CHAPTER 3 — PROFESSIONAL HANDS, DIRTY MEMORIES
POV: Damon Blackwood
Whitmore Tower stood on the oldest and most expensive side of campus, where Northaven tucked its donors away in apartments of glass, marble, and silence—as if money itself required soundproofing.
The penthouse had been a gift from Julian when I made the starting lineup, though gift was a generous word for anything my brother offered; he liked to remind me, in his elegant, roundabout way, that comfort came with strings attached, and that the Blackwood name always collected rent even when the property was in my name.
That night, the living room felt too large for one person and too small for two who’d been hating each other on a four-year delay.
The windows ran floor to ceiling, showing the campus bathed in cold light, leafless trees, and walkways slick from a fine rain that made everything look like an expensive photograph.
I sat on the leather sofa, too impatient for the ice pack, my shoulder throbbing under my black t-shirt and an untouched glass of water on the table, waiting for the private elevator to announce Noah Bennett’s arrival the way you’d wait for an officially sanctioned invasion.
He arrived at eight seventeen—not that I was watching the clock.
The elevator opened with a sound far too discreet for the size of the affront, and Noah stepped in carrying a small suitcase, a backpack slung over one shoulder, and a hard-sided therapy bag in his right hand.
His hair was still damp from the rain, a few strands plastered to his forehead, and the dark medical department coat made him look narrower than I remembered, though his posture said otherwise.
He looked tired, irritated, and handsome in a way that made me want to send him away just so I wouldn’t have to keep looking.
“Didn’t know I needed an invitation after you gave me the key,” Noah said, stopping a few steps from the elevator when he realized I hadn’t gotten up to greet him.
His voice was controlled, but there was tension in the way he gripped the suitcase, as if his hand needed somewhere to put all that force so it wouldn’t end up on me.
“Or does the fancy lock also require verbal humiliation before it lets the guest in?”
“Guests are invited,” I replied, setting the glass down without drinking and watching his eyes sweep the room—too fast to be innocent curiosity. “You’re a bureaucratic consequence with a backpack.”
Noah exhaled sharply through his nose and closed the elevator door behind him, not bothering to ask permission before moving into the room.
The rain had left dark stains on the shoulders of his coat, and the smell that came with him didn’t match the penthouse: wet street, cold fabric, vending machine coffee, and that clean therapeutic cream that had already found an irritating way into my memory.
My body registered all of it before my brain could turn it into contempt, and I hated every second of that wrong sequence.
“Great,” he said, setting the suitcase against the wall with too much care for someone pretending he wasn’t walking through a minefield. “I’ll pick the least offensive room, put my things away, and then we’ll do today’s evaluation.”
“We’ll do?” The words came out before I could decide if they were worth fighting over. “You’ve been in my house for forty seconds, Bennett, and you’re already talking like you have the right to set the agenda.”
“You slammed your shoulder into a barrier, lied about the pain, admitted to three weeks of symptoms, and now you’re sitting crooked on the sofa pretending you don’t want to brace your left arm,” he replied, dropping the backpack on an armchair as if that didn’t make me want to have the entire room sanitized—and, at the same time, didn’t make me imagine his clothes tangled with mine in the hallway. “So yes, we’ll do it.”
I stood up slowly, more out of pride than necessity, and my shoulder punished me for the decision with a twinge that shot up to my neck.
Noah noticed. Of course he noticed. His eyes didn’t drop scandalously, didn’t give away anything someone else could use as proof, but I saw the attention shift, saw the professional surface over the man, and that irritated me almost more than the desire did.
I would have preferred guilt, longing, anger—anything I could attack. Competence was harder to hurt.
“The guest room is at the end of the hall,” I said, passing him without offering to help with the suitcase.
When my arm brushed his wet coat—barely a touch—the skin under my shirt seemed to come alive in places the fall hadn’t reached.
