Chapter 6 - Reese
Reese
I’d been angry-organizing my kit bag when a light rap got my attention.
“You summoned me?” Theo’s casual grin worked overtime, but I wasn’t buying it.
“Shut the door.”
That seemed to do it. His smile faded pretty fast. Theo stepped into the medical bay and closed the door behind him.
He wasn’t as hungover as I thought he’d be, considering the state of the locker room last night.
In fact, he looked kinda put together, in a pair of blue jeans and a clean button-down, rolled to the elbows.
I caught myself staring and forced my gaze back to the kit bag.
“I gotta meet Hunter at the mall in half an hour, so if you don’t mind…”
“The mall? What are you, twelve?” I motioned for him to sit, but he ignored the chair at my desk and sat on the edge of the exam table instead.
He slid his hands into his pockets, careful, I noticed, not to engage that right shoulder. “We’re catching a movie, if you must know. It’s our day off, in case you missed that part.”
“I didn’t miss it.”
“But you called me down here anyway,” he said. “What’s up?”
I abandoned my kit bag and wheeled over on my chair. I promised myself I wouldn’t ambush him, in case that made him clam up even more. So I gave him the higher ground, and said, “You tell me, Bouchard.”
“You sent me a text saying you needed to talk urgently, but somehow I’m the one who has to do the talking?” He scoffed, narrowing his eyes at me. “Something about that doesn’t feel right.”
“You have some nerve coming in here and talking to me about what does or doesn’t feel right.”
“And you have about twenty-seven minutes to get to your point,” he shot back. “If you have one.”
“Your arm.”
“I have two of them, thanks for noticing.” But that easy smile faltered, and I knew we were getting somewhere.
“It’s not recent, like you told me. And after what I saw on the ice last night, it’s definitely not nothing.” I folded my arms over my chest and waited.
“Oh, that.” His laugh had a nervous edge to it, and he raked his fingers through his crop of dark waves to hide it. “It’s kind of embarrassing. What you saw was the result of my shoddy tape work.”
I got up slowly. “Why didn’t you let me tape it for you like last time?”
There was nowhere for him to go with the exam table behind him, but it still felt like he’d mentally backed away from me. A one-shouldered shrug, and then, “You had your hands full with the other guys.”
“Right,” I nodded, holding his gaze. “So, an act of courtesy then.”
That smile came back and he looked relieved for a second. “Exactly. I’m nothing if not— Aaaghh!” Theo crumpled over, hugging his shoulder. Because that’s where I’d just landed a well-timed blow. “Are you crazy?”
“No, but you are if you think you can keep hiding that injury.”
He straightened, remnants of pain still etched into the grimace on his face. Finally, he dropped his arm and attempted to roll the affected joint.
“It’s not that bad.” This time, he didn’t even bother to sound convincing.
“Theo…” I stepped closer, forcing him to look at me. “I’m the only way you get to keep playing. Anyone gets wind of this, and you’ll be warming the bench indefinitely. So it’s a really good idea for you to be honest with me right now.”
I saw through the act, however hard he tried to play this off as nothing. But I also wanted it to come from him. That was the only way it would work… the suggestion I was about to make. Maybe I was the crazy one in this unlikely alliance after all.
He pushed off the table and started pacing, sticking close to the door as if he were planning a quick getaway.
A caged animal. Something tipped in my chest, seeing him this way.
My years in this job had brought me face to face with the pressure these athletes faced, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
Watching the war waging behind his eyes.
“Honestly,” he started, that same fake levity back in his tone, “I’ll be fine if you keep taping me up before practices and games. I can keep playing.”
“Until your arm falls off?”
He turned to me, exasperated. He would’ve thrown out his arms if he was able to. “I’m the best defense we’ve got, and we’re headed into the playoffs with the best chance at the cup this team has had in years. What do you want me to do?”
“Stop being an idiot, for starters.” My response knocked the wind out of his half-assed reasoning, and he just stared at me. “But you’re right.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I am?”
“About me taping your shoulder to keep you in the game, yes,” I said. He punched the air and was halfway through a stupid victory dance, when I continued. “You’re not right in thinking that’s all it’s gonna take.”
Predictably, his excitement deflated as fast as it had spiked. “C’est poche.”
“T’est poche,” I deadpanned, and the look on his face was priceless. Equal parts delighted, shocked, and horrified. All at the same time.
“You know some French?”
