Was she scared? Of me? For me?
“Take your shirt off. Let me see,” she whispered.
“Bianca…”
“No, now, Evan.” The tone of her voice was like steel. “I’ve given you months. I should have dealt with it immediately, and I should have reported it, especially after feeling it last night. No more.”
“Just don’t call just yet,” I begged.
“Evan, you have to be in excruciating pain. Please.”
“I’m not saying don’t. I’m just asking you not to right this second.”
I wasn’t about to fight and disagree with her, mainly because I knew there was no fight left. I went to lift my right arm to pull my jersey off and couldn’t. Pain shot through my shoulder, sharp enough to make me gasp.
Almost instantly, I felt her hands on me. She eased the fabric of my jersey over my head, wasting no time as she cut away my base layer. I felt her fingers brush over my skin, every touch feeling like a bolt of electricity. Then I heard her catch her breath.
I didn’t need to look. I already knew what she saw.
“Evan…” she cried. “The bruising is already spreading across your collarbone. It’s swollen and inflamed…Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
“Don’t, Bianca, please don’t say it.”
“Say what? That you’ve got a grade three separation? That I was right when I thought you had a torn rotator cuff and God knows what else? This could end your career…”
“I told you…don’t.”
Bianca took a step back and looked at me, her eyes beginning to water. “Why? Why would you do this to yourself?”
I closed my eyes. The answer sat in my throat, an answer I knew she already had herself. I’d been running from this ever since the end of last season when I’d felt my shoulder slip and had known what I feared the most.
“Because I refuse to be my father.”
Bianca frowned as she looked at me.
“You don’t get it. My dad was so strong, not to mention a fantastic player, or was before the knee injury and the surgeries. He was everything. But when his body broke…”
God, this room felt way too small, too intimate. I had been lying and playing with pain that made me want to scream for months until Bianca had gotten here.
“I promised myself I’d never be that. That I would never be him and never be broken enough to be a burden to those around me. So when my shoulder went, I couldn’t admit it. I couldn’t ask for help because asking meant I was becoming him, and if I became him I’d become a burden and I’d lose everything that I’d worked for.”
Her hand, feather-light, touched my jaw. “Evan, look at me,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to,” I said, holding my breath as another round of pain hit.
She grabbed my chin and tilted my head up, forcing me to look at her. “You’re not your father, Evan, and being hurt and asking for help doesn’t make you a burden on anyone.” She brushed her thumb against my cheek.
“I don’t know how to ask for help.”
“Well, you have little choice, I’m afraid. You need to let down your walls and let me in. Don’t just allow me to see the parts of you that you think are acceptable.”
I wanted nothing more than to do what she was asking. Yet I had this fear ingrained in me that all I knew how to do was the opposite, even while I was sitting here in unimaginable pain with my shoulder destroyed and the lies I’d told crumbling.
“What if I need surgery and months of recovery and I’m not…What if I can’t come back from this?”
Bianca cupped my face with her hands and looked me in the eyes, holding me steady. “Then we will figure it out. Together.”
“You’re my trainer. The coach’s daughter. You shouldn’t?—”
