Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stella
Once campus got over its initial cardiac event over S&T becoming official, life did what it always does.
It kept moving.
Not quietly.
Not kindly.
Not even all that slowly.
But the first wave of hysteria did die down.
People got bored in the way only overfed, over-scheduled, hyperconnected college students can.
Another athlete got caught liking the wrong girl’s bikini photo.
A fraternity lost social privileges for something involving fireworks and a golf cart.
Midterms hit. Deadlines piled up. Coaches barked.
Bodies broke. New gossip replaced old gossip like weather.
The edits were still out there.
The hashtags too.
The photos from Newport still made their rounds every few days when some account re-posted them for engagement.
But the initial frenzy softened.
Now it lived more in glances and half-smiles and the way people’s eyebrows lifted when Tristan and I crossed campus together, rather than in outright swarm behavior.
Good.
I didn’t need strangers narrating my life for me. And if the campus still wasn’t fully over it, Coach Alvarez certainly was.
But I never stopped playing like I still had something to prove.
By Thursday afternoon my whole body felt like one long bruise wrapped in tape.
My calves were tight enough to sing. My low back ached. My shoulder had that deep post-practice throb that makes opening a water bottle feel personal. Even my fingers hurt in that strange, athlete-specific way where every joint remembers every rep.
We finished a brutal late practice with extra serve-target work and transition defense until the whole gym smelled like sweat and volleyball rubber and people trying not to throw up.
Coach blew the whistle.
“Done.”
No one moved for a second.
Then girls folded in half, collapsed onto floor mats, dragged hands over faces, muttered prayers to various gods and sports medicine.
I dropped onto the bench and pulled my ponytail loose with shaking hands.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
One text.
Meet me out back. Don’t let anyone see you limp.
I stared at the screen.
Then I smiled.
Lila caught it immediately.
“Oh my God.”
I shoved my kneepads into my bag.
“No.”
“That smile should be illegal after the practice we just survived.”
Mari, face down on a mat, lifted one hand weakly.
“Tell Basketball Royalty if he has a brother who specializes in hamstrings, I’m available.”
I laughed under my breath and stood carefully, because my entire lower body objected to verticality.
“He doesn’t.”
“Then what good is he?” Lila called after me.
“Questionable good,” I said.
Then I headed out the side door into the back lot, where the sky was already turning that soft bruised California evening color and the cold air hit my overheated skin like mercy.
Tristan was leaning against his SUV in sweats and a black hoodie, arms folded, looking like the patron saint of very bad self-control.
The second he saw me straighten out of the doorway, his face changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that I felt it.
Concern first.
Then understanding.
Then the quiet, athlete-specific assessment of a man who knows exactly what overtraining soreness looks like because he’s lived inside it too.
He pushed off the SUV and came toward me.
“You’re wrecked.”
“Your powers of observation are unbelievable.”
His hand slid to the small of my back as he reached me, warm and steady.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
I let out a breath and leaned into him just enough to feel his body take a little of my weight.
That, all by itself, nearly made me emotional.
No grand gesture.
No drama.
Just the pure relief of someone strong enough to brace against.
He kissed my temple.
“I booked something.”
I blinked.
“What kind of something?”
“A recovery place off campus. Private suite.” His hand moved up and down my spine once, slow and calming. “Massage, cold plunge, steam, sauna. Just us.”
I looked up at him.
“You did not.”
His mouth curved.
“I did.”
“You booked me a secret athlete spa?”
“I booked us one.”
That should not have been hot.
It was devastatingly hot.
I stared at him.
At the hoodie.
At the dark hair falling a little over his forehead.
At the mouth that should come with a warning label.
Then I asked the only reasonable question.
“Did you also solve world hunger on the drive over?”
He laughed softly.
“Get in the car, baby.”
The place was tucked behind a nondescript row of offices in Menlo Park, hidden enough that you would never notice it unless someone told you exactly where to look.
No sign out front.
No flashy branding.
Just smoked glass, clean lines, and a keypad entry like rich people had discovered physiotherapy and turned it into a secret society.
Inside, it smelled like eucalyptus, clean stone, and money.
Soft lights.
Pale wood.
Muted music low enough not to offend anybody with a headache.
A receptionist who looked like she had signed three NDAs before breakfast.
