Chapter 2 Chapter Two: Coach's Orders

WREN

Dad's office door slams so hard the framed team photo on the wall jumps.

That was me. I slammed it.

"Sit down, Wren."

"No."

"Wren—"

"I said no." I throw the clipboard on his desk. It skids through a pile of game film notes and stops against his cold coffee from this morning. The one he couldn't drink because he knew. "You knew at breakfast. You stood in our kitchen and said new guy, shoulder, like you were telling me the weather."

"I was going to tell you."

"When? After he'd been in my training room for a month? After he'd come over for fucking Thanksgiving?"

"Language."

"Are you serious right now?"

He scrubs both hands down his face. Under the fluorescent lights he looks older than fifty-two. He looks like a man who hasn't slept in a year, and that's because he hasn't.

"Sit," he says again, quieter. "Please."

I don't sit. But I stop yelling, which is the most he's getting.

"Why him?" My voice shakes. "Out of every player in the country. Why him?"

"Because he's the best center in the country."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer that matters in this building." He leans back, and the chair creaks. "You want the whole thing? Fine. Here's the whole thing. We finished second to last. The AD gave me one year. One. If we don't make the conference tournament, I'm gone by April."

"So get a different—"

"There is no different. Every top transfer went to programs with new arenas and NIL money we can't match. Hollis had offers too. Big ones. He turned them down."

"Why?"

Dad hesitates. It's quick, but I see it.

"He wanted a smaller program," he says.

"You're lying."

"Wren."

"You just did the thing. The pause. Eli does the same pause."

He exhales through his nose. "He didn't negotiate. He didn't ask about ice time or the coaching staff. He asked me one question."

"What?"

"He asked how Eli was doing."

The room goes very quiet.

I don't know what to do with that, so I do what I always do with things I can't hold. I throw them.

"He doesn't get to ask that. He doesn't get to care. He put Eli on a stretcher, Dad. I was there. You were there. You rode in the ambulance with him."

"I remember."

"Then how can you look at that guy and—"

"Because if I lose this job," Dad says, standing now, voice cracking right down the middle, "I lose the insurance. Do you understand me? Eli's neurologist, his meds, the MRIs, the physical therapy, every single thing that keeps your brother functioning runs through this university's plan. I lose my job, and Eli loses all of it. So yes. I'll put the devil himself on my first line if it keeps that kid covered."

I stare at him.

He sinks back into the chair like the words took everything with them.

"Does Eli know?" I ask.

"I'm telling him tonight."

"You should've told him before you signed the papers."

"Probably."

"You're a coward."

He flinches. He doesn't argue.

That's the worst part. Growing up, my father argued with refs, with reporters, with Mom. He'd argue with a brick wall if it looked at him wrong. Now he just takes it.

"I know you hate this," he says. "I hate it too. But he's on the roster. He's on scholarship. And he's a player on my team, which means he gets treated like every other player on my team. Understood?"

"Or what? You'll bench me?"

"Wren."

"Fine." I grab the clipboard back. "Understood, Coach."

I leave before I say something I can't take back. I don't slam the door this time.

I think that's worse.

---

In the hallway, I pull out my phone and open my texts to Eli.

Me: Did Dad say anything to you about

I delete it.

Me: Hey how's your head

Delete.

Me: I need to tell you some

Delete. Delete. Delete.

I put the phone away. Dad can do his own dirty work.

---

The training room is my favorite place in the arena. It's clean and quiet, with shelves of tape rolls sorted by width and a whiteboard where Doc Pruitt writes the daily treatment list in green marker.

Today, halfway down the list, in green marker, it says:

HOLLIS — R shoulder — eval + rehab plan — CASTELLANO

"No," I say.

Doc doesn't even turn around from the ice machine. "Good morning to you too."

"Doc. No. Put me on anyone else. Put me on Beau's groin. I'll do Beau's groin every day for a year."

"Nobody should do Beau's groin every day for a year."

"Doc."

She finally turns. Marla Pruitt is sixty, five-foot-nothing, and she once reset a dislocated finger on the bench mid-shift without the player noticing. Nobody in this building scares me except her.

"I know who he is, Wren."

"Then you know why I can't."

"I know why you don't want to." She dries her hands. "That's different."

"It's a conflict of interest."

"It's a clinical assignment. Your rotation requires a season-long rehab case. He's our only season-long rehab case. Partial labral tear, right shoulder, managed without surgery. It's a textbook case, and it's yours."

"Then I'll drop the rotation."

"Then you lose the semester, you graduate in December instead of May, and that neuro rehab residency in Denver you won't shut up about? The one attached to Front Range?" She raises an eyebrow. "They start in June."

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

Doc softens. It's barely a flicker, but I catch it.

"You told me in your interview you wanted to work with brain injuries because of your brother," she says. "That's a good reason. It's also a hard job. You're going to treat people you'd cross the street to avoid. Drunk drivers. Guys who hit their wives. Athletes who ended someone else's career. They still get your best hands. That's the job."

"He's not just someone, Doc."

"I know." She steps closer. "So here's what I'll give you. I'll be in the room for every session this month. If he says one wrong thing, looks at you wrong, breathes wrong, he's mine and you're off the case. No penalty. Deal?"

I swallow. My throat feels like sandpaper.

"Deal."

"Good. He's booked the second practice ends. Go wash that ink off your hand, you look like you stabbed a Smurf."

I look down. My palm is still streaked blue from the pen I snapped.

I scrub it at the sink until my skin burns. It doesn't come all the way off.

Practice runs ninety minutes. I spend every one of them in the training room, setting up the table the way I'd set it up for anyone. I lay out the goniometer, the resistance bands, fresh paper on the headrest. My hands are steady. I'm proud of that.

My heart is not steady at all.

It's just a shoulder, I tell myself. It's just a body. Bones, ligaments, a labrum. You don't have to look at his face. You never have to look at his face.

The door opens.

Doc glances up. "Hollis. You're early."

"Figured I should be."

His voice is lower than I expected. Rougher. I've only ever heard it through a TV, once, in a post-game clip he gave three years ago that I have watched maybe two hundred times.

I didn't mean for him to get hurt.

I keep my back to him. I adjust the paper on the headrest that doesn't need adjusting.

"Table's ready," Doc says. "Shirt off, sit on the edge. Your trainer this season is going to run your eval."

Fabric rustles behind me.

Then silence. Long enough that I have to turn around.

Knox Hollis is sitting on the edge of my table, shirtless. His right shoulder is mottled with an old yellow bruise, and there's a surgical-looking scar along his collarbone that wasn't in any article I read. He's bigger up close. Broader. He's holding his T-shirt balled in one fist like he doesn't know what to do with it.

And he isn't looking at Doc.

He's looking at me, like he's been looking at me since he stepped onto the ice this morning.

"Hi, Wren," he says.

I never told him my name.