“I’m pushing as hard as I can—”
“Use your weight.”
She puts her whole weight into it. She’s so close now I can smell her hair. Her body’s at eye level and I’m doing my damnedest not to look. I’m a professional
Cut the shit.
“You’re staring at the ceiling really hard,” she says.
“I’m managing.”
“Managing what.”
I open my mouth.“The situation.”
“What situation.”
“your—”
“Yeah?” A dare in it.
“Your leggings,” I say.
Fuck.
That came completely out of my mouth into the room.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No,” she says. “No, it’s—” She stops. Something in her voice. “It’s fine.”
“It’s an observation.”
“Very clinical.”
“I’m a clinical person.”
“Sure.”
“Nova.”
“Jax.”
“Two inches left,” I say.
“Two inches,” she agrees.
She moves. Finds the knot.
I go completely still.
Not the managed kind. The real kind. The kind that means something just landed that’s been sitting in my shoulder for two weeks and her hands are finding it without me directing them and I don’t have the capacity to manage the ceiling and this at the same time.
Pain first. Then comes relief. Then the very specific problem of her hands staying there long enough for my whole body toregister exactly who’s touching me and how careful she’s being about it.
There’s something unfair about competence in a woman I’m already trying not to think about.
“There,” she says. Quiet. All the banter gone.
