“Nope.”
I could feel the tension, feel the heat from the inflammation, and I could see the way he moved to hide the pain. I pressed slightly deeper, watching his face.
His eyes went dark. “Bianca.”
“Hold still,” I said, continuing to dig into the area. “Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” I asked again, my fingers mapping along every inch of inflamed muscle.
“I told you, I’m fine,” he growled.
What a liar, I thought as I pulled my hands away from his shoulder, moving to my table so I could make notes, my expression carefully neutral, even though I could feel his eyes burning into me.
“What are you doing?” he questioned.
“Making my notes. You have significant inflammation in that shoulder,” I whispered, moving on to the next section of my report: rotation. “You also have a reduced range of motion in external rotation. You need to be on a modified training schedule for a while until we can get the inflammation under control.”
“No,” he said, cutting me off.
I tore my eyes away from my tablet. “Evan?—”
“I said no.”
He slid off the table and stepped into my space, forcing me to back up against the wall behind me.
“You don’t get to bench me. You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“I’m not. What I am trying to do is help you.”
“I don’t need your help.” His words came out harsh, desperate. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”
I took a step back, my body now right up against the wall.
“Understood,” I mumbled. “However, the inflammation has already been documented, and I won’t retract it. If you injure yourself further, it will already be on record that you have refused treatment.”
Evan glared at me, then turned, grabbed his sweatshirt, and left the room in a huff.
That nightI sat in my room, the door closed, with the light on and quiet music playing while I held an ice pack to the base of my skull. I was trying to ease the tension headache that had been building since my confrontation with Evan this morning.
I’d planned to ask my father about him, to see if there was something in his backstory that would have caused him to act this way, but my father hadn’t responded when I’d asked him for a meeting.
I closed my eyes. I could hear movement on the other side of the paper-thin walls. Listening hard, I easily made out the distinct sound of a bag of ice being wrapped in a towel.
He was icing something. Probably the shoulder he refused to let me continue to examine, I thought to myself, replaying the movement I’d seen him perform earlier this week and the hit he’d taken last season in my mind.
Here we were, both sitting in separate rooms, icing completely separate wounds, hiding from one another and from ourselves. It was almost funny.
Almost.
I pressed the ice pack harder against my neck, wishing my condo hadn’t flooded.
“Fuck, Bianca, don’t leave tea bags in mugs! I just found another one in the dishwasher’s bottom!” I heard him shout and then his door bang shut.
“I hate him,” I whispered to myself as I thought about the look Evan had given me earlier today.
He was confusing as hell, and I needed to maintain a professional distance from him, but after the look he’d given me today, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to. His eyes had practically devoured me when he was in front of me while I was pressed against the wall.
Only I already knew the truth, and it was far more dangerous than I’d originally thought. While I now knew he was hiding some sort of injury, I could also see the walls he had built. I could also see the familiar look of fear hidden beneath his anger. The only reason I recognized it was because it was the same look I carried, and I’d built the same walls around myself that he had.
Chapter 6
