She didn't say any of that.
"You should get some sleep," Sienna said, standing. She gathered the mug and plate and took them to the kitchen. "Keep the sling on. Ice the shoulder for twenty minutes before bed. And text me if the pain gets worse overnight."
"Okay."
Sienna paused at the door. She looked back at Elise, and her expression was softer than professional concern and more complicated than friendship. "You're going to be okay, Elise."
The words were simple. Her voice was not.
"Yeah." Elise's voice was rough. "Thanks, Doc."
Sienna smiled, small and brief, and let herself out. The lock clicked softly behind her as the door closed. Elise listened to her footsteps fade down the stairwell, and then the apartment was quiet again.
She sat on the sofa with her tea growing cold and her shoulder aching and her chest full of a heat she refused to examine, and she thought about Sienna Park's warm, steady hands and Sienna Park's quiet voice and the way Sienna Parkhad looked at her in the medical room when she'd put her hand on her chest and the whole world had gone still.
Six weeks of rehab. Daily sessions. Just the two of them.
Elise leaned her head back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling. The apartment was too quiet again. Her shoulder was throbbing. And she didn't know whether to dread the next six weeks or ache for them.
5
SIENNA
Sienna's apartment was small and clean and exactly what she needed it to be.
She'd rented it fourteen months ago when she'd taken the Valkyries job, choosing it for its proximity to the stadium and the ocean view from the bedroom window. It was a two-bedroom on the third floor of a quiet building with good light and not enough personality. Her furniture was functional. Her kitchen was organised. Her bookshelves held medical journals and a few novels she'd been meaning to read for years. There was nothing on the walls except a framed print of a coastline that had come with the apartment and that she hadn't bothered to replace.
It looked like a place someone slept in, not a place someone lived.
She'd left Elise's apartment ten minutes ago. The drive home had been short and dark and filled with the silence that followed a long, intense day. She'd made scrambled eggs and tea for an injured woman and sat on her sofa and talked to her and then said goodnight and walked away, and all of it had felt simple and right and too close to a line she shouldn't be approaching.
Sienna set her keys on the kitchen counter and opened the fridge. She stood in the cool blue light and looked at the contents: a carton of oat milk, some leftover rice, half a bell pepper, and a takeaway container she'd been meaning to throw out. She closed the fridge without taking anything out.
She was standing in her kitchen, trying to remember what she normally did at this hour on a weeknight, when the knock came.
Helen. Right. She'd completely forgotten.
She opened the door to find Helen Ward leaning against the corridor wall with a bottle of sparkling water and an expression of patient amusement.
"You forgot," Helen said.
"I didn't forget. I was... preparing."
Helen glanced pointedly at Sienna's feet. "Your shoes are still on."
Sienna looked down. Her shoes were, in fact, still on. She'd been standing in her own kitchen in her coat and shoes without noticing. "Come in."
Helen came in like she owned the place. She set the sparkling water on the counter, hung her jacket on the hook by the door, kicked off her shoes, and settled onto the sofa with a comfortable grace that Sienna envied and could never replicate. Helen belonged in spaces immediately. Sienna had lived in this apartment for fourteen months and still felt like she was visiting.
"Rough night for the team," Helen said, glancing around. "Well, rough for one player in particular. How are you doing?"
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"
"Because you drove a player to the hospital at ten o'clock at night, which is above your pay grade, and now you look like you've forgotten how to be in your own apartment." Helen crossed her legs and settled deeper into the cushions. "Your coat is still on."
Sienna looked down. Her coat was, in fact, still on. She pulled it off and draped it over the back of a chair with as much dignity as she could muster.
"Tea?" she called from the kitchen.