"The best decision of my life. This place gave me everything." She glanced at Sienna. "Including you."
Sienna's cheeks coloured, visible even in the low light. "Thank you," she said.
The two words sat between them with an odd weight. As if they'd cost Sienna effort to say. As if she was practising them.Elise didn't push on it. She reached for Sienna's hand and their fingers laced together and they walked the rest of the path in comfortable silence, the only sounds the crunch of gravel under their feet and the growing rush of the ocean below.
The cove opened up below them as the path crested the low headland. A crescent of pale sand sheltered by dark rock on three sides, with the open ocean on the fourth. The tide was low and the sand was wide and empty. In the east, the horizon was on fire, bands of gold and copper spreading upward through the rose and violet, the sun's edge just beginning to clear the water. The light caught the wet sand and turned it to copper. The rock walls of the cove held the heat of the fading night and blocked the breeze, and the air was still and salt-warm.
"Oh," Sienna breathed.
"I know." Elise led her down the sandy track to the cove floor. She spread the blanket on the dry sand above the tide line, in the shelter of the southern rock wall, and sat down. Sienna sat beside her, close enough that their hips touched.
The sunrise was slow and spectacular. The gold spread and deepened and the first true light hit the cove and painted everything warm. Elise unpacked the bag. The thermos, the cups, the pastries, the strawberries. She poured coffee for both of them and handed Sienna the lemon danish and watched Sienna's face when she bit into it, the small noise of pleasure, the crumbs on her lower lip that she brushed away with the back of her hand.
"This is perfect," Sienna said.
Elise set her coffee in the sand and turned toward her. "You're perfect."
Sienna looked at her. Colour crept up from her collar again. But she didn't argue. She didn't deflect. She held Elise's gaze and said, "Thank you." Quieter this time. As if the words were becoming easier.
Sienna brushed a crumb from her lip. "Tell me what you're thinking."
Elise stared out at the water, where the sunrise was painting long gold streaks across the surface. "I'm thinking Thursday scares me."
Sienna looked at her. The professional concern was there, the quick physician's assessment, but it was layered now with personal worry. "Your shoulder is ready. I wouldn't have cleared you if it wasn't."
"It's not the shoulder. It's everything else. Seven weeks off. Lex has been incredible. What if I come back and I'm not the same player? What if the team doesn't need me like they did before?" She paused. "You don't get it. You already know who you are. You've had a whole career. Degrees, a specialisation, years of knowing you're good at what you do. I'm thirty. Hockey is the only thing I've ever done. If it ends, I don't know what's left."
Sienna was quiet. The ocean filled the pause. "When I was thirty, I was two years into my sports medicine fellowship and terrified I'd made the wrong choice leaving tennis behind. I didn't feel settled. I felt like I was starting over."
Elise looked at her. "You did?"
"I was thirty and I couldn't have told you who I was without the word 'doctor' in the sentence. So yes. I understand more than you think."
Sienna's thumb traced a circle on Elise's knee. "The team needs you."
Elise picked up a strawberry and bit into it, the juice sharp and cold on her tongue. "You have to say that. You're sleeping with me."
"I'm saying it because I've been watching this team for eighteen months and I know what they look like with you and without you. They've been good without you. They'll bebetter with you. Different skills. Different energy." Sienna's hand rested on Elise's knee. "You're not competing with Lex. You're complementing her."
Elise covered Sienna's hand with her own. The worry was still there, but it was quieter with Sienna's fingers warm under hers.
They ate in the warming light. The strawberries were sweet and cold and Sienna ate them one at a time, biting them in half, her lips stained red. The coffee was strong and hot and the steam rose from their cups in curling threads that dissolved in the still air. A pelican glided past the mouth of the cove, low over the water, its shadow skimming the surface.
"I want to give you something," Elise said. She set her coffee cup in the sand and shifted so she was behind Sienna. "Take your jacket off."
Sienna turned her head. "What are you doing?"
"My shoulder's better. I can use both hands now. And you spend all your time taking care of everyone else's bodies." She tugged the collar of Sienna's jacket. "Let me take care of yours."
Sienna hesitated. Then she shrugged the jacket off her shoulders, revealing the thin running top beneath. Elise moved closer, her thighs bracketing Sienna's hips, and placed her hands on Sienna's shoulders.
The muscles were tight. The trapezius on both sides, the muscles along the spine, the fascia between the shoulder blades. Sienna carried her tension high, in her neck and shoulders, and Elise could feel the knots beneath her thumbs as she pressed into the tissue. She worked slowly, using the heel of her palm, her thumbs, her knuckles. She'd learned this from years of locker-room massage swaps and from Kylie's sports massage workshops that she'd attended during rehab.
"That's..." Sienna dropped her head forward. "God, that's good."
Elise smiled against the back of Sienna's neck. She pressed her thumbs into the muscles on either side of Sienna's spine and felt the tension release in increments, the knots loosening under sustained pressure. Sienna's breathing slowed. Her shoulders dropped. A small sound escaped her, low and grateful, and Elise's body responded to it with a flush of heat.
She pushed Sienna's running top up, her fingers sliding beneath the hem and up the bare skin of her back. Sienna's stomach contracted at the touch. The skin beneath Elise's hands was warm from the morning sun and smooth and the fine muscles shifted beneath her palms as Sienna breathed. She worked her thumbs along the spine, pressing into the tight spots, and her fingers fanned out across Sienna's ribs. The touch was still a massage. Technically.
