Her thumb finds the knot again and digs in.
I breathe through my nose.
“And this one?” she asks, nodding toward my left shoulder.
“The compass?”
“Yeah.”
“Keeps me pointed.”
She goes quiet.
Not the sharp kind. Not the defensive kind.
This one sits lower.
Her hand stays on my shoulder, warm now, careful in a way that does something stupid to my chest.
“Of course it does,” she says softly.
I don’t ask what she means.
I want to.
I don’t.
Her thumb finds the knot again, higher this time, tucked under the edge of muscle like my body hid it there on purpose.
I don’t make a sound.
She notices anyway.
Her hand stills for half a second, not long enough to make it a thing. Long enough to tell me she knows I lied about the pain.
“You do this a lot,” she says.
“Get rubbed down by journalists?”
“Pretend something doesn’t hurt because admitting it would inconvenience the room.”
That gets under the sheet faster than her hands do.
“Two more minutes,” she says. Back to the shoulder. Quiet again. “Then you’re done.”
“Yeah.”
“And Jax.”
“Hm.”
“Eight out of ten,” she says softly. “That’s not manageable. That’s not what that word means.”
I don’t say anything.
She finishes. Steps back. I sit up. Roll the shoulder.
She’s close enough that my knee could brush her thigh if I moved half an inch.
