THE CAPTAIN'S DARK OBSESSION

SOME PROMISES YOU KEEP QUIET

Spent three years telling myself I was fine never seeing her again. Turns out that was a lie I only believed because nobody ever tested it. Took her about four seconds to prove it, walking into my own gym like the place belonged to her and not the other way around.

My people set the whole thing up. I went through the contract myself, twice, checked the spelling on her name because I wasn't about to let some assistant mess that part up. So yeah, I knew she was coming. Guess I figured that meant something. It didn't. There's a difference between knowing something and actually sitting there ready for it, and I found that out the second she walked through the door.

She had circles under her eyes. Looked thinner than I remembered, the kind of thin that comes from working too much and sleeping too little, not the kind people choose. Chin up anyway. Walked in like I was just some guy with a bad knee and not whatever the papers have decided to call me this year. Hasn't happened in a while, somebody looking at me like that. Not since the accident. Not since that press conference put my name back in every headline in the city for the wrong reasons.

She grabbed my chart almost immediately, barely looked at me while she did it, and I let her have that. Easier watching her work than watching her face while she figures out how much she still can't stand me.

"Who cleared you to keep training on this," she asked, hands already on my knee before I even answered. Steady hands. Sure of themselves, like they already knew this knee better than the last three doctors combined.

"Team doctor."

"Your team doctor should lose his license."

Fair. He's spent two years telling me exactly what I want to hear because I sign his checks, and I let him, because the alternative wasn't something I wanted to sit with. She didn't bother softening it for me. Just said it. And that, weirdly, is what settled something in my chest, because everybody else in my life manages me. She just talks to me like a person.

Told her to fix it. She said it wasn't that simple. Told her to make it simple anyway, mostly because I wanted to hear her argue with me again, and she did, said I don't get to order her around like she's one of my teammates. Wasn't wrong about that either.

Then she said something about getting that impression three years back, quiet, almost to herself, and I could see the second she realized she'd said it out loud instead of just thinking it. Went stiff. Waited for me to throw it back at her, probably. I could see her bracing for it in the way her shoulders came up an inch.

Didn't take the bait. Told her we weren't talking about it. Not because there's nothing to say. There's plenty to say. I just don't know where that conversation goes once it starts, and somewhere in my apartment there's a room I keep locked that she doesn't know exists, full of things I'd have a hard time explaining to anybody, let alone her. So I shut the door on it before it opened.

Forty minutes of range of motion after that. Barely talked. Didn't need to. Every time her hands moved over that knee I had to work at not flinching, and it wasn't the knee causing it. Pain I know how to sit with. What I don't know how to sit with is her hands on me again after three years, having to act like this was routine and not the thing I've been half hoping for since she walked in.

She left with a list of instructions I probably won't follow the way she wants. Let her go without saying most of what was actually in my head, because none of it would've sounded sane out loud. Same time tomorrow. Said it like it was nothing. Like I hadn't spent years waiting for a reason to say her name out loud again.

Stuck around the gym another hour after she left. Iced the knee. Sat there thinking about the envelope on my desk at home, her mother's account number on it, cash counted out exact, going out through a courier who doesn't ask questions and doesn't know my name. Been covering that woman's medical bills two years now. Elena's never known a thing about it.

Phone went off around nine. Unknown number, the kind I'd usually let ring out, except security flagged it before I opened anything, some system they run that catches numbers bounced through burner accounts. Opened it anyway.

One photo. No caption. Me, mid stride on the ice, angle that only made sense if whoever took it was inside the arena during a closed practice, somewhere my own people swear nobody unauthorized could get to.

Had threats before. Comes with the job. This one wasn't the usual noise though. No name, no demand, no anything, just proof somebody could get that close whenever they wanted and I'd never even know they were there. That's the part that sat wrong. Not the photo itself. The quiet behind it.

Called my head of security instead of sleeping. Told him to keep it off the team, off the press, off Elena especially. Last thing she needs on her first day back in my life is finding out I've already got somebody circling me with a camera and no name attached.

Should've left it there for the night. Would have, if my phone hadn't gone off again forty minutes later. Different number. No name. No message.

Just an address.

Her address.

The one I've never given anyone, buried under three shell accounts specifically so nobody could trace it back to me keeping tabs on her from a distance she doesn't know about.

Somebody already has it.