“Don’t touch the office, don’t go in my room, and don’t pretend the kitchen needs your presence to function. ”
“By the look of this place, the kitchen’s been in mourning for months,” Noah replied, following me down the hallway with the suitcase rolling behind him. “Is there a rule about breathing near the windows, or can I do that without the captain’s authorization?”
“Depends. Planning to sell the air to someone afterward?”
He stopped for half a second, and the suitcase almost hit his heel.
The words had been cruel out of habit, faster than my better judgment, but they landed where I wanted and where I didn’t at the same time.
Noah turned slowly, and the recessed lighting in the hallway caught the green of his eyes—harder now, less patient.
The silence between us shifted temperature, and for an instant I almost wished he’d curse me out, because that would be simpler than the tired look of someone carrying answers he still refused to give.
“If you’re going to turn every hallway into a badly rehearsed version of Blackwood court, let me know now,” he said, low, without theatrics—and that gave the words a heavier weight.
“I can treat your shoulder while hating you, but I’m not going to sleep somewhere I have to apologize for a story you never let me tell. ”
The urge to demand the story surged up, so fast it almost became a question.
I swallowed it before it could escape, because Noah had this irritating way of leading me toward the truth down paths I hadn’t authorized.
Instead of answering, I opened the guest room door and let him see the space: large bed, light walls, view of the west side of campus, private bathroom, and no personal traces.
It was the perfect room for someone passing through.
That’s why it bothered me to imagine Noah there.
“Put your things away,” I said, stepping back before the image of him in that room could take up permanent residence in my head. “Ten minutes.”
“Fifteen,” he said, walking in with his suitcase and setting the therapy bag near the door. “And you're going to drink water before the evaluation, because you're using irritation as a substitute for hydration.”
“Don't give me orders in my own house.”
“Then stop acting like a patient in it.”
I shut the door before my mouth could do something stupid, like laugh, and walked back to the living room with the unpleasant feeling that I'd lost a small battle I hadn't even agreed to fight.
The penthouse felt different with Noah in the hallway.
Not because of noise—he made less noise than most people—but because of the way he invisibly occupied the space.
His suitcase was in the guest room, his bag near the door, rainwater from his coat pooling on the entryway floor, and my entire apartment seemed to have learned far too quickly how to accommodate someone I'd spent years pushing out in every way I knew how.
When he came back, coat gone, wearing a simple gray t-shirt and dark athletic pants, I was standing by the window with the empty glass in my hand—because apparently my body had decided to obey the hydration order just to betray me one more time.
Noah noticed the glass, didn't comment, and that irritated me in a ridiculous way.
The t-shirt outlined his shoulders without showing off, and his bare forearms caught my attention before I could look away.
Those were the hands of someone who studied bodies, but also someone who knew how to carry weight, adjust straps, hold a person right at the edge between pain and relief.
I remembered those hands holding a pen, a mug, the sleeve of my jacket on a night we almost kissed in the hallway of the old dorm.
“Where do you want to do this?” Noah asked, opening the bag on the coffee table and pulling out tape, a clean towel, a jar of cream, and a small portable lamp.
The question hung in the air with an ambiguity neither of us acknowledged.
I saw his jaw tighten when he caught it, and that small reaction gave me an ugly, hot satisfaction, immediately followed by anger at myself for noticing.
I pointed toward the windows, where there was enough space for the folding massage table the medical team had sent earlier.
Noah set up the equipment with confident movements, not asking for help, and I stood watching because it was impossible not to track his efficiency when every gesture felt like both a fresh memory and an old wound.
“Take off your shirt,” he said, after adjusting the table's height.
The words hung between us, too simple to justify the way my body responded.
I stared at Noah, expecting provocation, but he was focused on his bag, checking supplies as if he'd asked something mundane.
Maybe it was mundane for him. Maybe he'd spent the last few years saying this to other athletes, touching other bodies, assessing other injuries, using that same firm, calm voice while men better or worse than me obeyed.
The thought bothered me with irrational intensity.
“Do you say that so casually to everyone?” I asked, gripping the hem of my shirt with my right hand but not pulling it off yet.