CHAPTER 5 — WHERE IT HURTS
POV: Damon Blackwood
I could have driven Noah out of the bathroom with a single cruel sentence, could have used what little air still obeyed my lungs to remind him that this penthouse was mine, that this cold floor beneath my body was mine, that the pain was mine too, and that no Bennett had the right to kneel before me as if he still knew the way back.
The problem was that my shoulder seemed to have decided to separate from the rest of my body out of sheer spite, and the mere attempt to straighten my spine sent a sharp pain shooting up to my neck, stripping away any illusion of dignity I was still trying to hold onto.
Noah didn't touch me right away. That was the part that irritated me most, perhaps because I'd been prepared to reject his help, not to face his patience.
He stayed kneeling on the marble, just inches from my knees, hands open on his thighs, visible, steady, in no hurry to prove power over my body.
The cold bathroom light caught his messy hair, his serious mouth, the exhaustion in his green eyes, and I hated noticing that he looked more worried than satisfied. Worry was harder to hate than triumph.
“Thirty seconds,” he said, his voice low and controlled, as if he were talking to a wounded animal that might bite if anyone got too close. “I just need to know if this is a spasm, inflammation getting worse, or if you did something stupid after I told you not to.”
“You'll need to be more specific,” I replied, trying to channel the pain into sarcasm, though my voice came out rougher than I intended. “I do a lot of things you'd consider stupid.”
“True,” he said, and the response came too quickly, almost too familiar, before his gaze dropped to my hand clenched over my shoulder. “But I'm asking about the arm. Did you try stretching on your own? Lift weights? Sleep on it? Fight with Julian on the phone before dinner like I told you not to?”
The list made me want to laugh, and the urge died the instant a deep breath pulled the pain to the side of my neck.
I'd done two of those things, maybe three, depending on the definition of fighting.
Julian had called four times after Mason left.
On the fifth, I answered. My brother didn't need to shout to make me tense; Julian never shouted.
The polite voice was enough, the tone of a man who turned concern into a leash, the questions about Noah in my penthouse and the elegant suggestion that Bennett should never have been allowed anywhere near the hockey program again.
“I answered a call,” I said, because Noah kept looking at me as if my silence had a pulse too. “I didn't train, didn't lift weights, and didn't die, despite your obvious disappointment.”
“My disappointment has more to do with the fact that you got up from the couch without putting on the temporary sling I left on the counter,” Noah replied, leaning in slightly, still not touching me. “Was the call with Julian?”
My gaze met his, and something in the question made the pain shift, leave my shoulder and settle into older territory.
Noah tried to keep his face neutral, but the tension in his fingers betrayed a reaction he shouldn't have had.
Julian's name was a thread pulled too tight in that room, and I was starting to suspect that if I followed it with enough patience, I'd find something uglier than the accusations I'd been carrying for four years.
“You make that face every time you hear his name,” I said, holding my breath when my shoulder throbbed beneath my hand. “Doesn't fit someone who swears they have nothing to hide.”
“I never swore that,” Noah replied, and that partial honesty hit me harder than a lie would have. “Now answer what matters: did you lose strength in your hand? Tingling? Pain running down your arm?”
“No.”
“Damon.”
The way he said my name stopped me cold for half a second.
It wasn't intimate in the obvious sense, wasn't soft, wasn't a request. It was just my name in his mouth without a surname, without provocation, without the calculated distance of “Blackwood” or “Captain.” My body recognized it before my pride did, and for a shameful instant, I wanted to obey just to hear it again. I clenched my teeth against the idea.
“A little tingling in my fingers,” I admitted, as if I were offering useless information and not proof that he was right to keep an eye on me. “It came and went. You don't need to make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that says you're about to tell me I'm an idiot.”
“I don't need to say what your body's already proving on its own,” Noah replied, and then slowly moved his hand toward my forearm, stopping just short of touching, eyes on mine, waiting for permission without asking out loud.
I hated this part of him. The care. The ethics.
