Chapter 15 #2
I look at Jessie. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t look away. “We can note you’ll cooperate fully with compliance,” she offers, gentle. “And that you’re seeking counsel before commenting.”
That part I can live with. “You can write that,” I say, nodding to the declination line. “And I’ll sign to acknowledge that I declined today pending counsel.” I emphasize the last two words because the room needs to learn them.
Patel hesitates—calculating optics in real time—then turns the page toward himself and writes exactly what I said, neat as a rulebook. He slides it back. I read every word. I sign. The letters of my name look steady even though my ribs feel like a cage for something flying.
From the hall, a burst of laughter tumbles by—rookies, careless, alive. I want to be out there measuring ankles and not sentences.
Patel caps the pen. “Thank you for your professionalism, Ms. Lane.” He stacks the unsigned ‘clarifying’ drafts back into the folio like a card trick and tucks the signed declination behind them, smile reinstated. “We’ll proceed accordingly.”
Jessie lingers after he leaves. The door closes on the hum of the corridor. “You okay?” she asks, not PR now—Jessie the human, the one who has cried in equipment closets and then re-powdered her nose to brief cameras.
“No.” The truth comes out quiet and surprising. I straighten a label that doesn’t need straightening. “But I will be.”
She nods, eyes glossy but dry. “I’ll walk you through tomorrow’s interview structure later. For now… maybe avoid brand row.” It’s a bad joke, and I love her for trying it.
“Fine,” I say, and this time the word scrapes.
When she’s gone, I wash my hands just to have a task, hot water turning my skin pink.
In the mirror above the sink, I look like the trainer who fixes everyone else’s damage.
I tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear and go back to lining up tape as if I can tape the day into place.
My phone buzzes on the counter, a rude dragonfly trapped in a jar. I ignore it for one ring, then two, then cave because discipline has never silenced curiosity. The screen lights my palm: Jason.
The preview is a single line that makes my throat go tight.
I need you. No one else.
Another buzz shakes the phone before I can decide what to feel.
A photo populates—his wrist, close and unforgiving in the bright light of the trainers’ room next door.
The skin is angry where tape cuts into bruising, the edges frayed from a rush job.
Whoever wrapped him was fast, not careful.
It’ll hold. It will also chew him alive by the third period.
My first instinct is purely professional.
Cut, re-wrap with less tension, space the anchors, float the pad over the ulnar styloid, check grip strength after…
The checklist rockets through me, precise and familiar.
My second instinct drags hard in the opposite direction—toward the elevator, the red light, the badge that chirped NO in my face. Stay away.
I type: On my way. 2 mins.
My finger hovers over Send. The words look like an admission and a promise and a dare. I delete them.
New message: Find Adams. Tell him to loosen the distal anchor by two lines. Add foam over the styloid and check capillary refill after.
It’s perfect—impersonal, exact, safe. I delete that, too, because even clinical feels like contact, and everything about today is designed to punish me for touching.
Another buzz. He doesn’t add words this time, just sends a short video.
It’s his hand flexing slowly into a fist, the tape biting, knuckles blanching, then opening again.
The sound is a breath, his, held and released.
He keeps the camera steady like he knows the angle I’ll want to see.
He knows me too well. Or I’ve taught him too well. Both are a problem.
I set the phone facedown like it’s hot. The trainers’ room shrinks to the radius of my breath. I count it—four in, six out—until my heart stops trying to walk out of my chest.
I’m not his trainer right now. I’m not his anything. I repeat it until the words feel true. They don’t.
The phone buzzes again, an insistent, miserable heartbeat. A second text blinks onto the screen when I flip it over, as if he could hear the argument in my head and cut to the part that matters.
Please.
I close my eyes, press my thumb hard into the tendon at my own wrist until it hurts, until sensation beats want. I picture Danvers’ thin smile. Jessie’s careful hands pushing a folder across glass. Miles with his color-coded protocols. The badge light flashing red-red-red.
I type and backspace twice. Finally I write: Ask Adams. He’ll do it right.
The three dots appear almost instantly. They pause. They vanish. They return.
