16
Rihaan
WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, I had stopped pretending my shoulder was fine.
Not that anyone needed to know that.
We were winning.
That was what mattered.
After the conversation with Maeve, something in me had snapped—not loudly, not cleanly, but in a way that left a residue under my skin.
Instead of sticking to my plan to take it easy, I’d ended up going into the match like I could outrun it.
Like if I hit harder, bowled faster, pushed my body just a little further past what it was willing to give, I could silence whatever had been left behind in that room.
So I did.
I over corrected everything.
Every ball I bowled felt like a negotiation with pain. Every run I took felt like I was trying to prove something no one had asked me to prove. Even the way I stood in the field—too sharp, too alert, too restless—felt like I was trying to outrun the echo of her voice asking me if I was serious.
By the end of it, we’d won.
A day early.
The stadium had erupted like it always does when the result tips too cleanly in your favour.
Even with it being an away game, there had always been love between the fans here.
Between my teammates shouting, helmets being thrown in victory, hands clapping my back hard enough to jolt my shoulder into something close to fire.
I smiled through it; I always did.
That part was easy.
What wasn’t easy was the way my arm hung slightly wrong at my side, like it had finally decided it didn’t want to belong to me anymore.
Every step back to the dressing room sent a dull, insistent reminder through the joint. Not sharp enough to stop me. Just persistent enough to make me aware of it.
Coach saw it immediately, his lips tightening.
One look. That’s all it took.
“Extra session,” he said, already turning away like the decision had been made long before I walked in. “Precautionary, otherwise no play at all for you in the next round.”
I almost laughed, but the seriousness in his voice stopped me.
Precautionary.
As if I hadn’t spent the last four days ignoring every precaution my body had been begging for.
“Fine,” I said instead. Because, what else was I supposed to do? After I’d left his office yesterday morning, he’d given me a resigned look as he found no hint of our truce. I suppose he was just glad I didn’t throw a tantrum when Maeve did swap for a field position.
Taking a quick shower, I changed out of the team gear and, made my way to the treatment room.
Tonight, the silence was enough to raise goosebumps across my skin. As though unlike the rest of the stadium, the noise of the win hadn’t been allowed to follow me in. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and tape, the kind of clean that never quite reaches the tension in your muscles.
Maeve was already there, her focus completely absorbed by whatever notes she was making on her tablet.
As though sensing my gaze, she looked up the moment I stepped inside.
And something in me—something I didn’t have a name for—shifted in a way that felt too immediate to be safe.
Her eyes narrowed at the way I shifted, and as though she knew how serious it was, jumped up. “Please, let me help.”
A rough breath left me as her sincerity reached me.
I swallowed before I nodded and closed the distance between us.
“Don’t lie down just yet.” The flat table creaked under me as I lowered myself, but pausing to follow through her words.
Pulling the shirt off my shoulder, I stilled under her gaze. Discomfort filled through me, making me roll my shoulder once before I could stop myself.
“Don’t—”
“Fuck”. I cursed instantly, my joint answering for my mistake in a deep, grinding ache.
A sympathetic expression filled her face, before her hand settled beneath my elbow. The other came lightly against my upper back, steadying me without forcing anything.
“I’m going to help you lie back,” she said. “I’ll take the weight of the arm. You just move the rest of you.”
A part of me hated how relieved I was.
“Ready?”
I nodded.
She lowered me slowly, keeping my left arm supported against his body. Even that small movement pulled a grimace from me.
“There,” she murmured. “Stop.”
I laid still, breathing carefully.
“How bad?” She finally asked, raising a brow.
Closing my eyes, I muttered. “Seven.”
“Rihaan.” Her voice left no room for arguments.
“Fine. It’s edging at Nine.”
“Thank you.”
Her hand remained beneath my elbow for another moment before she eased it onto the pillow she had positioned beside me.
Feeling her hot stare seep into my skin, I opened my eyes to meet her. Only to realise that she’d been watching my face the whole time.
My body betrayed me before I could decide how to react.
Heat moved through me—not the kind that belongs in a treatment room, not the kind that should exist between a player and the physio who was supposed to keep him functional.
It was worse than that.
It was awareness.
Of her proximity. Of the way her focus narrowed in the pads of her fingers touched my skin when she started her assessment.
“Where does it hurt?”