The way he refused to give me a good reason to accuse him of invading my space, even while kneeling in my penthouse bathroom in the middle of the night.
It would be easier if Noah were the clean villain of my memory, the boy who betrayed and ran, the name I could hate without remorse.
The man in front of me was far more inconvenient: he had steady hands, clear boundaries, and an irritating way of treating my pain as something real, not as an obstacle to the next victory.
“Just do it,” I said, because “you can touch” seemed too intimate.
He accepted the translation without comment.
His fingers wrapped around my wrist first, measuring the strength of my hand, my pulse, the response of my fingers.
The touch was clinical, but my body didn't have the same discipline as his résumé.
His skin was warm against mine, and the contrast with the cold marble under my hip sent a brief current through my good arm, traveling to places where pain explained nothing.
Noah pressed my fingers, asked me to resist, watched the tension in my forearm, and slowly moved up to my elbow, always too attentive, always too close.
“Your strength’s intact, but you’re in a bad spasm and you’ve aggravated the area,” he said, withdrawing his hand before I could decide if I wanted him to continue.
“I need to get you off the floor. Slowly. Without proving anything to me, to the mirror, to your emotionally dead brother, or to whatever Blackwood ghost is watching.”
“You talk too much when you’re nervous.”
“And you get unbearable when you’re in pain. We’re all revealing patterns.”
The response almost pulled something like a smile out of me, and that made me furious with myself.
Noah moved to my side, offering his right arm as support without touching my left shoulder, and I stared at that hand as if it were a trap.
Maybe it was. Maybe every gesture Noah made was a trap because my body still remembered trusting before my head screamed not to.
Still, the bathroom seemed to tilt beneath me, and the alternative was to keep sitting on the floor until the pain decided to show me some mercy.
I rested my right hand on his forearm. The muscle beneath my fingers was firm, stronger than it looked from a distance, and the warmth of his skin seeped through my palm with indecent familiarity.
Noah didn’t comment on my weight or the sharp breath that escaped when he helped me up.
He just adjusted his posture, brought his body closer to mine to stabilize the movement, and guided me out of the bathroom with a focus that made the anger inside me give way to something else—something far less useful.
The hallway seemed too long, and each step turned my shoulder into a new threat.
Noah stayed at my side, close enough to catch my waist if I lost balance, far enough to pretend the distance was professional.
His hand hovered near the small of my back, not touching, and the absence made me absurdly aware of what could happen if it did.
When we reached the bedroom, he turned on only the side light, sparing my eyes and, perhaps, my humiliation.
“Sit on the edge of the bed,” he said, already heading to the dresser where he’d left a small bag with emergency supplies. “I’m going to get a hot compress first to relax the spasm, then ice if the inflammation acts up. And you’re going to breathe with me for a few minutes.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“For you, breathing correctly probably is.”
“Bennett.”
“Damon.”
My name, again, unhurried, without edge.
I sat on the edge of the bed and hated the silent obedience.
The room felt too exposed with Noah inside it, though I’d spent years bringing people into that space without feeling anything beyond boredom afterward.
The difference was that no one stayed. No one looked at the books on the nightstand as if they might find clues.
No one saw me sitting there, shirtless, in too much pain to sustain the perfect facade and with too much history stuck in my throat.
Noah returned with a heated towel and stopped in front of me, assessing the best way to reach my shoulder without forcing me into awkward movements.
The side light touched his face more warmly, softening the hardness he’d been wearing since he walked into the arena that morning.
There was something deeply offensive about his calm.
I wanted Noah to tremble, to make mistakes, to show enough guilt to feed my hatred.
Instead, he held a warm towel and looked at me as if I were still someone who deserved care.
“I need you to let go of your arm,” he said. “I’m not going to pull, I’m not going to force anything, and I’m not going to do anything without warning you first.”
“Did you practice that tone with scared children or idiotic athletes?”
“Both tend to deny pain with the same conviction. The difference is that children improve when they grow up.”
“You’re very comfortable insulting me in my bedroom.”
“You’re very comfortable bleeding pride on my shift.”