I could not ignore the concern in his voice. “Fine.”
Relief crossed his face quickly enough that he probably wished I had not seen it. “Five minutes,” he repeated, then disappeared back through the cafeteria before anybody could pay too much attention to us standing together.
I stared down at my untouched food.
Is this what the rest of it becomes?
Watching every glance. Measuring every conversation. Calculating who might be taking photos from the next table over.
The exhaustion hit harder than the injury.
When I finally reached Dean’s room, my pulse was hammering. He opened the door, stepped aside to let me in, then closed it fast behind me.
“Sit.”
I obeyed before thinking about it.
Dean stayed standing in front of me for a second, arms folded, studying me with an intensity that made lying impossible.
“How bad?”
I considered minimizing it anyway. Years of habit pushed the words halfway up my throat before I swallowed them again. Dean waited without rushing me.
Slowly, I stripped off my training jacket and hooked my fingers beneath the hem of my compression shirt, lifting the fabric high enough to expose the line of my hip.
Dean crouched in front of me at once.
The sudden change in height altered the air between us so abruptly my breath caught. His hands hovered near my skin without touching yet.
“Tell me where.”
I guided his hand toward the front flexor. His fingertips pressed lightly along the muscle first, careful and methodical, checking tension before applying pressure. Heat climbed my spine anyway. Dean’s concentration only made it worse; he treated my body withthe same care he brought to skating, full attention narrowed to exactly what mattered.
I tensed when his thumb pressed deeper along the strain.
“There?”
“Yes.”
His eyes flicked up briefly. “Relax for me.”
Nobody should have been allowed to say words like that in a voice like his.
I forced the tension out slowly while he worked along the muscle, testing range and resistance. Nothing in his touch suggested pity. He handled me like an athlete first, which somehow made the gentleness underneath it harder to bear.
I found myself breathing normally again.
Dean reached for tape on the bedside table. “Lie back.”
The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he braced one knee beside my thigh, one hand sliding beneath the curve of my lower back to adjust my position. Entirely practical. Entirely necessary.
My body reacted anyway.
He anchored the first strip beneath my hip bone. “Keep breathing,” he said quietly.
I swallowed. “I had not realized I had stopped.”
He smoothed the tape downward with steady pressure. “You’re lucky,” he muttered, still concentrating on the placement. “If you’d pushed through another full session, this probably would have gotten uglier.”