“I know you’re screwed if you don’t do as I say from this point on.” I took hold of his arm—the left—and guided him back to the exam table. Telling him he sucked in his mother tongue made him a lot more pliant, and Theo obeyed without protest.
“Okay, okay, you win,” he said, sitting back down. “So, what’s it gonna take for me to get to finals?”
The question I’d been waiting for.
I’d barely slept after watching that game last night. His condition was impossible to hide unless some real work started, and that was the easy part. His commitment to the plan is what everything boiled down to.
“I’ll give you rehab to correct your shoulder,” I said then. “In private, obviously.”
Something flashed behind his eyes and even though I couldn’t read it, my stomach felt all weird and flipped over. I cleared my throat. “Taping you up before games is a short-term solution. Rehab guarantees you heal up and get stronger for finals.”
“And you’re okay to keep this from Coach, from everyone?” I didn’t look right at him when I nodded. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
For the first time since he’d walked in, I became physically aware of our isolation back here in the med bay. Door closed, and on the other side of it, everyone packed up and gone for the day. Behind his eyes were about a million thoughts, all of them aimed right at me.
“A promotion.” I spat it out. Wanted nothing more to do with it swimming around in the back of my head. “Van der Berg’s leaving, and they’re looking at me to take over as head trainer for The Surge. Don’t look at me like that. This isn’t funny. Stop smiling.”
He laughed softly. “What can I say, Hopper? Ulterior motives look good on you.”
“Shut up, and listen,” I said, swatting away his attempts at making light of this. “In order for this to work out for either of us, there has to be rules—”
“Buzzkill.”
“First off: I’m gonna need full transparency and commitment. No exceptions.”
He started unbuttoning his shirt. “You see me half-naked all the time as is, but okay.”
“I said you need to listen.” I put my hand over his, and he stopped what he was doing.
“No outside treatments. I’m your physio, and I’m the one who works on that shoulder.
Daily checks, for rehab and monitoring. And of course, finally, ultimate discretion.
Nobody can know about this, Bouchard. Not even Hunter. I’ll snap your arm off myself.”
A slow smile crept onto his lips. “I can’t tell if you just really want the job, or really want to have your hands on me. Either way, I’m liking this bossy thing you’re doing.”
“Good,” I said, and took a step back. “Now take off your shirt.”
His eyes shot to mine. We were in the deepest shit, and I was taking conscious steps to bury us further down, but still. I kinda liked that I had this effect on him.
Theo didn’t make a meal of the shirt thing, which somehow made it worse.
He just peeled it off his shoulders and set it beside him, palms braced on the exam table like he’d climbed onto some execution block of his own choosing.
I hated the little twist in my stomach when he did that.
Hated even more that I knew exactly why it was there.
“Lie down, chest to the table.”
He obeyed, stretching out with an ease that didn’t match the tension bunching across his upper back. The overhead fluorescent caught on the sweat-damp line of his spine, and I swallowed once before snapping on a pair of gloves I didn’t strictly need.
“This gonna hurt?” he asked, turning his head just enough to see me.
I touched his jaw to guide his face back down. “Probably.”
“Awesome,” he sighed. “I always preferred pain to Marvel movies anyway.”
I planted my hands on his right scapula first, the injured side, pushing gently to assess. The muscle twitched hard, making the purple bruise look like it was dancing under my thumbs.
“Relax,” I murmured.
“Trying,” he muttered into the table. “It’s kinda hard to breathe when you’re driving a spear through me.”
I ignored that. My fingertips skimmed along the border of his shoulder blade, tracking the way everything compensated upward and inward.
I moved my hands in rhythm with my breathing, hoping he’d relax enough to match it.
It turned into a kind of hypnosis. Nothing but the slide of my palms over taut muscle, the quiet push and pull, and the almost imperceptible sway of his shoulders under my touch.
“Your supraspinatus is locking up.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re a— a super… califragilistic—”
“Shh.” He clammed up, but not without enjoying his lame joke first. His upper body skittered with it for a few seconds, until my thumbs dipped into the bull’s eye.
He let out a muffled groan, his body tensing to the tips of his toes. I reminded him to relax again, to breathe, and the sound that came out of him was a mixed bag of effort, relief, discomfort. It almost had me feeling bad for him.
I shifted to his mid-back, letting my hands slide in slow lines to chase the muscle groups that had picked up the slack. He went suspiciously still.