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He nods. “I’m fine. I just…my arm is hurting, and I normally take a few ibuprofen or something to manage it, you know?” He shakes his head and closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the concrete wall. “It’ll be fine.”
Licking my lips, I try to think of what I can do, only one idea eventually coming to mind.
“Turn to face me,” I tell him, adjusting my position so I’m sitting sideways on the bench, one knee angled on top and one foot on the floor.
Huffing out a breath, he turns, mirroring my position, our handcuffed hands resting on our knees between us. Then I reach out with my free hand and begin gently massaging the muscles of his left bicep, above his cast.
Bishop groans, and I stop immediately.
“No, keep going. It feels so good,” he says.
I return to what I was doing, applying gentle pressure on the muscles and ligaments that stretch along his bicep.
“I don’t know if you remember, but I used to give amazing shoulder massages.”
Bishop chuckles. “Oh, I remember. Part of the benefit of being an athlete is access to physical therapists and masseuses when you have an injury or are trying to prevent one.” He shakes his head. “None of those people ever lived up to the ones you gave me after some of our harder practices.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re full of shit.”
“I’m not. I’m being serious.”
Pursing my lips and shaking my head, I continue what I’m doing, glancing at Bishop’s face occasionally. It’s a little difficult using just one hand, but it seems to be helping, and that’s what matters.
“And you’re even better at it now. Or maybe I’m just in more pain now, so it’s making a bigger difference. I don’t know. But seriously, Gabi. This is so helpful.”
He closes his eyes and groans again, and I swallow thickly, diligently keeping my thoughts on his arm.
“I just have stronger hands than I used to, that’s all.”
Bishop opens one eye. “All that time on the wheel?” he asks.
I nod. “It’s actually great exercise,” I say as I slowly stroke down a particularly tight area, making him wince. “It works a lot of core muscles, and on more than one occasion I’ve woken up the next morning feeling like I did hundreds of crunches or something.”
“You building up a six-pack?”
I shake my head. “Hardly. I like my croissants too much.” I pause, debating sharing what’s crossed my mind, eventually just saying it. “If either of us has a six-pack, it’s definitely you. Look at all these muscles you’ve put on. They must have you in the gym every day.”
I can feel Bishop’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at him. Instead I just focus on his arm.
“It feels like it,” he offers, leaning slightly to the side against the concrete wall. “We had an intense training regimen during the off-season. Running, weights, HIIT workouts. You name it, we did it. And during the regular season, we were expected to be in the gym on any day we didn’t have a game.”
My brow furrows. “That sounds kind of extreme.”
“It was, but my coach promised me I’d be ready for the draft combine. With the combination of the paces he put me through and a pre-draft training camp I went to over the summer, I was in the best shape of my life.”
My lips tilt up. “I can tell.”
I say it before I realize what I’ve said, and then my cheeks heat slightly. Thankfully, even though Bishop grins, he doesn’t draw attention to my admiration of his body.
“How was it? The combine?”
“A lot harder than I was expecting,” he says, his honesty surprising.
Bishop’s never been one to point out when he’s facing a particularly difficult challenge. He normally just puts his nose down and busts his ass then makes it look like it was easy all along.
“They do all these strength and conditioning tests to see where your baseline is. They take body measurements and check your range of motion. They watch you do squats and lunges and pushups. They test your balance and grip, make you do things like a 30-yard dash to see how fast you’d run bases.” He shrugs. “It was only two hours, but it was nerve-racking.”
That’s another surprising statement.
