23. Chapter 23
Quinn
My clearance session runs clean.
Eighty-two degrees of flexion. Pain scale steady at one point five.
Grip strength numbers that would make any team doc stop reading and just sign the paperwork.
I document everything twice because I've learned that meticulous records are the only armor that holds, and when I look at the column of data I've built over eleven weeks, I see what looks less like a chart and more like proof.
Proof that this worked.
"You're going to pass." I say it without looking up from my laptop, but I can feel Cade's attention sharpen from across the barn. "Reyes is going to clear you for bullpen work the second he sees these numbers."
"You sound surprised."
"I sound accurate." I close the laptop and finally meet his eyes.
He's sitting on the treatment table with his compression sleeve pushed down to his wrist, forearm muscles still warm from the final resistance sequence.
Morning light cuts through the barn door and catches the edge of his jaw, and I have to remind myself that I'm still his therapist for exactly four more hours.
"Your flight leaves at three. Reyes will want you throwing by end of week. "
"I know."
"And Graham called. Media van's been parked outside Fenway's sports med entrance since yesterday. Someone's running a story on your return date."
"I know that too." He doesn't move from the table. Doesn't look away. "Quinn."
I hold up my hand. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't say whatever you're about to say while I'm still holding your chart."
He's quiet for three full breaths. Then he slides off the table and crosses the barn floor toward me with the deliberate pace of a man who's been trained to read the space between bodies.
He stops two feet away. Close enough that I can smell hay dust and sun-warmed flannel, all these weeks of barn mornings folded into the space between us.
Close enough that my pulse kicks despite eleven weeks of practice keeping it steady.
"Then sign the chart."
My fingers tighten on the laptop edge. "Cade."
"Sign it. File it. Send it to Reyes." His voice drops. "And then let me say what I've been sitting on for three months."
The rubber band is tight around my wrist. I don't snap it. I haven't needed to for the last few days, which is its own kind of data point I'm not ready to think about.
"You're asking me to rush documentation."
"I'm asking you to trust that the documentation is already perfect.
Because it is." He takes another half step closer, and I can see the small scar on his left hand that he's never explained.
"You built the most airtight case your office has ever seen.
You don't need four more hours to prove anything to anyone.
The only person you're still trying to convince is yourself. "
He's not wrong.
I pull up the clearance form on my laptop. My signature block sits empty at the bottom, waiting. Above it, eleven weeks of data make an argument that even Kristen couldn't dismantle.
I sign it.
The timestamp reads 9:47 AM. I forward the completed file to Reyes's office, cc the organizational inbox, and close the laptop with a click that feels like the final entry in a chart I'll never have to update again.
"Done." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You're officially not my patient."
Cade doesn't smile. He steps into the space between us and takes the laptop from my hands, sets it on the workbench beside my folders. When he turns back, his expression is the same one I saw the first day he walked into my clinic in Boston: focused, certain, completely present.
"I've been thinking about you since the first time you told me I was being stupid about my elbow.
" His hand comes up to my jaw, thumb tracing my cheekbone, the same gesture from the porch two weeks ago, except this time neither of us has anywhere else to be.
"You made me read every page of that ethics policy before you'd even look at my imaging, like I hadn't earned five minutes of your trust yet.
I respected you for that more than I ever told you. "
My breath catches. I don't hide it.
"I'm not good at this." He says it quietly, honestly. "I've spent twenty-four years learning how to call a game, how to read a pitcher's tells, how to block a wild throw in the dirt. Nobody taught me how to do this part. But I know what I want, and I know I've never wanted anything this much."
"Cade."
"I'm going back to Boston today. I'm going to throw in the bullpen and help Diaz with his framing and try to get my team to the playoffs.
And then I'm coming back to you." His other hand finds my waist, steadying both of us.
"I meant what I said on the porch. Boston's the work.
You're what makes it home. I want you in both halves of my life. "
The question sits in the air between us. Not spoken, but present. I can feel it the same way I felt it the first night we played guitar together: the shape of something we both want, waiting to see if either of us is brave enough to reach for it.
"I have conditions."
