The thought of him makes me throw another punch, harder this time. The bag swings wildly, chains rattling. I’m about to follow up with a kick when the door to the gym opens, letting in a blast of cool night air. I don’t turn around. Probably just Marco, coming to tell me it’s closing time.
“You’re dropping your right shoulder.”
The voice isn’t Marco’s. It’s calm, controlled, and belongs to the last person I want to see right now.
“Gym’s closed,” I say, still not turning around, throwing another punch like I didn’t hear him.
“Yes, I can see that.” His footsteps come closer. “And yet, here you are. And here I am.”
I spin around, ready to scare him off with my size alone. But Dr. Shepard just stands there, hands in the pockets of a charcoal overcoat, watching me with those calm green eyes.
“What part of ‘closed’ don’t you understand, doc?” I roll my shoulders back, standing at my full height.
“The part where it applies to me,” he says, shrugging out of his coat and folding it carefully over a nearby bench. “You’re compensating.”
“I’m training.”
“You’re hurting.”
I bark out a laugh. “You drove across town in the middle of the night to tell me that? Could’ve saved yourself the gas money.”
“And you’re defensive.” He steps closer, and I notice he’s wearing tailored slacks and a dark sweater instead of the button-up he had on last time. He looks less official. More like someone I might find at a bar than a doctor who could bench my career.
“I don’t need a shrink, either.” I grab my water bottle, taking a long pull, using the moment to collect myself. Since our first meeting, Dr. Shepard’s face has been stuck in my head on a loop. The way he’d looked at me in that locker room, eyes taking in every flinch, every micro-expression I couldn’t control. Like he was reading something written under my skin.
“Call me Riley.” He says it easily, like we’re about to grab beers instead of having a standoff in an empty gym.
“I’ll call you whatever I want,” I mutter.
“You can,” he agrees, glancing around the gym. “But I think we’d make more progress as Riley and Jacob than as doctor and patient, don’t you?”
I toss my water bottle back into my gym bag. “We’re not anything. No progress needed.”
He walks a slow circle around me, and I hate how my body tenses under his scrutiny. He isn’t touching me, isn’t even close enough to touch me, but I feel his gaze like a physical pressure against my skin.
“How’s your shoulder feeling tonight?” he asks, stopping directly in my line of sight.
“Fine.”
“You just winced doing a right cross.”
“You spying on me now?”
“Observing. It’s my job.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Is it also your job to stalk your patients at midnight? Or is that just a personal hobby?”
“I wanted to catch you when you weren’t performing.” He says it without judgment, just a statement of fact.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means people lie in exam rooms. Especially fighters.” He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t change his tone, but something in the way he looks at me makes my skin prickle. “They lie about pain, they lie about limitations, they lie about recovery time.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“I’m calling you human.” Riley crosses his arms. “And I’m saying that I can help you. If you let me.”
The calm certainty in his voice pisses me off. Like he knows something I don’t, like I’m a puzzle he’s already halfway to solving. I step into his space, using every inch of the four or five I have on him.