24. Roman
24
ROMAN
There’s a lightness in my movements today.
I feel good. Really good. At this point, it’s been weeks since the last hiccup in my therapy, and since then, I’ve been on top of everything: diet, sleep, working out but not overdoing it, all of it. And despite the fear of success that Lily pulled out of me this week, gait training has also been going well.
Somehow, our conversation during Trivia Night made it disappear.
As I enter the clinic for the first time since that night, I tell myself that those are the reasons I’m excited to be here today.
But I don’t think it works very well, because the moment I set eyes on Lily, happiness warms my chest like the morning sunrise.
God, she’s so fucking beautiful. It’s not just her physical appearance, with the shiny blonde hair and easy smile and sparkling blue eyes, it’s… her . It’s the heart she wears on her sleeve.
Not for the first time, it registers that she’s one of the few people to never give up on me. She dealt with all my self-hatred, my constant apathy, and she took my angry barbs on the chin like they were nothing. She withstood all of it and never stopped caring. Never stopped pushing me toward a better life.
She’s the closest thing to an angel on earth I’ve ever seen.
That happiness expands, tangling with such an immense wave of gratitude that my breath catches. And when Lily locks eyes with me, and the brightest smile appears on her face, the tsunami inside of me is overtaken by an entirely new emotion.
“Hey,” she greets cheerfully when she meets me in the middle of the gym. Her smile hasn’t dimmed a watt.
I don’t have a shot in hell of containing mine, either. “Hi, Doc.”
She presses her lips together, trying not to make her delight over the nickname obvious. And I try not to think any more about those lips, and how they felt on mine.
“Feeling okay?” she asks in that sweet tone of hers, eyes dropping over my body. “Anything hurting?”
I shake my head, my gaze never leaving hers. “I feel great, Liliana.”
I watch her shoulders drop the tiniest bit, losing the tension she always carries before she asks me that question.
And that inexplicable feeling in my chest grows.
“Okay good, that’s good,” she muses, her eyes still traveling over my body. She doesn’t see my amused smirk until she asks, “Ready to get started then? Why are you smiling?”
I shrug. “Just happy, I guess.”
Affection floods her expression. “Oh,” she breathes out, trying to hide her own smile. “I…guess that’s acceptable.”
I bark out a laugh. “Well, thank God, it’s acceptable .”
She shoves at my shoulder, but she’s grinning. “Shut up. You know what I mean.” Letting out a mock exasperated breath, she braces her hands on her hips. “Well, since you’re feeling so great today…let’s see if we can hit some PRs with the weights.”
I grin, excited to tackle the challenge. “Sounds good to me, Doc.”
She shakes her head as I make my way over to the treatment table, where we start with our usual exercises. We don’t speak for the next ten minutes, but the silence is a comfortable one. I catch her with a random smile on her face a few times—not that I’m much better today. It isn’t until she hits a sore spot on my calf, and I wince, that we speak.
“That hurt?” she asks, immediately concerned.
Chuckling, I respond, “Relax, Liliana. I’m just sore.”
“That’s because you’re working too hard again,” she grumbles to herself, already starting to knead the sore muscle.
I have to wait until her massage goes from painful to helpful before I can respond. “Well, what about you?” I tease. “What’s your workout regimen? I can’t believe I haven’t asked you that yet with all this torture you put me through.” When she doesn’t answer, just leans even harder into the massage, my eyes narrow. “Oh God. You’re a 5 a.m. workout girlie, aren’t you?”
She shoots me a grin. “Guilty.”
Shaking my head, I ask, “How on earth do you wake up that early when you’re here until 9 p.m.?” When she merely shrugs in answer, clearly trying to tamp down on her grin, I sigh. “Even as a professional athlete, I was always amazed by you people. Earliest I could ever get up for a workout was 6. And that was just wakeup time.”
“I don’t know, I kinda like being up before the world,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s quiet. Gives me a chance to catch my breath before the chaos of my day seeps in.”
I quirk an eyebrow at her. “You calling me chaotic, Doc?”
When she pinches me, I yelp and jerk away from her. Which only earns me a pleased grin as she straightens.
“Roman Ward, you are the definition of chaos in my life.”
I don’t know if the underlying meaning is good or bad. I can’t read her right now, even though I’m suddenly desperate to. Especially after?—
“Come on, let’s get started,” she says, gesturing over at the weights. “Enough yapping.”
Swallowing roughly, I nod and reach for my wheelchair. It isn’t until I’m seated and making my way over to the leg extension machine that I have myself composed enough to continue our conversation.
“So…what’s the 5 a.m. workout of choice?”
“Spin,” she answers excitedly.
