Page 1 of Anatomy of Us

Chapter 1

Zoe

The car engine has been running for fifteen minutes, and I can’t make myself turn it off.

Ten a.m. In January, Seattle cold bites straight through your clothes and into your bones. The sky hangs low and gray, like it’s warning me to turn around.

In the rearview mirror, I watch Wesley sleep in his car seat, head tipped at an angle that looks painful. Fifteen different moms have sworn to me it’s normal. I still want to fix it with my hands.

Twelve months since I’ve set foot here.

My appointment with the club’s medical staff is tomorrow. Technically, I shouldn’t even be here today.

But I need to see the building. I need to remember why I do this every day: the pelvic floor exercises that make me feel like my body is a bad science project, the fight with abs that were split open to make room for a tiny human, the way I stand in front of the mirror and pretend I recognize the woman staring back.

I need to believe my spot is still waiting for me.

There aren’t many cars in the parking lot. Probably staff. Or one player who can’t wait for preseason to start.

That used to be me.

I used to be the first one in, stealing at least thirty extra minutes in the weight room, chasing the title of fittest on the roster like it was a trophy.

I used to be a legend.

I used to control the tempo of every match, see passes other players didn’t even process. Olympic champion. World champion. Locked-in starter for the national team. Six league titles. League MVP four times.

Shit.

It feels like another lifetime.

Now I shake like a leaf trying to do a push-up.

When I finally cut the engine, the silence hits fast and hard, broken only by Wesley’s soft breathing. The reason I’ve spent a whole year not playing. The reason I watched last season on TV while commentators said my name and wondered out loud if I’d ever step onto a soccer field again, while my minutes went to someone else.

It hurt.

Every game from my couch. Every time they said “Zoe Méndez” and let doubt drip into their voices, it hurt like someone sliding a knife under my ribs and twisting.

And I would do it a million times over.

Because every time Wesley smiles at me, every time I watch him sleep, something inside me goes quiet and sure. Like, yes. This. This was worth it.

When I lift him out of the car, he doesn’t even wake. He just curls into my neck, warm and heavy, his breath damp on my skin. He’s huge. Sometimes I wonder when he stopped being that sleepy little newborn who spent whole days folded into my chest. Soon he’ll walk, and with his personality, I’m already scared.

I go into the locker room on instinct. My feet remember. My hands remember. Even my lungs remember.

Nothing has changed. Same smell—cleaner, sweat, old rubber, a faint bite of menthol from the training room down the hall. Same rows of lockers. Same benches that always feel too cold through leggings.

At least they kept my jersey number. Iris Vance told me my replacement asked for it more than once.

“Zoe?”

Shit.

I freeze where I stand. Hades. The last person I want to run into.

“Coach,” I say, and I paste on a smile like it belongs to me.