CHAPTER 3 — PROFESSIONAL HANDS, DIRTY MEMORIES #2
Noah looked up. For an instant, his gaze dropped to my mouth before lifting to my eyes, and the speed of the movement didn't save either of us.
The air near the windows felt warmer than it should have, despite the rain streaming down the glass.
He closed the jar of cream carefully, as if he needed to give his hands something to do before answering.
“Only to patients who need to take their shirt off for a shoulder evaluation,” he said. “If that threatens your reputation, I can ask Mason to come hold your hand.”
“Mason would lose his hand.”
“Then be brave.”
The word shouldn't have affected me. Courage, at Northaven, was cheap currency, tossed around by people who confused taking hits with having character.
But Noah had said it as intimate provocation, not praise, and the combination made me yank the shirt over my head with more force than my shoulder appreciated.
The pain came with the movement, cutting through my control for a second. I hid the grimace too late.
Noah saw. His gaze traveled down my chest—not with open hunger, but with an attention that pretended to be clinical and failed in details too small for anyone else to catch.
The pause at my abdomen. The slower breathing when he noticed the scar near my rib.
The way his fingers went still on the towel for a fraction of a second before resuming work.
He could wear the physical therapist mask all he wanted; I knew the difference between observing an injury and fighting memory.
“Sit on the table,” he said, his voice a little lower.
“Should I ask if you're okay, or would that go in the report as arrogance?” I replied, tossing the shirt over the back of the sofa before sitting.
“It would go in as excessive talking to compensate for discomfort.”
“Did you learn that in class or during the years you spent practicing how to disappear?”
His hand stopped in the air, inches from my shoulder.
The blow was unnecessary, and maybe that's why it landed on both of us.
Noah didn't respond right away. When he touched my skin, his fingers were cold from the cream but firm, and the contrast made me hold my breath before I could turn the reaction into disdain.
He spread the cream slowly over my upper shoulder, working carefully to avoid pressing where the inflammation was worst, and my entire body seemed to recalibrate around those hands.
I tried to look at the window, at the campus, at anything that wasn't Noah standing between my knees, close enough for me to feel his warmth.
The position was technically convenient and morally indecent.
He needed to be there to evaluate angle, tension, and muscle response; I needed very little to remember that I'd already imagined Noah between my legs in contexts that didn't involve therapeutic tape.
The thought came raw, too adult for the version of us that never happened, and I crushed it with anger before my body could betray it in a more humiliating way.
“Breathe,” Noah said, moving his thumbs in slow circles near the base of my neck. “You're locking up before I even get to the most sensitive spot.”
“Maybe I don't like having you behind me.”
“Liar. You don't like not knowing whether you want to push me away or tell me to keep going.”
His response came so quietly that for a second I thought I'd imagined it.
I turned my face toward him, but Noah stayed focused on my shoulder, as if he hadn't just slipped a thin blade exactly where my defenses were weakest. My pulse shifted.
I felt it. He probably did too, because his fingers slowed, pressing carefully into the tense muscle, and the pain mixed with a relief so intense it nearly dragged a sound out of me.
“Careful, Bennett,” I said, my voice less steady than I wanted. “You're awfully comfortable for someone who should remember where he is.”
He leaned slightly to assess lateral mobility, and his breath grazed the back of my neck—warm and brief, enough to raise goosebumps on my arms. I gripped the edge of the table with my right hand, hating how every physical detail of him seemed amplified: the clean scent of his shirt, the heat of his thighs near mine, the slide of his fingers through the cream, the concentration that roughened his voice.
Touch had never been neutral between us.
Not when we were too young to admit it. Not now, with enough hatred to fill that room.
“I remember exactly where I am,” Noah said. “In your penthouse, trying to keep you from destroying your shoulder because you'd rather feel pain than admit you have limits.”
“You talk like you know me.”
“I did.”
The words opened a space neither of us filled.
Noah pulled his hands away for a moment, and the absence of his touch felt like an insult.
