CHAPTER 5 — WHERE IT HURTS #3
He looked at my hand, then at my face. He didn’t pull his arm away. He didn’t move closer either.
“Damon,” he said, and this time my name came as a warning.
I should let him go. I knew that. The rational part of me—the part that still worked when Noah wasn’t too close—listed reasons: he was my physical therapist right now, the coach’s son, a temporary guest, the man I accused of destroying my family.
I released his wrist before my hand decided otherwise, but my fingers lingered half a second longer than they should have.
Noah noticed. A flush crept up his neck, and I hated how much that satisfied me.
“Are you done?” I asked, because anything more honest would have been dangerous.
“For now,” he answered, standing slowly. “I’ll leave the compress on for another ten minutes. Then put ice on it. If the pain goes down to your fingers again, call me.”
“You’re giving me permission to interrupt your sleep? How generous.”
“I’m trying to keep you from waking up on the floor again, because marble isn’t a recovery plan.”
He gathered the supplies with silent movements, and I kept watching in a way I shouldn’t have.
Noah moved through my room like someone trying to take up as little space as possible, but his presence was everywhere.
In the smell of the cream, in the warm towel on my shoulder, in the air I breathed more easily now, in my wrist that still felt his fingers.
When he leaned down to grab the bag, his gaze fell on the nightstand.
I knew before he touched it.
The playbook was there, partially open, because I’d leafed through it after Julian’s call, looking for anything to keep me from thinking about Noah sleeping at the end of the hall.
The old photo had slipped between the pages, maybe when I set the book on the table, maybe because the universe had a cruel talent for exposing weaknesses at the worst possible moment.
Noah saw the white edge first. Then he pulled it out carefully—not quickly, not invasively—but as if he already knew this required delicacy.
The image emerged under the light: the two of us in the winter of freshman year, sitting on the low wall behind the old arena, me with my team jacket open, Noah wearing an oversized hoodie, his head tilted toward me and a smile I hadn't seen in four years.
I remembered who took the photo. Mason, before he understood there were things between us that weren't just a joke.
I remembered the cold, the smell of bad hot chocolate, Noah's hand almost touching mine on the wall.
I remembered keeping the photo to prove to myself that he'd once seemed happy next to me.
Later, I kept it to hate him better. The lie was always comfortable until someone turned on the light.
Noah held the photo as if it could cut him.
The color drained from his face, and that professional expression finally gave way to something raw, so fast it hit me before I could summon the right cruelty.
He didn't smile. Didn't cry. Just looked at the version of us that existed on paper, two boys too close to a truth they'd never spoken, and then looked at me.
“You kept it,” he said, and there was no accusation in his voice. That made it worse.
I should have said I'd forgotten it there.
That it was trash. That I kept proof of betrayal, not memories.
Should have ripped the photo from his hand and turned the moment into war before he saw too much.
But my shoulder still throbbed under the compress, my skin still remembered his touch, and the lie took half a second too long.
“Don't get emotional, Bennett,” I said finally, my voice low and cruel enough to try to salvage the moment. “Some things we keep just to remember where we went wrong.”
Noah lowered his eyes to the photo again, and his hand gripped the edge carefully, as if he still refused to damage even that.
When he set the photo back on the table, he didn't push it away, didn't fake contempt, and didn't give me the comfort of an easy reaction.
He just adjusted the bag on his shoulder and walked to the door, taking with him the heaviest silence he'd ever left in my room.
“Then remember it right,” he said, stopping in the doorway without fully turning around. “Because you weren't the only one who lost something that winter.”
He left before I could respond, closing the door carefully, as if he still cared about not waking a house that was already too awake.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the compress cooling on my shoulder, the old photo on the table, and the pain changing shape inside me.
I wanted to hate him for finding that. Wanted to hate him for touching my body and easing the pain.
Wanted to hate him for walking out with words that opened another crack in the past. The problem was that, for the second time that night, Noah Bennett had gotten too close to where it hurt, and I no longer knew if I wanted to push him away or force him to finish what he'd started.