I let out a thoughtful hum. “You like biking?”
Lily nods as she sets the height and weight on the machine. “Yeah. My family’s mountain biking trips are always my favorite. Sometimes on weekends, I’ll bike down Kelly Drive along the river.”
“It’s a nice view down there,” I say absentmindedly as I transfer into the machine’s seat. “I used to like running that path.”
I feel her gaze on me, can feel her hesitating as she mulls over something. I turn my head to look at her curiously.
“In full transparency, I’m thinking about putting a freeze on my spin class membership,” she blurts out. Which only makes my eyebrows pinch. She pulls in a shaky breath and explains, “I kind of want to switch to kickboxing classes.”
At that, my eyes widen and my stomach flips. I have to clear my throat before I can ask, “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
But with our gazes locked, I don’t even need her to answer. I can see every bit of her heart in her eyes.
And now I’m thinking back to the MMA factoids she dropped when we first started working together, and the day she played my walkout song when I was having a hard day. And I wonder if she goes above and beyond for every patient, or if, maybe, impossibly, I’m just a lucky one.
My chest squeezes at the possibility. I open my mouth to ask some version of that question?—
“There she is. I told you she has a client on Saturdays.”
Mine and Lily’s attention snaps to the doorway, where two men are entering the gym. The older man has graying hair and a big smile on his face, while the younger man adopts a casual hands-in-his-pockets stance as he looks curiously around the clinic. It looks like there might be a familial resemblance. And actually…
“Dad,” I hear Lily say from beside me. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
Lily’s dad waves off her concern before walking over and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Everything’s fine. We were in the neighborhood, so we wanted to stop by.”
The guy behind him—who I’m assuming is Lily’s brother—rolls his eyes and says, “I tried to talk him out of it, but you know he loves his pop-ins.” He jerks his head toward me and adds, “She’s with a client. You can ask her later, Dad.”
“Ask me what?” Lily asks with a frown.
“It’s about our trip at the end of the month,” her dad explains. “I figured it’d be easier to ask in person, but you’re right, I shouldn’t be interrupting. I thought you were done at four.”
“No, I’m with Roman until five.”
“Ah, okay. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed. I’ll just call you afterwards, then.”
But Lily still looks thrown off by the visit and confused about its purpose, so I tell her, “I don’t mind if you take a few minutes. I can wait.”
Sure enough, Lily sends me a grateful look before asking her dad, “Can you be quick?” When he nods, she reaches for his arm to pull him aside. “I’ll be right back,” she assures me.
Once they move to the other side of the room, I’m left alone with her brother. Based on the descriptions Lily has given me, I decide to take a guess.
“It’s…Sean, right?”
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, before a big grin appears on his face. “Yeah. She talks about me, huh?” He chuckles. “Probably because I’m the family’s agent of mayhem.”
I huff a laugh. “She’s never put it like that, but…yeah, that fits the description she’s painted.”
He shakes his head with a smile. “She’s always been the sweet child, that one.”
I think about the hell she’s put me through with PT and murmur, “I don’t know about that.”
Sean catches on to my meaning and lets out a loud laugh. “Okay, I can see how a patient of hers wouldn’t agree with that. I can only imagine how much of a hardass she is in here.”
I snort. “That’s putting it lightly. Your sister’s kind of a terrorist.”
Another booming laugh. “Oh God, I can’t wait to put that in the family group chat. The cousins will love that.”
Eventually, his laughter fades, and his gaze drops to the machine I’m working on. Which makes my mirth dissolve as well. “Hopefully, the terror she’s instilling is working, though,” he comments.
I fidget awkwardly in my seat. “Yeah, she’s been great.”
But then Sean’s brow furrows, his eyes moving over me again.
And then they go wide, and his mouth drops open in shock.
“Holy shit, I know you!” he yells. “You’re Roman Ward!”
Ah, fuck.
I clear my throat with a cough. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God, I saw you fight at the Garden in 2021! Your fights were insane , dude. I swear, you made it look like your opponents were working in slow motion.”
Another awkward throat clear. “Thanks, man.”
Finally, fucking finally , reality hits Sean in the face like I’ve punched him. His gaze lowers to my legs, and then flicks to my wheelchair.
“Oh… Oh shit. Shit . I completely forgot about the accident. I’m so sorry. I feel like an asshole.”
“All good, don’t worry about it.” But my voice is like sandpaper.
Which Sean hears, because he rushes to fix his fuckup. Gesturing toward Lily, he says, “But you said she’s been helping, yeah? That’s good!”
I don’t respond this time. And Sean can’t seem to help himself because he still follows that up with, “Do you think you’ll fight again?”
That familiar feeling of dread starts to slowly drip down my spine.
