The Center's Vow : A Workplace Tension Sports Romance, livre ebook

Eight months ago a tendon let go during a routine block and the whole world collapsed into one sound, like a bowline parting. Since then he has been the oldest man in the room, taping his wrists like a rookie, and pretending nobody has noticed which of those two things bothers him more.
The tape rips clean, a sound like tearing skin. Levi Carter presses the white strips across his left wrist, then his right, working the adhesive flat with his thumb. Three years of this ritual before every game, every practice, every time he straps on pads.
The locker room hums around him. Cleats scraping concrete. Shoulder pads clicking. The low bass of somebody's playlist bleeding through a speaker.
His left pec aches. Not the sharp tear of eight months ago. A dull throb now. A reminder. Ghost pain. He flexes his hand. Good.
Across the aisle, Razor leans back on the bench with his gum cracking and a gold tooth catching the fluorescents, sweat clinging to his shaved head from a summer of cutting weight.
*Looking tight, old man. You're taping like it's your first rodeo.*
*And you're talking like you're useful.*
*Useful enough to start.*
What follows: the tunnel he cannot make himself walk through, a man he could not save, the weight of holding a line for other people, a file that was never meant to reach his hands, the echo of a voice he misses at inconvenient hours, the view from a sideline he has never once occupied, and one symptom he passes on to somebody who did not ask for it.
*He'd kissed her forehead. She'd stirred, smiled without opening her eyes, and said something he didn't catch.*
A coffee stain near the left shoulder. A cigarette burn near the collar. He has kept the shirt.
Will what the two of them built in the season's worst month survive the day the file becomes public and everyone finds out what he has been hiding? Or does he protect the room by disappearing out of her life, the same way he has handled every hard thing since the snap?