in the other hand. She was in her usual gear—black-on-black sneakers, perfect posture, her signature glasses, and a ponytail. Ivy Emerson didn’t wear polish, but she never looked unkempt. Everything about her said: I know exactly what I’m doing. Try me.
Ivy wasn’t warm, not in the way people expected from friends, but she was loyal. Brutally honest. The kind of person who didn’t flinch when things got ugly. She saw people fully—even when they didn’t want to be. When she looked at you, itwasn’t to measure how useful you were. It was to ask,Are you good?And if you weren’t, she’d help you until you were.
“You’re already sweating,” she said, her tone light but layered. “Trying to out-lift the ghosts again?”
I wiped the back of my neck, catching my breath even though I wasn’t physically winded. “Clearing my head.”