The second we stepped inside, she looked up, recognized Tristan, then me, and did the sort of subtle professional recalibration that means yes, she absolutely knew who we were, and no, she planned to act like she didn’t.
Tristan gave our names.
She handed us robes and quietly said, “Your private recovery suite is ready.”
Private suite.
I turned to look at him.
“You really did solve this.”
He glanced down at me.
“I tipped enough that if anyone leaks anything, they’ll probably lose a kidney.”
I laughed so hard my sore abs protested.
“Tristan.”
“What?”
“That’s insane.”
He reached out and hooked a finger briefly under the collar of my hoodie.
“So are you. Keep moving.”
The suite was unreal.
Not spa-frilly.
Not candles-and-whale-music absurd.
Athlete heaven.
A treatment room with two massage tables.
A stone plunge pool sunk into the floor.
A cedar sauna glowing amber.
A glass steam room with eucalyptus drifting through it.
Heated towels stacked in cubbies.
Recovery tools lined up with military precision.
It should have felt indulgent.
Instead it felt like the first exhale after weeks of clenching.
The massage therapist came in first—a woman built like she had once broken somebody in judo and still occasionally considered doing it again. She introduced herself as Mira, shook both our hands, and asked us what hurt.
I almost kissed her on the mouth.
“Everything,” I said.
She nodded like that was a useful starting point.
Tristan snorted.
“You laugh,” I muttered, “but I’m one hamstring twinge from joining a monastery.”
He leaned against the wall and folded his arms.
“That dramatic?”
“Yes.”
He smiled lazily.
“Good.”
Mira split us into back-to-back sessions in the same room, so while one of us was on the table the other could stretch, hydrate, or sit there looking unfairly good in a robe.
I went first.
And somewhere between the first long press of her forearm into my right calf and the deep, clinical agony of her working through my shoulder blade, my soul briefly left my body.
“Breathe,” she said.
“I am breathing.”
“No,” she said calmly, digging into a knot that had apparently formed sometime during the Obama administration, “you are bargaining.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
Across the room, Tristan laughed.
I lifted my face from the cradle just enough to glare at him.
“I hate you.”
His grin flashed.
“No, you don’t.”
I dropped my face back down.
Unfortunately, he was right.
Even more unfortunately, after forty minutes under Mira’s hands, my body felt like something had been untied from the inside.
Loose.
Heavy.
Warm.
Human again.
I staggered off the table in the robe they gave me and Tristan took my place.
Watching him get worked over should not have been as fascinating as it was.
He was all hard planes and bruised masculinity even half-undressed, built with the sort of violent athletic grace that made everything he wore look temporary. When Mira started in on one of his shoulders, he hissed once through his teeth and muttered, “That’s personal.”
I sat cross-legged on the recovery mat with a bottle of water and watched him be humbled by sports medicine.
It was healing.
After that came the cold plunge.
Which I would like officially noted is barbaric.
We stood at the edge of the sunken stone pool in robes and silence while icy water reflected the low amber light and steam from the sauna drifted nearby in what I can only describe as active mockery.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
Tristan tied his robe tighter around his waist and looked down into the freezing black-blue water.
“Same.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
I looked at him.
He looked back.
Then he held out his hand.
“Three?”
I slipped my fingers into his.
“Why are all athlete rituals just weirdly expensive forms of self-harm?”
He smiled.
“Because performance is a cult.”
“Good answer.”
We counted down together.
On one we both still looked at the water with hatred.
On two I nearly bolted.
On three he squeezed my hand and we stepped in.
The cold was immediate violence.
I made a sound I have never made in my life and hope never to make again.
“Oh my God—”
“Breathe,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I hate this!”
“I know.”
It climbed our legs like punishment, then our hips, then our ribs, and by the time we sank low enough to let the water hit where it was supposed to hit, I was clinging to his forearm with enough force to leave marks.
He was breathing hard too, jaw tight, eyes narrowed, body tense under the shock.
But he stayed close.
Not sexual.
Not performative.
Just there.
A shoulder against mine.
His thigh braced lightly to mine in the freezing water.
His arm where I could hold it without embarrassment because that’s what cold plunge is, at its core—group suffering.
After the initial shock passed, something strange happened.
Stillness.
The pain became clarity.
The ache in my muscles sharpened, then receded.
My skin buzzed.
My lungs opened.
I turned my face toward him.