I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more—that she wasn’t hovering and fussing like everyone else, or that I kind of wanted her to look up and see that I wasn’t completely useless.
“Again,” Jess said when I stumbled. “You’re capable of better than that.”
I clenched my jaw and went again. Harder this time. Pushed through the burn in my hip, the electric zing of phantom pain. Focused on the bar in front of me instead of the woman pretending to be utterly uninterested in my progress.
“Better,” Jess murmured. “There he is.”
By the time she moved me over to the step platform, my leg shook with fatigue. She nudged the riser up a notch anyway.
“You’re not made of glass, Vaughn.”
“Tell that to everyone else,” I muttered.
She raised an eyebrow. “You letting them treat you like you’re going to break, or are you just assuming that’s what they’re thinking?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy not falling on my ass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clara stand and walk to the water cooler, refill a paper cup, then go back to her seat. Her gaze skimmed past me once, quick as a blink, before she sat down again and pulled her knees up, the magazine balanced on her thighs.
It shouldn’t have mattered. I was here for me. For my leg. For the life I wasn’t sure I wanted but apparently hadn’t given up on, because I was voluntarily sweating under fluorescent lights while a woman half my size told me to lift my knee higher.
Still, every time I stuck a landing or didn’t wobble on a turn, a small, stupid part of me wondered whether Clara had seen it.
Jess finally released me with a clap on the shoulder and a “Same time next week, Vaughn,” like I hadn’t just done an hour in her personal torture chamber.
By the time I made it back to the front, my leg felt like it was made of wet cement. The world had that sharp, too-bright edge it got when I was past my limit and pretending I wasn’t.
With Clara at my side, the clinic doors whooshed open, and cold air knifed in. There was a short concrete ramp down to the parking lot, dusted with a fresh layer of snow that some half-assed plow job hadn’t quite cleared.
I paused at the top, jaw tight.
Clara stepped through ahead of me, letting the door close gently behind. She didn’t reach for me. Didn’t rush to block the ramp with her body like a guardrail. She just shifted a little closer to the side and bent her arm at the elbow, hand hanging loose between us. Not touching. Just ... there.
An offer, not an order.
I told myself I didn’t need it and took one careful step down. The prosthetic hit a slick patch and skidded a fraction sideways, the kind of slide that would have sent me sprawling a month ago. My muscles seized.
Before I could overthink it, my hand shot out and caught her forearm.
Warm. Solid.
The world steadied.
We stood like that for half a breath—her arm under my grip, her body a grounded line next to mine—before I realized what I was doing and let go like she’d burned me.
“I’ve got it,” I muttered.
“I know.” Her tone stayed mild. She tucked her hands back into her coat pockets. “The car’s right there.”
It was easier, that was the worst part. The ramp, the snow, the whole thing. Having her arm within reach had made it easier, and I hated that so much I could feel my teeth grinding as I eased myself into the passenger seat.
I spent the ride home stewing in it.
Stewing in the fact that PT had gone better than the last time. Stewing in the fact that I’d pushed harder with her in the room. Stewing in the fact that borrowing her arm for two seconds had saved me from eating pavement.
Clara seemed to pick up on my mood, because she didn’t bother with small talk this time. The car filled with the low murmur of the heater and the thrum of tires over packed snow. Every so often she tapped the steering wheel in time with a song only she could hear.
By the time we pulled back into my driveway, the knot between my shoulders felt like it had its own pulse.
