22. Chapter 22
Cade
Quinn walks the goniometer through one last slow arc, and I watch her measure my elbow herself instead of looking at the number.
"One forty-two." She says it like a date worth remembering, then writes it down without looking up. "Full extension, full flexion, no compensatory shoulder hike. That's the number Reyes wants to see tomorrow."
"That good?"
"That's better than good. That's the number I'd expect from someone who never tore anything in the first place.
" She unwraps the band from my forearm, methodical, the same economy of motion she had on day one, except now her fingers linger a half second longer than the protocol requires.
She doesn't seem to notice she's doing it. I notice.
"Last session," I say.
"Last full session. Tomorrow's just the evaluation." She says it flat and factual, daring it to mean something else. "Reyes runs his own assessment for the file. Strength testing, stability series, range of motion documented by someone who isn't emotionally compromised."
"You're not emotionally compromised. You're the most objective person I've ever met."
"I'm aware of exactly how compromised I am, Cade. That's the whole point of having someone else sign off." She rolls the resistance band into a neat coil and sets it on the shelf Noah built. "I need it to be airtight. For both of us."
I want to tell her I don't care about airtight.
I want to tell her I'd take whatever number Reyes writes down as long as it gets us to the part where she stops measuring the distance between us in centimeters of motion.
I don't say either thing. We made a deal about waiting, and I'm not going to be the one who breaks it twelve hours early.
"Walk me through tomorrow," I say instead.
"Strength testing first, then the stability series, then a final interview where he asks you how you're feeling and you tell him the truth." Her eyes flick up to mine, sharp. "The actual truth, Cade. Not the version that makes my documentation look better."
"I've been telling the truth since the leadership call. Bit late to start hedging now."
That gets the smallest crack of a smile out of her, there and gone.
She closes the folder, squares the edges against the treatment table, and for a second neither of us moves toward the door.
The barn holds the gold late-afternoon light the way it does every evening now, dust turning slow in the air between us.
"Tomorrow," she says again, softer.
"Tomorrow," I agree, and let her walk out first, because I still have some discipline left.
I find a signal out past the south fence, where the satellite bars finally climb past one, and call Diaz on video because texting doesn't feel like enough for this conversation.
He picks up still in his catcher's gear, helmet shoved back, sweat dark at his collar. Bullpen session, by the look of it. "Sullivan. You're not supposed to be calling me, you're supposed to be getting cleared."
"Tomorrow. Today I'm calling to see if you've stopped dropping the low ball yet."
"Once. I dropped it once." He grins, but there's something underneath it, some static he's trying to talk over. "Coach says I'm starting Thursday. Against Tampa."
"That's good, Diaz. That's what you've been working for."
"Yeah." He pulls his helmet off the rest of the way, runs a hand through hair flattened with sweat. "Feels like I'm starting because your elbow's still healing, not because I earned it."
I know that feeling. I had a version of it at twenty-two, watching a veteran's roster spot open up because his shoulder finally quit on him for good. Nobody tells you the guilt comes standard with the opportunity.
"You earned it the day you started showing up four hours before everybody else," I tell him. "My elbow's got nothing to do with whether you can frame a low strike. That's just you."
"You're going to want your spot back."
"I'm going to want my spot back," I agree, because lying to him would be its own kind of disrespect. "But that's a different conversation than whether you're ready for Thursday. You're ready for Thursday."
He's quiet a second, looking at something off-screen, maybe a coach waving him back to the bullpen. "Marcus said you might not even come straight back. Said you might take it slow."
"Marcus talks too much." Though he's not wrong.
I haven't told anyone the full shape of what slow might mean, not even Quinn, not in so many words.
"Whatever happens with my timeline, you play Thursday like it's the only game that matters.
That's the only piece of advice I've got that's worth anything. "
"Copy that." He puts the helmet back on, already half turned toward the field. "Hey — Sullivan. Thanks. For all the calls. You didn't have to."
"Go drop a low ball so I've got something to needle you about Thursday," I say, and he laughs as the call ends.
I stand there a minute with the phone warm in my hand, thinking about how a year ago the idea of someone else wearing my gear would have felt like erosion.
It doesn't, now. It feels like handing something off on purpose instead of having it taken.
My phone rings before I've made it back to the house. Graham's name is on the screen, no video, which means he's driving somewhere or doesn't want me to see his face do whatever it's about to do.
"Tell me Reyes still has you on the schedule for tomorrow," he says, no hello.
"Ten a.m., barn time, which around here apparently still means ten sharp because Quinn doesn't believe in rancher math."
"She wouldn't." There's a smile in it. "How's the elbow, actually? Not the file version. The real one."
"Real one's good, Graham. Better than good. Full range, full strength, no hesitation on the throw down to second."