He’s busy. You know my wrist.
Damn him for being right and for choosing the one string that vibrates through all my armor.
I think of the old fracture he skated on at nineteen, the scar tissue that makes his wrap a puzzle most trainers fumble the first time.
The first time I taped him, he looked at me like I’d handed him a new hand. The memory is a blade and a balm.
I force my thumbs to move.
Can’t. Policies. Compliance interview tomorrow.
I add a period because any more would be softness.
A long bubble of silence. I stare at the door, half expecting him to fill the frame, stubborn and unasked for. He doesn’t. The phone lights one more time.
Okay. Be safe.
I put the phone in the bottom drawer under the stock of pre-wrap and close it like I’m locking a vault.
My hands shake anyway. I turn back to the tidy rows I made earlier, the tape and scissors and swabs that never ask me for more than exactly what I can give.
I rest both palms on the counter until they stop shaking.
Then I start moving again because stillness is where feelings grow teeth.
I make it to my locker without remembering the walk. Muscle memory does the turning, the weaving, the nodding. The metal door squeaks like always when I pop it open—mint gum, extra shoelaces, spare hoodie, a stack of laminated protocols I could recite in my sleep.
And an envelope.
Plain manila. No name. No team letterhead. Just tucked on top of my hoodie like a casual threat.
For a second I consider closing the door and pretending I didn’t see it. Then I peel the flap back with my thumbnail, slow so I don’t rip whatever’s inside. A single glossy photo slides into my palm and tilts the room.
We’re young in it. Not kids, but close enough that the sheen of invincible is still on our faces.
It’s the training room at the old arena—white walls, bad lighting, a blue towel draped on the edge of the table.
Jason’s on the bench in a T-shirt, grin lopsided, hair damp, wrist taped by me.
My hands are caught mid-wrap, eyes up at him, laughing at something I can’t hear now.
His mouth is a secret I used to know. My ponytail is messy, my cheeks are pink, and we look like the part of a storm that hasn’t hit yet.
I don’t remember anyone taking this.
There’s a sticky note stuck to the corner. Block letters, black ink:
Thought you’d want this gone.
No signature. No context. The implication does the talking. Someone knows exactly where to press.
For a breath I can’t decide whether to tear the photo in half or press it flat to my chest. Instead, I slide it back into the envelope with hands that don’t feel like mine and shove it into the back corner of the locker—behind the extra hoodie, behind the binder I never use.
Hiding isn’t erasing, but it’s the only verb I have.
The trainers’ room hums outside the row of lockers—voices, the thunk of a door, the whine of a cart. I sit on the bench because my knees forget what standing is. My palm is damp where the gloss touched it. I wipe it on my pants and hate the shake that lingers.
Who left it? Miles wouldn’t. Jessie wouldn’t. Julia doesn’t do anonymous. Danvers? The thought turns my stomach. A player? A staffer with a long memory and a short fuse? The list blooms and keeps blooming until it sours. Paranoia is a luxury I can’t afford and a necessity I can’t escape.
My phone pings from the bottom drawer where I buried it. Another dragonfly buzz through wood. I don’t move.
It pings again, this time the calendar chime, bright and tidy like good news.
I stand because standing is an act of defiance, pull the drawer, and unlock the screen. The notification blooms across the top in clean league font, as if fonts can’t be weapons:
Compliance Interview — UPDATED TIME
Tomorrow, 7:00 AM
Location: Admin 4B (Recording Enabled)
Note: Please bring team-issued phone for device review.
The words tilt the floor. Device review means messages, photos, call logs—the digital echo of everything I’ve ever told myself I kept professional. The drawer feels suddenly too small, my phone too loud, the envelope in my locker too close to everything they might ask about.
I lock the screen like that could lock the day back into order and press it to my sternum. My heart knocks once, hard, then starts a new rhythm that feels like running out onto thin ice.
I slide the phone into my pocket, shut the locker, and lay my palm against the cool metal as if I can press secrets deeper by osmosis.
“Okay,” I tell no one, and the word fogs in front of my mouth like winter.