Page 7 of Anatomy of Us

I laugh. It sounds exactly like Zoe. The woman who showed up to the gym an hour before anyone else. The one who played half a match with a cracked rib before she admitted something was wrong.

The one who never learned how to want anything halfway.

I close the laptop again. This time for good. I change into pajamas and head for bed.

Seven years. I spent seven years running, just to end up back in Zoe’s orbit.

I built the exact life I was supposed to want, the life any sports medicine doctor would dream about.

And it’s so empty I can hear the echo of my own steps as I walk to the bedroom. Maybe I should adopt a cat. Or three, like my old mentor.

I take a deep breath and turn off the light. Tomorrow at nine, Zoe Méndez walks into my office. It’s going to be professional.

I’m not going to think about how her laugh sounded against my neck.

I’m not going to think about the last time I touched her bare body.

I’m not going to remember how she dragged me into paradise every time we made love.

I won’t stare at the freckles near her belly button.

She’s married now. She has a baby. And I’m going to do my job.

Nothing else.

Chapter 3

Zoe

I get to the club facilities thirty minutes early because I’m so keyed up I can’t sit still at home. Clearance letter from my OB-GYN, reports from private physical therapists, a detailed log of every exercise I’ve done for the past two months. I prep for this evaluation like it’s a World Cup final. Full dossier. Every number backed up. Every page labeled. I need medical clearance to train with the team during preseason or I won’t be match-fit when the real games start.

I have to leave Wesley with my mom, and the separation hurts way more than I expect. His little face cracks me open. The poor kid doesn’t get why I’m going. He just knows I’m not picking him up. But I can’t bring him here. Not for the club medical evaluation.

When I walk in, the roar of the first strength session thumps through the main gym. Barbells clank. Music pounds. Someone shouts a count. The whole building feels alive, like it’s breathing.

I know the route to medical by heart. I’ve been in those offices dozens of times. Treatment for small injuries. Preseason physicals. The exam before contract renewals. But never for this. Never as someone who has to convince the medical team that her body can still do the job they pay her to do.

I wish Joe were still here. He knew my history. He knew what I could do. He trained with me after my ACL reconstruction and sent me back to the field in better shape than before the tear.

But Hades told me yesterday we have a new head of medical. One of the best in sports medicine, according to her. Came from Europe with a scary résumé.

Someone who doesn’t know me.

Someone who will look at the body I have right now and decide if it’s enough to make it through preseason.

“Come in,” a woman’s voice calls when I knock, and I swear I knock like I’m asking permission to breathe.

I push the door open.

“Fuck. Holy shit,” I rasp when I see her behind the desk.

Time doesn’t stop. That’s a dumb cliché. But it does snap backward seven years, straight to the moment my life blew apart, and it’s because of the same person watching me now with calm eyes and a pen in her hand. Seven years. Seven damn years without seeing her. Without knowingwhere she is, what she’s doing, whether she ever thinks of me the way I think of her.

“Good morning, Zoe.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m the new head of medical,” she says, like she’s telling me the weather.