I kept my eyes on her as I lifted my good hand and touched the front of my shoulder, just over my acromion. “Here.” I moved my fingers toward the side of my shoulder, indicating the area around my rotator cuff. “And here.”
She nodded, following the movement of my fingers, her gaze settling on the spot I'd indicated. “Okay.”
She leaned a little closer. “Can you lift your arm for me?”
“I can try,” I muttered, even though I knew the pain that was coming my way. Bracing my good hand, I braced myself against the edge of the table and tried to raise the injured arm.
It barely made it past a few inches when sharp pain spiked through beneath the joint, and settled in somewhere deep.
“Stop.”
“I can go higher.”
“No.” Her hand came beneath my elbow before I could try again.
The contact was careful, almost frustratingly gentle. “I don't want you pushing through that.”
“I've had worse.”
“I didn't ask whether you'd had worse.” Her fingers adjusted slightly beneath my elbow, supporting the weight of my arm.
I felt the tension leave my shoulder by degrees.
“There,” she said quietly. “Let me take it.”
I didn't dare to move, and for a second neither did she. Almost like she was biting back something she desperately wanted me to hear. For some reason, that tiny pause felt more intimate than it should have.
“What?” I finally asked. “Just spit it out.”
Her eyes flicked back to mine then. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
She sighed. “You’re so used to playing through the pain that you’ve forgotten how to recognise the signs altogether.”
I frowned, but she continued.
“You shouldn’t have played today. I think this may have been because when you slid near the boundary in the first over in the second innings. I know Faroq warned you to be careful during the break.”
“I wasn’t going to sit it out,” My words had a bite I hadn’t intended for, but I didn’t take them back. “Let’s just get through this.”
Her lack of push surprised me, but there was no resignation on her face either. She just waited without pulling, or forcing.
Just until I finally shifted my gaze from her to the ceiling and let my arm settle into her hands.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The word caught me off guard, my mind routing back to the horrified look I’d spotted on her face yesterday morning.
“I'm going to move it passively now,” she said, bringing my attention back to the room. “You don't help me. I'll do the work.”
“I don't like the sound of that.”
“I know.” From the corner of my eye, I noticed her mouth curved faintly.
Then she began.
Her hand supported my elbow while the other steadied my wrist, guiding the injured arm through the smallest possible arc. I felt every millimetre. The first movement was tolerable. The second wasn't.
My jaw tightened and she stopped immediately.
“Pain?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
I indicated the same spot.
She nodded and eased my arm back down.
Her expression hadn't changed, but I could tell she was thinking.
“I'm going to palpate around the shoulder,” she said. “Some areas may be tender.”
“May be?”
She glanced at me. “Probably.”
I gave her a look, and that earned me the smallest smile. Then her fingertips settled against the front of my shoulder. I went still.
She worked methodically, pressing lightly around the joint, checking one point and then another.
“Tell me when it's painful.”
I said nothing.
She pressed again.
I flinched.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“That one?”
I nodded.
She withdrew her hand.
“Okay.”
I exhaled slowly.
She'd noticed everything.
The hesitation. The flinch. The fact that I'd tried not to show either.
And somehow, that bothered me more than the pain. “Do you think it’s a tear?”
She sighed. “No, but it’s definitely a sprain. I’ll have to flag this up to Dr. Blackwood, and the coaches.”
Something in me tightened. Not anger. But something sharper. Defensive in a way I didn’t like.
“You’re not recommending that I be benched.” I spoke through clinched teeth.
“You can barely move your arm without pain.”
“I can move it enough.”
“That isn’t the point.”
I pulled away from her hands before I could think better of it.
The absence of her touch was worse than the pressure.
“I’m not weak.”
She flinched, like she hadn’t expected the words. “I never said that you were.”
“You were thinking it.”
“No, I wasn’t.” She replied evenly. “I was thinking that if we gave you a week off, with the one week gap between the two games, you can have an easier recovery.”
“No. We already have a five day break coming up. I can take it easy.”
She didn’t reply, but instead she held my gaze, like she was trying to read into the words I’d spoken earlier.
And in that silence, something shifted in her expression. Under the frustration that had climbed with my words, there was something else, like she was re-calibrating what she thought she knew about me.
“Why does being benched bother you this much?” she asked.
I didn’t answer.
Because the answer wasn’t simple. Because it wasn’t just about this match.