His mouth curves. "I expected nothing less."
"You don't get to make decisions about my career without talking to me first. Ever." I hold his gaze, making sure he understands. "That includes statements to media, conversations with Reyes, anything that involves my name in a professional context."
"Done."
"And you don't get to disappear. If it gets hard, if the season gets loud, if you decide this isn't what you want, you tell me. You don't just stop calling."
"Quinn." He tips my chin up, his thumb brushing my lower lip. "I couldn't stop calling you if I tried. I've been looking for excuses to text you about grip strength variations for the past three weeks."
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. "That was transparent."
"I wasn't going for subtle." His forehead rests against mine. "I was going for present. I was going for here. I was going for you."
This time, I close the distance.
The kiss is nothing like the one on the porch.
That was testing. This is knowing. He tastes like coffee, warm and a little bitter, and underneath it that cedar-and-coffee essence that's become as familiar as my own heartbeat.
I grab his shirt to pull him closer and he responds by lifting me just enough that we're level.
"I've wanted to do this for eleven weeks," he says against my mouth.
"Ten weeks and four days." I correct him without thinking, and his laugh vibrates through both of us.
"You kept count."
"I kept meticulous records. There's a difference."
He kisses me again, deeper this time, and I stop pretending I'm thinking about documentation.
His hands are sweetly bracing the back of my neck and my fingers have found the scar on his left hand, tracing it without asking the question yet.
There will be time for questions. There will be time for everything.
When we finally break apart, his thumb is stroking slow circles at my jawline.
"I have to leave for the airport in two hours."
"I know."
"Come to Fenway for the playoff run. Watch from the stands instead of the medical staff section." His eyes are bright with something I'm learning to name. "Then, let me take you somewhere special, with tablecloths, after we win."
"After you win?"
"Confidence is part of my charm." He grins, and it's the same grin he gave me in my office eleven weeks ago, except now I know what it looks like when it's real instead of performed. "But also, yeah. After we win. Because I'm going to have something to play for this time."
I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on. "Buy me a ticket."
"Already done." He pulls back just enough to show me his phone. Two seats, three rows behind the home dugout, the Monday after next. "Graham helped. He said to tell you he wants credit at the wedding."
"Graham needs to mind his own business."
I say it. And I mean it. I just don't think about it for quite as long as I should before moving on.
"Graham also needs to stop texting me at four in the morning with batting stance tips, but neither of those things is going to happen." Cade pockets the phone and cups my face in both hands. "Quinn McKenzie. I'm going to miss the hell out of you for the next few days."
"Then stop wasting time talking and kiss me again."
He does.
***
Noah finds us twenty minutes later, standing by the open barn door with his arms crossed and an expression that's equal parts resigned and amused.
"Truck's leaving for the airport in forty-five minutes," he says. "Paige says if you don't come inside for breakfast, she's giving your portion to the dogs."
Cade laughs. I expect him to step back, to rebuild the careful distance we've maintained for nearly three months. Instead, he takes my hand and laces our fingers together, lifting our joined hands to press a kiss against my knuckles.
"Tell Paige we're on our way."
Noah's gaze drops to our hands, and his whole posture eases. Relief, unmistakable.
"Good," he says. "It's about damn time."
He turns and walks back toward the house, and Cade pulls me against his side as we follow. The morning sun is warm on my shoulders. The cattle are moving in the far pasture. Everything smells like hay and pine and the sharp Montana air of my family home.
"We'll come back to visit," I say, quietly enough that only he can hear. "Both halves. Like you said."
He stops walking. Turns to face me. The look in his eyes is the same one I saw when he promised to stay, when he kissed my wrist where my rubber band used to be, when he played guitar on the porch and let me hear something he'd hidden from everyone else.
"Both halves," he agrees, like a vow. "In Boston we'll build the everyday — the bullpen mornings, whatever this turns into. But this place will always be family. We'll come back when we can. Together."
I laugh. I can't help it. And when he kisses me one more time before we walk into Noah's kitchen for breakfast, I don't document it. I don't need to. I just let myself have it.
I let myself believe in the beginning of what comes next.