I didn't look back.
The corridor wasempty and cold and smelled like rubber matting.
Twenty seconds. I’d give myself twenty seconds and then I'd go back in and tell Knox he was right and put my gear on and be the version of myself that functioned.
"Is something wrong?"
Fifteen seconds, apparently.
Cross was in the corridor.
Of course he was. Cross was always in the exact location where I was trying not to have a problem. I had stopped being able to tell whether that was a conspiracy or just a fact about how small the facility was. It didn't matter. He was here, and he was looking at me with the assessment look and he was already saying something efficient about stress response and the game being in forty minutes.
I put my hand up.
"Don't," I said.
He stopped.
"I passed this morning," I said. "I'm cleared. I'm fine." I dropped my hand. "Can you just—five minutes? Can you not be my doctor for five minutes?"
The corridor held the quiet.
I hadn't planned to say the next part. I'd been not saying it for four days, since the training room, since the collar and the knuckle and the way he'd saidWesleylike it was a specific thing he meant. Since he'd handed me my shirt, laundered and folded, and walked away, and hadn't once in four days sent a single text to ask if my head hurt or if I was sleeping or if the wax cheese situation had been resolved.
Four days.
Not that I was counting.
"You didn't check on me," I said.
Cross went very still.
"Four days of rest protocol." I could hear how it sounded. I could hear exactly how it sounded, and I couldn't stop. "You gave me all these instructions: sleep, eat something real, don't look at your phone. And then nothing. Not once." I stopped. Started again. "Jenkins gets a knee thing in practice and you're right there.”
“Jenkins hurt his knee? When?”
“Days ago! You said something and he laughed. Your whole face was different."
I couldn't find the end of it, which was a problem, because Cross was looking at me and the end of it was the thing I wasn't going to say, which was:you looked at him like he mattered and you look at me like I'm a liability you're managing and I have been thinking about your thumb on my jaw for four days and you didn't even text me once.
"You look at everyone on this team like they're worth the time," I said instead. "And you look at me like I'm a problem you have to deal with."
Something moved across his face.
"That's not what I see," he said.
It wasn't an answer. It didn't explain anything. It just landed in the corridor between us and didn't close anything at all.
We were standing too close. Close enough that I could see the pulse in his throat. Close enough that if he moved an inch forward his chest would hit mine.
I should have stepped back.
I should have said something smarter than what I'd already said.
Instead I stayed right where I was and looked at his mouth like it had personally offended me.
I crossed the distance.
