“You’re favoring it. The left one. Every time you lift the axe, you compensate with your latissimus dorsi. The scapular rotation is limited. You hitch at the top of the arc.”
I stare at her. Even half-asleep, wrapped in a blanket, she diagnoses. She takes me apart.
“I’m fine.”
“You have a tear. Rotator cuff. Supraspinatus tendon, most likely. Old injury, probably. But you’re aggravating it with the cold and the repetitive motion.”
“Doctor.” I drop my voice an octave, flashing a warning. “I’m not your patient.”
“No.” Her gaze drops again, tracking the jagged scar over my ribs, a souvenir from a knife fight in Caracas I nearly lost. “You’re evidently indestructible.”
“I break just like everyone else.”
“Do you?”
She looks back up and holds my gaze.
“Because from where I’m standing, you look like a machine. You treat yourself like equipment.”
“Machines don’t bleed.”
“Exactly.”
The air between us tightens, charged enough to spark. She’s not just arguing; she’s pushing. She probes the perimeter defenses, looking for a way in. Looking for the man inside the weapon. The fault line.
I let the silence stretch. Let her feel it. Let her feel the cold radiating off me.
“Go inside. You’ll freeze.”
My voice turns calm. Flat. An order dressed up as concern.
“I’m not cold.”
There it lies. The defiance. The spark.
I step closer. I move up one step. I don’t crowd her space yet, but enough that she has to tip her chin up to keep eye contact. Enough that my shadow swallows hers.
“Inside.”
Something flickers across her face. Cold calculation.
She weighs the order. She weighs the man giving it. Her body answers before her pride catches up, a subtle shift of weight, toes angling toward the door even as her eyes stay locked on mine.
She hates my attention. She hates that I read the compliance in her posture before she even offers it.
Another beat. The wind howls harder, threading cold through the moment, whipping the edge of her blanket.
She exhales sharply, a puff of white.
“You don’t get to order me around.”
I don’t argue. I just hold her gaze, unblinking.
“And yet, here we are.”
She breaks first.
“Fine.”
