17. Solomon #2
Cecelia is in pain. She’s not limping, not quite, but there’s a definite tenderness in the way she puts weight on her left leg.
The injured leg. It’s subtle. I don’t think anyone would notice it if they weren’t watching her as closely as I tend to do.
Maybe my stupid obsession with her has its benefits.
I wait until the meeting finishes and most of her teammates are leaving before I call her out on it.
I know I won’t get anywhere if I draw attention to her injury in front of the other girls—or, God forbid, her coaches.
I don’t have to worry about her leaving before the others.
Cecelia is usually the last person in any training room or on any practice field. The consummate captain.
“I was surprised not to see you in the treatment room earlier.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that she won’t meet my eye. “I felt like I needed the mobility session more,” she says.
“How about we go there now?” I press. “I’d like you to get some time with the foam roller.”
“Oh, I can do that in my room.” She tries to step around me, still not meeting my eye, but I get in her way.
“Cecelia. Let’s go to the treatment room.”
She lets out a long sigh and then turns on her heel, not saying a word as she stalks to the attached meeting room where the staff set up for treatment.
“Where do you want me?” she asks, voice clipped, arms crossed over her chest.
I gesture to the table. “Hop up. Let me check it.”
She pulls herself up with her arms to sit, instead of jumping up, and I pretend not to notice as I pull on my gloves, the simple barrier that helps me stay in “trainer mode” instead of the other place my mind wants to drift to whenever I see her outside of a treatment room.
I start at her quad, using slow, careful pressure. “Any pain here?”
“No.” Then she sighs. “Lower.”
I slide my hand down and feel heat around the knee joint. Swelling. It’s not bad, but it is noticeable.
“When did this start bothering you?”
For a second, I think she’s not going to answer me. She’s gone right back to that sullen, closed-off girl she’d been when we first started working together. Pissed off that someone noticed her pain and dared to call her on it.
“Cecelia,” I urge, and she exhales, some of the tension and anger slipping from her shoulders.
“I think it was sitting on the bus for so long,” she says, twisting her leg this way and that, wincing a little. “It got tight.” Her voice drops to a mumble. “And maybe a little swollen.”
“Muscle tightness and joint swelling sounds like the kind of thing you should tell your trainer about,” I point out. “You know, since he’s the guy who helps you with your stretches and packed about a hundred ice packs for this trip.”
She tries to glare at me, but there’s no real heat to it. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” she says. “Are you gonna help me, or not?”
“Of course I’m going to help you,” I say calmly. “I’ll always be here to help you. You can trust me. You should know that.”
She looks away, like she’s embarrassed. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” I move her knee gently through flexion. “You sat for more than five hours. This is normal.”
I watch her face as I bend the knee a little more. No wince—good. “We’ll do some soft tissue work before I get you on the Game Ready.” I meet her eye. “Tell me if anything hurts. Don’t tough it out.”
There’s a pause before she nods. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. “I do trust you.”
Those murmured words hit me straight in the chest and I almost lose my rhythm with the massage. I wipe my palms on a towel to steady myself. “But I need you to trust your body too. Swelling and soreness is your body telling you that you need some extra help. Okay?”
She nods once and we slip into silence as I continue to massage her quads then her calves, reducing the tightness in her muscles.
Then we do some gentle range-of-motion work, mostly consisting of me bending and straightening her leg, attention switching between her face and knee to watch for any discomfort.
“Okay, let’s get some cold on it,” I finally say. I bring over the Game Ready, a cold compression machine we use in place of ice. I adjust the cuff around her leg and the machine hums softly as I set the pressure.
“You’ll feel it tighten, then cool,” I explain, even though I know she’s used this a hundred times. “If it gets uncomfortable, call me over.”
She settles back, watching me with an expression I try hard not to decode. It feels impossible not to let my eyes drift to her lips, not to think about our kiss.
Professional. I have to stay professional.
“Thanks,” she finally says, quiet. “It helps, having you take care of it.”
I step back just enough to give myself space, but not so far that she thinks I’m pulling away. “My job is to get you ready to play tomorrow.”
She smiles. “Yeah. Your job.”
The room settles into a hush, broken only by the faint hum of the cold-compression pump.
The too-bright overhead lights splash yellow against the conference room’s gray walls, and the low murmur of hotel noise out in the hallway feels far away.
Cecelia’s breathing slows in sync with the machine’s rhythm, and I feel the quiet stretch between us—comfortable, but edged with that familiar weight.
Not an awkward silence, but one that holds awareness with each breath.
I’m always so damn aware of her.
I force myself to ignore it, to move, to work. I focus on checking the machine settings and organizing my supplies, even counting rolls of tape that do not need to be counted.
Anything so I won’t have to think about how much I want to just sit beside her instead.
I leave the makeshift treatment room when Cecelia does. Part of me thinks it would be smarter to stay behind, to let her head up to her room on her own. But when she seems to hover by the door, as if waiting for me, I just can’t make myself do it.
It’s probably pathetic how badly I want to walk her to her door, just to spend five extra minutes with her.
Cecelia keeps the conversation light and constant, and I get the feeling she’s doing it on purpose. Maybe she felt that heavy sense of awareness in the treatment room. too. Maybe chatter is her solution to ease the tension I feel snapping between us.
Or maybe I’m overthinking everything like I always do.
We’re waiting for the elevators when she gets a text. She looks down at the phone screen before grinning up at me.
“Cards in Helen’s room,” she says. “The other student trainer is up there. Wanna join?”
Do I want to sit next to Cecelia on a hotel room bed and watch the way her face lights up with the excitement of competition, the same way it had at her cousin’s party? Yes, I do. Very much.
“Don’t you have curfew, Ransome?”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re not talking about a rager, dude. We’re going to sit in someone’s room and play cards.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I notice you didn’t answer my question.”