“On a scale.”
“Four. Maybe five when I move too fast.”
He nodded. Absorbed it the way he absorbed everything—without visible reaction, filed somewhere I couldn’t see. “The ribs?”
“Sore. Nothing cracked.” I paused. “Doctor said.”
“I heard what the doctor said.”
The nurse came in with a printed sheet and a small bag—ibuprofen, an ice pack, the standard collection of objects that said you’re being sent home to deal with this yourself. She went through the instructions with the practiced speed of someone who’d given them a hundred times, made Coach confirm he understood the protocol, and left with a nod that managed to be both professional and faintly sympathetic.
The door clicked shut again after Coach confirmed he’d organized a ride.
Kincaid looked at the instruction sheet, then set it on the edge of the exam table within reach. He didn’t read it aloud. He didn’t go through it item by item the way someone would if they were uncertain. He just read it, retained it, and put it down, and I hadthe sense that he’d already committed every line to memory in the time it took the nurse to finish her sentence.
“Cinder would be here,” he said, without looking up, “but he’s out with Taz tonight. Friends in the city.” A pause.
The nurse had dimmed the overhead light on her way out, leaving the room in the softer glow of the single panel above the sink, and the shadows it cast made everything feel quieter than it was. Somewhere down the corridor, wheels on linoleum. A voice, brief and muffled, through a closed door.
I became aware, in the way I’d been becoming aware of things I didn’t want to be aware of all night, that I was sitting shirtless on an examination table and my ribs aching on a slow exhale, and Theron Kincaid was four feet away watching me with those gray eyes, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with any of it.
“The three guys,” I said, because I needed to say something that wasn’t any of the things I was actually thinking. “Did Renaud—”
“The police have footage because the door to the bathroom was open. Hotel security cooperated.” He leaned back slightly in the chair. “It’s handled.”
There was a quality to the way he said it—not possessive, not territorial, nothing that announced itself as anything other than a factual statement about the state of a situation. But underneath it something that felt like certainty that didn’t ask for your opinion about whether it was warranted.
I pressed the ice pack the nurse had left against my cheekbone and looked at the ceiling.
“I was going to take the shot,” I said.
He didn’t respond immediately. I could feel him waiting—that trademark patience of his, the kind that fills the silence with something you’re supposed to keep going toward.
“Fifth shift. Second one where I got hit. I’d decided. I was loading up, and then the check came and I—” I stopped. Movedthe ice pack. Put it back. “I had it. Before any of this. I want you to know I had it.”
“I know you had it,” he said.
“You couldn’t see it from the bench,” I said.
“I could see everything I needed,” he replied, flat and sure. “Your weight shifted three strides out—different from the first time. You’d committed.”
From thirty feet away, in the second period of a playoff game, he’d read my weight shift before the hit landed. I had nothing to say.
The ice pack was numb and cold. I focused on the sensation—the heat of my cheek, the biting cold counterpoint. Ribs burned on the exhale; my head throbbed behind my eye. Simple, manageable injuries.
“Antoine played forty-two points in four months,” I said. “He always told me I needed more experience to be better. Said it like encouragement.” I took a breath. “It wasn’t.”
Kincaid said nothing.
“It started before the trade,” I continued. “I was passing when I should’ve shot. Before any of this. I kept telling myself I’d work through it.” I pressed the pack harder. “He’d call me on the car ride home: You had the angle, but Briggs was open. The smart play was the pass. A debrief after every instinct shot.”
I hadn’t told anyone—agent, family, no one. Kept it locked away like a secret.
“By February,” I said, voice low, “I was passing up shots I should’ve taken. Not every time, just enough. By then, when a real chance came, I’d hesitate. The numbers still looked fine—Antoine was scoring on my setups. Which I think—” I stopped.
“Which you think was the point,” he said.
That tone again—no surprise, no outrage, no sugarcoating. Just flat, direct.
