Chapter 20 — ZAY
Berger is quieter today. I’ve been paying more attention since Teo told me about his phone call with Berger’s old teammate.
I press into his muscles and he winces but doesn’t narrate the way he would have two months ago, when every sensation came with a score and a comparison.
“Still compensating through the ankle.”
“I’m aware.” He studies the ceiling. “I’ve added distance to my runs.”
“How much distance? I need to know so we don’t create an imbalance with the strength and conditioning.”
“Enough. Maybe an extra mile.” The words sit there with no elaboration.
No scoring rubric. No follow-up about the route or the shoes or the weather’s effect on his splits.
I let the quiet hold because pushing Berger when he’s pulled in like this just pushes him further.
His eyes stay on the ceiling even after I move to the ankle.
I don’t think the extra mile is about running.
I finish his session and strip the table when he leaves. Wipe it down, reset the bolster, drop the used towel in the bin. Thirteen names on today’s schedule and Marchetti’s is ninth.
Tyler catches me in the corridor on my way back from the supply closet.
“Hey, Brooks. Quick thing.” He falls into step beside me, tablet tucked under his arm. “I was pulling Marchetti’s file on the road trip to prep for his sessions. That scheduling cadence is locked in. Same frequency, same slot, every week since September.”
“Long-term rehab. The protocol benefits from consistent frequency through the recovery”
“No, yeah, totally.” He nods. “Just noticed it stood out from the rest of the rotation. Most of the guys taper by this point or shift to maintenance. Marchetti’s the only file that hasn’t moved.
” He gives me a quick, collegial grin. “Must be a hell of a protocol. Anyway, let me know if you need anything for the Hájek groin. I’ve got notes from Pittsburgh. ”
He taps the doorframe once and keeps walking. His footsteps move down the hall, unhurried and easy. Twice now he’s noticed. From a man who isn’t looking for anything, that’s concerning.
Between sessions, I refill my water bottle and hear Marchetti before I see him. He’s at the far end of the corridor with Jensen and one of the equipment staff, both hands moving, explaining something with the total focus he gives everything. Jensen is grinning. The equipment manager is grinning.
Everyone gets this version. The full attention.
The grin that makes you feel like the most important person in the building.
I’ve seen him do it with trainers, with front office people, with the woman at the smoothie counter in the lobby who knows his order by heart because he made sure she would.
He means it every time. The generosity isn’t fake or acting.
It’s just him, running warm with whoever is nearest, and the question I don’t let myself finish is whether what he gives me at midnight is different because we’re simply alone or because it’s me.
I close the treatment room door and wash my hands and stand at the sink longer than the soap requires. Marchetti walks in humming. Pulls himself onto the table. Grins at me the way he grins at Jensen, at the equipment manager, at everyone.
“Range of motion. Let’s see where we are.”
“Missed you too, Brooks.”
The tissue is healthy, responsive, the impingement reduced to a footnote. His range is exactly where I want it to be. The session takes minutes now instead of the thirty I used to need. I’m running out of things to assess and we both know it.
“Flexion looks good. Abduction is full. We’re trending toward discharge.”
“You say the most romantic things.”
I write the numbers down. “We’ll reassess next week.”
He slides off the table. Stops at the door with the quieter grin, the one the corridor doesn’t get.
“Your place tonight?”
“After seven.” I don’t look up.
He’s at my door at seven twelve. I open it and his mouth is on mine before the lock catches, his hands on my jaw, the kiss open and hungry.
I pull him into the apartment by the front of his shirt and his back hits the hallway wall and I press into him, my whole body against his, closing the distance that twelve hours of professional language put between us.
His hands find the hem of my shirt. Pull it over my head.
His palms slide warm up my ribs and I strip his shirt and put my mouth on his shoulder, his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his throat where I can feel his pulse under my tongue.
The bedroom. His back on my sheets. I follow him down and his legs open and I settle between them, his hips rolling up against mine through the fabric still between us.
I push into him and his breath catches. I get his belt open, push his jeans down with his briefs, and wrap my hand around him.
I stroke fast, no teasing, no patience for the slow build tonight, pulling every sound out of him because I need them, because the sounds are proof that I’m here and he’s here and the door is locked.
“Zay.” His hand closes around my wrist. Not stopping me. Steadying. “Slow down.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.” His thumb moves once over the tendon inside my wrist. “Come here.”
He pulls me up, both hands on my face, and kisses me.
Slow. His mouth careful. His thumbs tracing my jaw with the patience of a man who has nowhere else to be and doesn’t believe I do either.
I try to press forward, to find the friction again, and he holds my face still and keeps kissing me like this, unhurried, deliberate.
I stop pressing and he rolls me onto my back.
I let him, which I don’t always do, but my hands have stopped arguing with his.
He undoes my belt. Pulls my jeans and briefs off together and settles his weight over me, his chest against mine, and I wait for the heat of him to push us back into the pace I understand.
Instead, he puts his mouth on my collarbone.
Presses his lips to the center of my chest and holds there, just breathing against my skin.
His hand traces up my side, slow, from my hip to my ribs, and rests.
Not moving. Not reaching. Just his palm flat against my ribs, warm and steady, the weight of a hand that isn’t asking for anything.
“Teo.” I can’t take the languid pace. I want more, need more. I need the friction and the pace I know how to meet. Instead, he gives me his mouth on my chest. His palm on my ribs. His breath warm and steady against my skin, and the tenderness of it splits something open in me.
He lifts his head. Looks at me. His eyes are too honest but I don’t look away.
I pull him down and we’re skin to skin, his cock hard against mine, the slick heat between us when he reaches for the nightstand and comes back with his hand wet and wraps it around both of us. His grip is sure and slow, his thumb dragging through the slick, his forehead dropped against mine.
“Stay with me,” he says.
His hand works us together. I am watching his face and his eyes are open, his arm braced beside my head.
He’s watching me and the exposure of that, two people looking at each other while the pleasure builds, undoes me more than his hand.
My hips push into his grip and he matches me but doesn’t speed up, won’t let me chase, keeps the pace his even when my body is asking for more.
His free hand touches my face as kisses me. Thumb along my jaw. Fingers curling behind my ear. The same easy gesture he scatters across every room he enters, except his hand is shaking. The touch that looked effortless at the arena trembles against my skin.
I come with his name pressed between my lips.
His hand still moving and his eyes still on me.
The orgasm rolls through me slow and devastating and I feel it in my chest, in the hand I have pressed flat against his back, in the breath I pull that sounds like it was torn from somewhere I don’t usually let anyone hear.
He follows close behind, his body shuddering against mine, a broken sound pressed into my neck that is quiet and private and nothing like the voice that fills every corridor.
We breathe. His hand loosens around us, rests on my hip. The sweat cools between our chests. He shifts his weight off me but stays close, his leg over mine, his face against my shoulder.
He gets up and heads to the bathroom, bringing back a washcloth for me. Because he knows where everything is in my place, just as I know his. He settles back on the pillow and reaches for me and I go.
We lie in the quiet. His breathing settles against my shoulder and his hand rests on my stomach, his thumb still. He isn’t sleeping.
The shoulder is nearly cleared. The reason I have for being in the same room with him twice a week is weeks from disappearing, and when it does, we’re two people who work in the same building with no professional explanation for any of this.
I put my hand over his on my stomach. Feel his fingers lace through mine. His grip tightens. The warmth of him is real and has a feeling it didn’t have a month ago, when it was just two people in a bed being happy and the world outside the door hadn’t yet started pressing through the walls.