"And the other thing." He's never been shy about asking after Quinn. He wasn't the day he suggested I come out here, and he isn't now. "How's that going?"
"You already know how that's going. You knew it before I did."
"I had a hunch." Now he sounds pleased with himself, which is exactly how I expected him to sound. "She's not an easy person to get close to. Never has been. Whole family runs protective, but nobody runs it deeper than Quinn, for reasons that aren't mine to tell you if she hasn't already."
"She's told me enough."
"Then you know what tomorrow actually is.
Not just a clearance. The whole reason she's been white-knuckling that file for eleven weeks.
" His voice loses some of the teasing, settles into something steadier.
"She's not going to say it like that. She'll call it documentation.
But once Reyes signs off, there's no more file. No more reason to keep the wall up."
"I know."
"Be good to her, Cade. I mean that as your friend, not as anybody's brother appointing himself her gatekeeper.
She doesn't need a gatekeeper. She needs somebody who shows up the way you've apparently been showing up.
" A pause, and then, lighter again: "Also, for the record, I called this in April. I want that on the record."
"You called it in April. Noted."
"I'm going to want a very good seat at whatever this turns into," he says, and there's something in how easily he says it.
Like he's already picturing himself at a table that doesn't exist yet, and that makes me wonder, not for the first time, exactly how much of this Graham saw coming before any of the rest of us did.
"Get some sleep. Don't let her run extra stability tests on you at midnight out of nerves. She will if you let her."
"I know her, Graham."
"Yeah," he says, and there's something almost soft under the teasing now. "I'm starting to think you do."
I find Noah in the equipment shed after the call, elbow-deep in the guts of a baler that's been making a noise he doesn't like.
He doesn't ask about tomorrow. Just jerks his chin at a second wrench on the bench, and I pick it up and crouch down beside him because some things you understand without being told.
We work in silence for a while, the kind that doesn't need filling. He finds the problem. A belt is worn thin and he shows me how to thread the replacement through without my asking, like he's decided I should know how, like there might be a reason I'd need to know it again.
"You're good with your hands," he says eventually. "For a guy who gets paid to catch a ball."
"Spent a lot of summers helping my uncle with engines. Different kind of machine, same logic."
"Huh." He wipes grease off his fingers with a rag, considering me with the same directness he had the day we met, except the watchfulness has worn down into something else. "Quinn's evaluation's tomorrow."
"I'm aware."
"She's not going to sleep tonight. She'll say she is, and then I'll see her light on at two in the morning, same as every big day since she was a kid studying for something." He says it plainly, an old fact about his sister, not a warning. "Just so you know what you're walking into at breakfast."
"I'll bring extra coffee."
"Smart." He tosses the rag aside, claps the baler's panel shut, satisfied.
Then, not looking at me, like it costs less if he's looking at the machine instead: "You did good work out here.
Fence is solid all the way to the tree line.
Cattle like you, which is more than I can say for half the men Paige has brought around. "
"High praise."
"Highest I give." He picks up the second wrench from where I set it down, sets it back in its spot on the pegboard, exactly where it belongs, the way everything in this shed belongs somewhere.
"I imagine we'll see you around again."
It isn't a question. I answer it like one anyway. "You will."
"Good." He claps me once on the shoulder, the same firm weight as that first handshake at the airport, except this time it isn't a test.
"Door's always open. Whenever. You don't need an invitation next time."
He says it and walks out toward the house before I can find the right response, which is maybe the point.
Noah McKenzie doesn't linger for thanks any more than he lingers for anything else that might ask him to feel something out loud.
But I stand there in the shed a minute, surrounded by tools hung exactly where they go, and understand that he just handed me something more valuable than a thank-you.
He handed me a key to a door I didn't know I was hoping he'd open.
The house is dark by the time I climb the porch steps, except for the thin line of light under Quinn's door, exactly as Noah said it would be. I don't knock. She needs the version of tonight where she gets to pretend she's not scared, and I'm not going to take that from her hours before it matters.
I sit on the top step instead, guitar across my knees, and don't play anything. Just hold it. The weight is familiar, the same weight as every instrument, every glove, every piece of equipment that's ever meant something. An anchor and a promise at once.
Tomorrow, Reyes signs a form, and the file closes for good. The same file that's governed every interaction Quinn and I have had since that first Boston exam room.
No more ethics acknowledgment standing between us. No more protocol to hide behind when the wanting gets too loud to pretend it's professional.
I think about Diaz pulling his helmet back on, ready for a game that's his now. About Graham already saving himself a seat at a table that doesn't exist yet. About Noah handing me a key without ceremony, like family is just a fact you state plainly and then go back to fixing the baler.
Somewhere above me, the light under Quinn's door is still burning.
Tomorrow, the file closes.
Tomorrow, everything else gets to open.