I move behind him and lay my hands on his shoulders.
He doesn’t flinch, but tension detonates through his frame. He isn’t accustomed to being touched. He isn’t accustomed to gentleness.
“Relax. I need to get better leverage.” I step around the ottoman.
His sharp gaze tracks my movement like a turret locking on a target.
I step between his spread knees and stand right in front of him. If he leaned forward, his forehead would rest against my stomach. If I moved an inch closer, my knees would brush his thighs.
His skin burns scalding hot. Slick. Hard as granite. The heat radiates off him in waves, warming the air between us.
He tenses under my touch. His trapezius cinches into iron bands. He braces for pain. He braces for judgment. He braces for me to recoil from the violence inscribed on his skin.
“Relax.”
“I don’t know how.”
The admission rumbles low, honest.
“Learn.”
I dig my thumbs into the knot at the base of his neck. Pressing into stone. I lean in, using my body weight to force the muscle fibers to separate.
He inhales sharply, a hiss of breath pulling through clenched teeth.
I step into the heat radiating off him. My shins brush against the worn cotton of his sweatpants. To get the leverage I need, I have to lean in, lean over him. The position feels intimate. Obscene.
I work my thumbs outward, tracing the line of his clavicle.
I tell myself I’m assessing the injury. I tell myself I’m palpating for micro-tears in the fascia. I tell myself this is medicine.
But my hands linger.
The scar tissue sits thick, with raised ridges under the sleek, sweat-slicked skin. I trace the jagged line on his shoulder blade, following the path of old violence.
“Detroit. Beam came down.” He grunts the explanation, staring straight ahead at my midsection.
“And the ribs.”
“Bullet fragment. Ricochet.”
My fingers drift up to his neck, to the burn scar disappearing into his hairline. The one framing his face. The one I touched last night.
He goes still.
“That one was my fault.”
The words land heavy, like lead poured into the silence.
I don’t press. I don’t ask for the story. I knead the flesh around it. Treating the symptom.
But he reaches back. His hand covers mine, pinning my palm flat against the puckered ridge. He wants me to feel it. He wants me to know the texture of his failure. His hand is massive, engulfing mine, his calluses raw against my smooth skin.
“Lift your arm.”
He obeys. The movement proves stiff, guarded.
I slide my hand down his tricep, locating the insertion point of the shoulder muscle. I press deep into the divot between the bicep and the bone, hunting for the trigger point.
