9. Chapter 9
Quinn
Idiscover the misdirected email at six fifty-three in the morning because I can't sleep, and checking my inbox feels more productive than staring at the ceiling for another hour.
The subject line reads "Sullivan Recovery Protocol: Progress Summary," and the recipient field shows Cade's team email address alongside Dr. Reyes's.
My stomach drops. I scroll through the sent items, confirming what I already know.
I copied the wrong address when I filed last night's notes.
Exhaustion, distraction, and the fog that comes from playing guitar with someone I shouldn't be thinking about.
The barn door creaks when I push through it.
I need to reset the chalkboard before Cade arrives, need to have my hands busy and my mind focused on something clinical.
Morning light cuts through the high windows and lands in stripes across the treatment table, and I catalog the equipment like a meditation: resistance bands hung on their hooks, goniometer on the bench, ice packs in the cooler, session notes stacked in their color-coded folders.
I hear the screen door before I'm finished. His footsteps cross the gravel outside, heavier than usual. He's already decided what he's going to say.
He appears in the barn doorway with two cups of coffee, which has become his ritual even though I never drink the one he brings. Today he doesn't smile. Today he looks at me like he has something to say and is deciding whether to say it.
"I saw the email." He sets both cups on the bench and stays by the door. "Closed it after three lines."
My hand moves toward my wrist before I catch myself. The rubber band is still there, but I don't snap it. "Did you read it?"
"Your progress report on me? No." He meets my eyes directly. "I saw my name and your clinical observations formatting and I closed it. Figured if you wanted me to know what you wrote, you'd tell me. If you don't, it's yours. I'm not going to take anything from you that you haven't chosen to give."
I study his face for the lie. The tell that would confirm he read every word, including the line about his tissue response that sounded too impressed even as I typed it.
I find nothing. Just steady attention, and the patience he's built up over weeks of following my protocols without argument.
"I'll contact Dr. Reyes's office about the distribution settings." I turn back to the chalkboard and pick up the red chalk. "It won't happen again."
"Quinn."
I don't turn around. There's a steadiness in his voice that I haven't learned how to deflect yet.
"About last night," he continues. "On the porch. What you said about not being sure you could pretend I don't affect you."
"We have a session to run." I write the date on the chalkboard in precise numbers. "Your goniometer readings from yesterday showed improvement. I want to document whether that holds through the resistance sequence."
"I know." His footsteps cross the barn floor, and I track the sound without looking.
Closer. Then stopping at an appropriate distance.
"I also know Kristen's inquiry and the leadership call are weighing on you.
And I know we're not talking about what happened between us because you need to get through Friday first."
I set down the chalk and turn to face him. He stands near the treatment table with his arms loose at his sides, not closing the distance I've created. Respecting the boundary even as he names what sits on the other side of it.
"What happened on the porch was me saying something I shouldn't have said." The words come out clinical. Practiced. "It doesn't change the protocol or our professional relationship or the stakes of that call."
"It doesn't." He nods slowly. "But it happened. And pretending it didn't seems like the kind of thing that makes everything harder, not easier."
The rubber band bites into my wrist when I finally snap it. The sting barely registers.
"Shirt off. We're starting with passive range of motion."
He complies without further comment. The morning session runs exactly the way morning sessions should: clinical, measured, documented.
I take his elbow through the full range and note the numbers on my chart.
His pronation holds steady. The UCL stress test produces no pain response until seventy-eight degrees, six degrees better than last week.
I record everything in triplicate because Kristen Vance has made documentation my only defense.
"Ahead of schedule," I tell him when we finish the resistance sequence. "Your tissue response continues to exceed projections."
"Because you're good at your job."
"Because you're following the protocol." I hand him his shirt. "The credit belongs to your compliance, not my instruction."
He pulls the fabric over his head, and I don't let myself notice his shoulders. Don't let myself remember that my hands have touched that skin in clinical contexts that felt nothing like clinical.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask."
"When did you stop believing compliments?"
The question lands somewhere I didn't expect. I pick up the goniometer and return it to its place on the bench. "Session's over. Noah said he wanted you to help check the south fenceline this afternoon. I'll clear you for that work as long as you stay within the load parameters we discussed."
"Quinn."
"I need to file these notes." I gather the folders without looking at him. "Dr. Reyes requires submission within twenty-four hours, and after the email issue, I want to be precise."
He doesn't push. He never pushes anymore. That might be the part I find hardest to navigate: his consistency, his steady presence. He shows up every morning and does exactly what I ask, and never once makes me feel like I owe him anything for it.
"I'll be in the south pasture if you need me," he says from the doorway. Then he's gone, and I stand in the barn with my folders pressed against my chest and my rubber band leaving marks on my wrist.
***
The afternoon brings Paige and her yellow labs and a chaos I didn't anticipate.
She appears at noon with grocery bags and a smile that means she's already figured out something I haven't admitted to myself. The dogs bound toward me, and I crouch to scratch behind their ears because it gives me somewhere to look that isn't my sister's knowing expression.
"How's the patient?" She sets the bags on the kitchen counter and starts unpacking.
"Ahead of schedule."
"I meant you."
I straighten and reach for the coffee pot. "I'm fine."
"Cade isn't the pitcher, Quinn." Paige says it like she's been waiting all the way up the driveway to say it.
"I never said he was."
"You don't have to say it. You're treating him like he might be.
" Paige crosses her arms, and I see our mother in the set of her jaw.
"You've spent five years rebuilding everything that jerk of a pitcher destroyed.
And now you're living under the same roof as another athlete whose career depends on you, and you're telling me the only thing you feel is professional concern? "
"What I feel is irrelevant to the clinical outcome."
"See, that's the thing." Paige steps closer. "Cade told Noah he'd rather lose ten days of recovery than have you bend one rule for him. That's not the same as what nearly ended your career. That's the opposite of it."
"I'm his physical therapist. Not his psychologist."
"You're the only one he's been honest with in years." Paige's voice softens. "And you're so busy protecting yourself from what happened before that you can't see he's not the same kind of problem."
"You don't know that."
"I know he looks at you like you're the first real thing he's seen in a long time. I know he plays guitar on the porch because it's the only way you'll let him be near you without clinical justification."
I cross my arms. There's no good answer to that, and Paige knows it.
"And I know you look at him too, when you think nobody's watching."
The rubber band snaps against my wrist. Once. Twice. Paige reaches out and stills my hand.
"I'm not asking you to trust him instead of the protocol," she says quietly. "I'm asking you to stop deciding he's dangerous just because the last one was."
I pull my hand free. "I need to file my session notes."
"Of course you do."
I walk past her toward the barn without responding.
***
The afternoon light stretches long shadows across the yard. Somewhere in the south pasture I can hear Noah's truck and the sound of fence posts being checked. Cade's out there working within the load parameters I approved, following the protocol I designed.
He trusts me with his career. I can't even trust him with the basics.
I sit at the barn bench with my laptop open and my folders spread around me, and I type the same sentence three times before I can make it clinical enough to file.
The session notes go to Dr. Reyes by midafternoon. I copy the send time into the HR response folder that Paige doesn't know I've been building since Kristen's first inquiry. Every clinical observation documented. Every ethical boundary maintained.
Every moment where I chose professionalism over whatever this is that keeps pulling me toward the porch at night.
Then I open his file. I scroll to today's entry.
I type the word I always reach for when there's nothing safe left to say.
Compliant.
I stare at it for a long time.
It used to mean something different.