I hated myself for feeling that. He picked up a resistance band, asked me to do a controlled movement, and tracked the joint with his fingers hovering close—not touching, but my body kept anticipating contact.
With every inch of movement, my shoulder protested, and I channeled the pain into anger to keep from giving Noah any more signs of vulnerability.
“You're compensating with your torso,” he said, positioning his hand on my chest to prevent the wrong rotation.
The touch was technical. Should have been technical.
His palm landed on my upper chest, fingers spread, pressure firm, and my body forgot the word should with embarrassing speed.
I looked at his hand, then at his face. Noah looked too.
The distance between us had shrunk without either of us acknowledging it.
He was standing in front of me now, too close, one hand on my chest, the other holding the band, eyes locked on mine as if he'd realized too late the trap his own competence had set.
“Take your hand off,” I said, but it didn't sound like an order. It sounded like a test, and we both heard the difference.
“If I take it off, you'll do the movement wrong.”
“Maybe I want to do it wrong.”
“Maybe you want an excuse to blame me when it hurts.”
Anger surged, but beneath it was something else—denser, hotter, an old desire dressed as threat.
My right hand closed around his wrist before I'd even decided to move.
I didn't squeeze hard enough to hurt; I just held on, keeping him from pulling away.
His skin was warm under my fingers, his pulse racing fast enough to shatter any illusion of calm.
Noah looked at my hand, then at me, and this time there was no clinical mask to hide behind.
“Let go,” he said, low.
“You can pull away,” I replied, without letting go. “You just have to want to.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“You've always been good at recognizing terrible ideas after getting into them.”
His mouth opened to respond, but nothing came out.
The closeness turned the entire room into background noise.
There was rain on the glass, cold light over the couch, a black shirt thrown carelessly aside, and my breathing trying not to give away how deeply his scent had gotten under my skin.
Noah was close enough for me to see a drop of water caught in a strand of hair near his temple, close enough to remember all the times I'd almost touched that nape and hadn't—because we were cowards, sons of men full of rules and secrets.
He could have yanked his wrist free. Could have called me an idiot, reminded me about my shoulder, invoked professional ethics, or put distance between us the way he did four years ago.
Instead, he stayed. His eyes dropped to my mouth with the barest slip of control, and that was worse than any confession.
My body leaned forward before my brain caught up—just a fraction, enough to change his breathing.
The hand on my chest didn't push. Didn't pull either.
It stayed there, warm, open, a fragile border between treatment and disaster.
The doorbell rang.
The sound cut through the moment like a blade thrown between us.
Noah stepped back first, too fast to seem indifferent, and I let go of his wrist as if his skin had burned me.
The pain in my shoulder came roaring back—maybe from the sudden movement, maybe because without the distraction of his body, my nervous system remembered why we were doing this in the first place.
I took a deep breath, grabbed the shirt from the couch with my right hand, and pulled it on with enough difficulty for Noah to notice, but he was smart enough not to offer help.
“Were you expecting someone?” he asked, his voice rougher than before, screwing the lid back on the cream with irritating precision.
“No,” I replied, crossing the room before he could fully recover his professional composure. “But if it's building management telling me your dorm's been miraculously fixed, I'll make a generous donation to the plumbing fund.”
I opened the door from the panel, and Mason walked in carrying two bags of food, a box of drinks, and the smug expression of a man with the supernatural gift of showing up when he shouldn't.
He stopped when he saw Noah by the treatment table, the therapy bag open, my hair probably a mess from the shirt, and the room still thick with something no expensive air freshener could mask.
His eyes traveled from me to Noah, from Noah to the hand Noah was discreetly rubbing against his wrist, and then Mason smiled with the gleeful cruelty of someone who'd just scored material for months.
“I brought food because I figured you two would be responsible adults and forget to eat while trying to kill each other with big words,” he said, walking in without waiting for an invitation and setting the bags on the kitchen island.
“But now I'm getting the feeling I interrupted an educational demonstration on stretching.”