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She lowers her chin. “Less thank you.”

Carina laughs softly, and Cal ignores all of us as he looks at my laptop. He’s quiet for a second, eyes darting down to the table to read enough of my notebook’s list to understand. Cal Mercer always does that. He has an irritating habit of seeing too much while looking like he isn’t trying. Most people mistake his silence for disinterest, but they learn quickly.

He’s also a senior PT who knows his shit, despite being grumpy as fuck, so I put up with him. Most of the time.

“You’re building a place for the part after discharge, right?” Cal walks over to the fridge and opens it. “That gap where everyone says the athlete is fine, and the athlete still doesn’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the idea.”

“Then hire someone who understands the gap.”

I look at him, my mouth dropping open. I hate when grumpy men become useful.

Through reception, I can still see Sloane’s desk, even though it’s unattended. The clinic keeps breathing because she keeps the front of it calm. Patients don’t know how many things she catches before they become problems, and that’s the point. If she does it well, the room feels easy.

My studio needs easy at the front—I need easy at the front.

Sloane leans against the counter, picking at her salad. “Mila might be worth talking to.”

I sit up. “Who’s Mila?”

“My friend, Mila Kovacs. Good admin brain and a very good social media brain. Recovering from a hip injury, so she’s between things right now.”

Carina looks over. “Kovacs? I’ve heard that name.”

“You know her?” I ask.

“Know of her,” Carina says. “Commercial dancer. Hip labrum surgery last year, right?”

Sloane nods. “Yeah, she’s still rebuilding. She understands performance bodies, and she’d probably use the studio herself if she could.”

Cal grunts with a nod as he bites into an apple. “Dancers know the gap.”

Sloane is already typing out a message on her phone. “I’ll ask if she can come by.”

Mila arrives at 3:40 p.m., between my last patient and a phone call I’ve been avoiding with the booking platform company. She’s wearing a black cropped sweatshirt under a long cardigan, and her dark red hair is twisted up messily. When she steps into the empty studio with me, her right hip protects itself for half a second before she corrects it.

The space is mostly still tape and fresh paint, but Mila walks through it as though she’s already imagining bodies moving. She asks where the reformers are going, what kind of athletes I expect first, whether I want the social content to feel more educational or aspirational, and how much of my own face I’m willing to put on camera.

“Very little,” I tell her.

“That’s still workable.”

“Is it?”

“Hands, movement, voiceover, details. People don’t always need your face first, they just need to understand what you solve.”

“You.” I point at her. “I like you.”

She grins and turns toward the taped-out front desk area, then stops and looks back toward the studio floor. Her eyes travel over again to where the reformer rows will be. The late light cuts across her cheek, catching the fine tension at the corner of her mouth. For a second, I can see the dancer under the injured woman, or maybe the injured woman under the dancer. Both, probably. Bodies are rude like that. They keep all their history at once.

“So this is a place for athletes after they’re told they’ve been cleared, right?”

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Exactly.”

She studies me for a beat, then nods. “I know that stage.”

“Sloane said you’re rehabbing,” I say gently.