CHAPTER 5 — WHERE IT HURTS #2
The phrase landed between us without open aggression.
Noah stepped closer, placed the warm towel over the junction of my shoulder and neck, and I had to close my eyes for a second.
The heat sank in slowly, dissolving the most superficial layer of pain, and with it came the unbearable realization that he’d gotten the temperature, the pressure, and the placement right.
It wasn’t a miracle. It was study, practice, attention.
What irritated me was remembering that Noah had always had this talent: finding where it hurt without seeming surprised to meet resistance.
“Breathe in through your nose,” he instructed, his fingers adjusting the towel to better cover the tense muscle. “Out through your mouth. You don’t need to make it pretty. No one’s grading suffering in this room.”
“You talk as if you’re not evaluating my every move.”
“I’m evaluating the shoulder. The rest you give away for free.”
I opened my eyes. Noah was close enough for me to see a small shadow beneath his jaw, the movement of his throat when he swallowed, the way he avoided looking too long at any part of my body that wasn’t strictly relevant.
His restraint gave me a dark satisfaction.
It wasn’t just my body that betrayed me.
His betrayed him too, even if he tried to hide it under layers of professionalism, forms, and clinical orders.
Knowing that didn’t give me peace. It gave me hunger for a worse war.
“You were always terrible at faking indifference,” I said, watching his hand adjust the towel without touching my skin directly. “You just got more disciplined.”
Noah didn’t respond immediately. He picked up a small bottle, warmed cream between his hands, and waited a few seconds before touching the side of my neck.
When his fingers finally found skin—slow, firm, working the spasm with care—my breath faltered.
Not much. Enough. His face didn’t change, but I felt the microscopic pause in his fingers, the silent confirmation that he’d noticed.
“And you always mistook a physical reaction for an argument,” he said, resuming the movement. “Your body can remember things your head hasn’t forgiven. That doesn’t mean I’m going to use it against you.”
“Noble.”
“Necessary.”
“Coward.”
The word came out low, heavy, and his fingers stopped.
For a second, I thought Noah would pull away.
Maybe I wanted that—it would be easier to have confirmation that he always left when things got hard.
But he stayed. Took one breath, resumed pressure on the right spot, and just tilted his head to gauge my reaction.
That control irritated me more than any defense would have.
“You can call me whatever you want,” he said. “Just don’t move your shoulder while you do it.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“No. It’s all I’m going to say while you’re in enough pain to turn any truth into a weapon.”
“Convenient.”
“Safe.”
The word made me laugh—a humorless sound—and the laugh died when the massage hit a spot near my shoulder blade that radiated down my arm.
Noah felt me tense before I could hide it, eased off the pressure, and changed the angle.
He didn’t over-apologize, didn’t make a scene.
Just corrected. That efficiency left me nowhere to put my anger for a few seconds, and the silence between us filled with breaths, rain against the window, and the soft friction of his hand on my skin.
I didn’t want this to feel good. Didn’t want the relief to come from his hands, for the pain to ease under his guidance, for the room to feel less cold because Noah was nearby, focused on my body with an attention that wasn’t possession or guilt.
For four years, I’d imagined different versions of our reunion.
In almost all of them, I was cruel, he was sorry, and I came out the winner.
None of them included Noah sitting beside me on the bed, working my injured shoulder while teaching me to breathe as if he still had some claim to my survival.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said, without stopping the movement.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your jaw did.”
“Now you’re talking to parts of my face?”
“Some are less offensive than your mouth.”
This time, the sound that escaped me was almost a real laugh, short and unwanted.
Noah looked at me like he hadn’t expected to hear that, and that slip opened a crack in his expression.
Behind the exhaustion and caution, I saw something pass across his face.
Not a specific memory, maybe, but the old way we’d understood each other before everything became evidence, accusation, and leaving without goodbye.
The crack closed fast, but not fast enough.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Look like you remember something good.”
His hand went still on my shoulder. The room seemed to narrow around the bed, rain streaking the window, the side light making everything too intimate for a conversation that should have been about muscle and inflammation.
Noah pulled his fingers back slowly, wiped the excess cream on a small towel, and kept his eyes on his task for too long.
“I remember a lot of things,” he said finally, his voice so controlled it seemed to hurt keeping it steady. “The problem is you only want to talk about one.”
The answer cut deep. Because it was true enough to infuriate me and incomplete enough to keep me trapped.
I grabbed his wrist before he could pull away completely, repeating the gesture from the living room, but now without the excuse of provocation.
His heat under my fingers felt stronger in the bedroom, maybe because there was no Mason, no coach, no arena or audience.
Just Noah, my bed, my pain, and a silence too dangerous to break.