Page 68 of The Goalie in Room 1

He loosened the brace enough to examine my knee. Three weeks ago, I could barely make out the shape of the damn thing beneath all the dressings. The few times I did see it, the swelling worried the fuck out of me.

Now…the incisions had closed, the bruising had faded, and my kneecap had started looking like part of a human body again. My body.

But…it was still swollen. I knew that without Thad telling me. It had been swollen before physical therapy this morning, and it still was when I’d laid down on the mat. The good news…? It hadn’t ballooned. It wasn’t hot to the touch.

And that meant the joint hadn’t become inflamed when asked to do something new. Unlike last time, when every ask resulted in the joint ballooning up.

Thad pressed carefully along the joint line. He watched my face instead of his hand, as if he could catch the pain before I felt it.

His thumb reached the inside of my knee, and I tightened my jaw. “Tender?”

I nodded. “A little.”

“Here?” he asked and pressed again.

“Yeah.”

He shifted his thumb. “Here?”

“No.”

His hand kept moving around my knee, checking the same places he’d checked every day since bringing me home.

Fuck! This was not my home. Even if my subconscious and the man currently poking and prodding at my knee said it was.

“Cash? Did that hurt?”

“No,” I said, taking a deep breath.

Thad was way too perceptive. I’d complained about his hovering during the first week. Sometime during the second, I’d stopped arguing and started stretching my leg across his lap while we watched television at night. And last week, his hand had curled around my ankle, his thumb rubbing back and forth.

Neither of us mentioned the change or acknowledged when it became normal.

The measuring tape wrapped around my knee. This was becoming a new normal for us. He’d measure the knee in a few spots, and then he’d check it against the tablet that was always on the ottoman next to him.

Today was no different from the previous times we’d done this. At least not until his expression shifted.

Microscopically.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Same as most people wouldn’t have noticed the shift my face made a few moments ago. But the two of us had been pretty well attached at the hip since my surgery, so I’d spent enough time watching Thaddeus Vale to recognize the subtle change at the corner of his mouth.

“What?” I asked, looking between his face, my knee, and the tablet.

A shake of his head, a twitch of his mouth that turned the corners down, followed by, “Nothing.”

“Don’t do that, Doc. You’ve got the face. Tell me what’s going on.”

“What face?” he asked, his eyes flicking up to mine, then back to the tablet.

With a finger under his chin, I lifted his face, ducking mine to force him to meet my gaze. “The one you get when you’re trying not to tell me something.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“Don’t lie. You have a shit ton of faces, Doc. That one’s the closest Dr. Vale gets to smiling.”

He sat back. “The swelling is down. It’s minuscule…”

Minuscule. Tiny. Small. Infinitesimal.