Page 42 of Summer Love

CHAPTER 15

Jace

Steph’s fingers slide along the scar tissue, from knee to hip, with that steady pressure I know by heart. Six years of Tuesdays. Same table, same white light overhead, same foam bolster under my knee.

I stare at the wall across from me. One corner of the ACL poster has been curling up for at least three months. No one’s fixed it. I notice it every week.

“You’re tense today,” Steph says, not looking up.

Her fingers move back up the outside of my thigh. The tissue is thicker under her thumbs, like a hard cord stitched into the flesh. Steph follows the ridge methodically—presses, releases, presses. Some spots are numb. Others are barely waking up, a vague tingling, like a limb left too long in one position.

“No more than usual,” I say.

Steph doesn’t answer. She never argues when she knows I’m lying.

Her fingers travel down toward the inside of my thigh, where the tissue is densest. I turn my head toward the window. The blinds are halfway down. Outside, the light has gone the coppery shade of late afternoon.

“The tissue’s still dense here,” Steph says, pressing harder. “But it’s gotten more pliable since last month. The work’s paying off.”

I nod. This isn’t the part I dread.

She moves back up. Her fingers trace the top edge of the scar, where the nerve decided to come back to life two years ago. I could’ve done without it. Steph slows down. Her pressure changes—more precise, more careful.

And she presses.

My fingers grip the edge of the table. I close my eyes; my jaw locks. The pain is sharp. Steph holds the pressure, then releases.

I breathe out.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “But it’s a good sign. It responds better than it used to.”

I pry my fingers off the table. There are nail marks in the vinyl. Mine, probably.

Steph goes back to work, lower down, on a numb patch. The contrast is almost worse than the pain. A piece of me that doesn’t respond anymore.

“If you didn’t come in every week,” she says, pressing the area with both hands, “this scar would be twice as stiff. The tissue would contract, your mobility would drop. You couldn’t surf the way you do.”

I couldn’t surf at all.

“After what you went through,” she goes on, “a lot of people would’ve quit.”

I don’t say anything. I’ve never known how to take that line.

“Most people would never have gotten this much mobility back,” Steph continues, eyes on the scar.

Maybe. But mobility doesn’t hand you back a career.

I can still throw a bottom turn or a cutback. The power’s there—it’s the back leg that drives, and that one’s intact.

The problem is the front leg. The one that absorbs, that holds, that takes five hours of a session and three days of competition. The one that tells your body you can go again tomorrow.

Mobility is the bare minimum. It’s what still lets me surf, teach lessons, keep the school running.

It doesn’t change a thing about the goddamn accident that keeps me pinned here while my sister travels the world doing what I always wanted to do. The accident that swallowed the money Noah was supposed to use for med school.

Steph works a warm cream over the whole area. The smell of eucalyptus mixes with the disinfectant.

“We’re done,” she says gently. “You can get dressed.”