Below the Belt(77)

Keeping it confined to her professional domain might be enough to get through this unscathed.

Yeah, right.

He walked in as Chalfant walked out. The guy looked raw, as if he’d taken too many beatings. “You okay, man?”

Chalfant tried a smile, but then just raised his hands and let them fall. “Last cuts are coming soon.”

And Brad got it. The nerves were chewing on him from the inside out. He clapped his hand over the younger man’s shoulder and squeezed. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning. You can’t let it get to you, or you’re just creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Easier said than done,” Chalfant said with a grimace.

“Try some yoga before bed,” he suggested. When Chalfant huffed out a laugh, Brad sent him on his way and stepped into the training room.

There were a few Marines finishing up their icing session. The guy intern was dumping out a bucket into the huge sink, while the girl sat chatting one of the guys up. And Marianne—his calm in the storm—moved from one table to the next, assessing and encouraging, educating and . . .

He grinned.

Handing out another pamphlet.

He walked in, and she turned immediately. The smile on her face faded, and he wondered what that was all about. He waved, then went to get a bag of ice and ask Levi to start his time on the sheet. The younger man glanced up with what looked like annoyance, but wrote his name and time down with a nod.

With no free table, he settled his back against a wall on the floor, stretched his knee out and closed his eyes. The best part about icing was the fact that it gave him an excuse to sit still for twenty full minutes.

As his body relaxed and his heart rate slowed, he heard Marines leave one by one. But it was as if he were hearing them from underwater, or from a great distance. For the first time in a long time, his mind felt uncluttered from the knowledge that he was keeping a secret from his coach. The simple act of unburdening himself to Coach had lifted a metric ton of weight off his shoulders.

He prayed the same thing would happen when he talked to Marianne.

He heard Nikki say her good-byes to Marianne and Levi. Then Levi came over and nudged his left foot. “You’re done. Dump the ice and you’re free to go.”

“Thanks.” He stood stiffly—even when he was relaxed, sitting on the floor wasn’t ideal—and tore the bag open, letting the last of the ice and water run into the sink. He watched over his shoulder as Levi grabbed his bag, took one last look at Brad, asked Marianne if she was sure she was okay, then took off. Maybe the crush wasn’t on Nikki, but on his boss. Brad smiled at that. He couldn’t blame the kid.

When he tossed the wet bag in the trash, he found Marianne sitting at her desk, back to him, making notes. He walked over and ran a hand over the nape of her neck. She jerked, then hunched away from his touch.

What the hell?

“Hey. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

She shuffled papers, stuck them in a folder, then turned. Her face was grim, and a sudden chill slid through his gut.

“What’s wrong?”

She lifted her hands; let them fall back into her lap. “You tell me.”

He raised a brow at her tone. She wasn’t typically so snippy. He propped one hip against a file cabinet and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d rather not play the guess-why-I’m-mad game. My sister plays that shit all the time and I suck at it.”

Marianne’s brows furrowed together. “This is a game? I asked you to tell me what was wrong. As your athletic trainer, that’s not a game. It’s a serious question.”

Okay, so they weren’t in lover-mode. Fine. “I wanted to talk to you about my knee.”

Her face lightened slightly, and she leaned forward. “Sit.”

He grabbed the other rolling chair and dragged it over. “I have some paperwork I need to hand you. It’s in my duffel out in the gym. Basically, it’s a torn meniscus. Not the worst injury, but something to deal with. And so we’re going in tomorrow morning with Coach thirty minutes before warm up to talk to him about it.”

She nodded slowly, watching as his hand unconsciously went to rub at the area just above his kneecap. “How long have you known that?”

He tensed. “It’s been painful for a while, but not unbearable.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“About ten days.”

Her eyes slowly slid closed, and her lips moved as if she were saying a prayer to herself. Brad waited patiently. Whatever condemnation she threw at him, he’d earned.

“But it’s hurt all along, hasn’t it?”

“Since the second day, I guess.” He shrugged. “I’ve worked through it. It’s not paralyzing pain or anything like that.”

“I know what it is.” She took a deep breath, then let it out and ran a hand through her hair. Some of the blonde hairs pulled loose from her short ponytail and drifted down to rest against her cheek. Her now-flushed cheek. Flushed from relief? Heat? Or anger?

“You’ve known for almost two weeks what was wrong, and you didn’t tell me.”

Okay, anger. “I wasn’t ready to—”

“And because I didn’t know, I wasn’t able to do my job.” The flush crept down her neck now, and her ice-blue eyes were like white-hot flames, searing straight through him. “And now, I get to go to the coach tomorrow and discuss this with him, and he’s going to ask me why I didn’t know this sort of important information two weeks ago, when you did.”