I give him a half-answer. “Not at the UFC level, no.”
“Ah. Okay. But I bet they have tons of coaching jobs, right?”
I force a smile this time. “Yeah, probably.”
And because I don’t think I can handle any more of his questions, I quickly steer the conversation in a different direction, not caring how sudden it is. “So…what’s the reason for the visit?”
Thankfully, Sean accepts the topic switch. Looking over at his dad and sister, he says, “We’ve got a family trip coming up, and Dad just wanted to pick Lily’s brain for some of the planning. We were finishing up a late lunch when he got the idea in his head.”
“Ah, okay. Where’s the trip?”
“Moab out in Utah. We’re going canyoneering.”
I rack my brain for what that might be, but the only thing I can think of people traveling to Utah for is the national parks. “Is that…hiking?”
Sean’s face lights up. “More like extreme hiking. They take you to these awesome canyons, but to get to and through them you have to hike, rock climb, rappel, swim, everything. The package I found also includes white water rafting in the tour. It’s awesome.”
“And Lily’s going with you?” I ask.
“It was her idea. For every family trip, a different person picks the destination and activity. I picked last time when we went shark diving. My brother picked skiing in the Alps the year before. This year was Lily’s turn.”
Shark diving? Skiing? Extreme hiking?
I can’t even fathom going for a walk along the river.
The discomfort inside me grows, slowly morphing into an entirely different animal. This is…a lifestyle I can’t access. I’m not sure why it’s only sinking in now, considering I’ve known how much she enjoys adventurous activities, but hearing her brother talk about how often she does them and how excited they make her… It’s finally hitting me just how different our lives are.
I swallow roughly, then again, trying desperately to swallow my unease.
At the same time, Lily starts walking back toward me, her father in tow. She must see something on my face because her steps stutter.
I will my face to become blank, hoping she couldn’t read much from it just now. Then I force a smile.
“So, you’ve got a trip coming up?” I ask, attempting a light tone.
She turns toward Sean, her brow furrowing. But almost immediately, she’s turning back to me, her confusion morphing into worry. “Yeah…” she starts, sounding hesitant. “I’m sorry, I was planning on telling you, I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. We’re doing a long weekend, so I’ll miss your Saturday session.” She twists her hands, and I wonder who she’s nervous for—her or me. “I always schedule a replacement PT for my patients when I travel, so you’ll still get your session in. If…that’s what you’re worried about.”
I wave her off with an attempt at nonchalance. “I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d take care of me.”
I’m more worried that I can’t take care of you .
Not that I’ll have the chance.
Lily seems to want to say something else, but her gaze cuts to her family, then back to me.
“Okay, well, we’ve clearly interrupted and overstayed our welcome, so we’ll get out of your hair,” Lily’s dad says, looking between the two of us. “I appreciate you giving us a few minutes. Hopefully, she goes easy on you after this.”
Despite myself, I snort and look at Lily. “I don’t think she even knows the meaning of that word, Mr. Davis.”
“Apparently, Lily is quite the ball buster,” Sean excitedly explains to his dad. “I believe the exact word used was ‘terrorist.’”
Lily’s jaw drops as her head snaps to me. “You didn’t .” When I only hold my hands up in a gesture of surrender, she plants her hands on her hips and orders, “Take it back.”
I quirk an eyebrow at her and say dryly, “Liliana, I’ve had Philly boxing coaches that didn’t push me as hard as you do.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting me to grab some pom-poms and make up cheers?”
“Honestly, it might be nice to feel supported for a change.”
At that, her eyes narrow.
And then she slaps me across my shoulder.
“You’re a dick,” she grumbles. Which just makes me chuckle.
It takes us both a second to remember that it’s not just us in the clinic, that her family is quite literally standing beside us, watching this entire exchange. When I turn my attention toward them, her dad’s eyes are wide, and her brother is blatantly gawking.
“Oh, umm…as you can see, Roman is one of my tough love patients,” says Lily, stumbling over her words.
Her brother is still staring, but her dad gives us a polite smile and says, “Well, some of us need that, don’t we? Whatever helps the recovery.” Then he gestures toward his son. “We’ll let you two get back to your session. I’m sorry again for interrupting. It was nice to meet you.”
I nod at him and reply, “It was nice to meet you too, sir.”
“I’ll walk you guys out,” Lily says hurriedly. Then she looks at me. “Light weights until I get back, yeah?”
I roll my eyes and make a scene about putting the machine’s pin in a lighter weight. “Yes, Doc.”
It earns me a smile, even as she’s already ushering her family toward the exit.
And all my worries about Lily and I living vastly different lives outside of the clinic are forgotten.
For now.