Chapter 11 - An Explanation

Elias doesn't respond to Lucas's teasing.

He's too busy replaying the treatment room in his head—the moment Mia's expression had shuttered, the specific way she'd looked at him like he was something she'd already decided to be done with.

He'd assumed the worst, like an idiot, and said it out loud, like a bigger idiot. She hadn't known about the assignment. The math is humiliatingly simple now that his head has cooled.

The larger problem is, he's missed another chance to get her number, and without the physio-patient schedule as a bridge, they have no connection at all.

He watches her move up in the queue.

She looks exhausted, faint shadows under her eyes.

She studies the menu with total seriousness and comes away with a Spaghetti Bolognese and a blood orange soda, which Elias finds, against his will, deeply charming.

When she turns with her tray, she finds him directly behind her. She pauses for exactly one beat, gives him a minimal nod, and walks around him toward a window table.

Elias looks at her tray. Then he orders almost the same thing, double portion, and swaps the soda for chicken noodle soup.

The cashier recognizes him before he's even set his tray down. "Elias Weston! In the cafeteria—"

Elias smiles briefly, taps his student card, and moves before the radius of attention can fully form. The cap was supposed to prevent this. Apparently not today.

He finds Mia already seated beside a blonde girl, Ellie from the showcase, and nods to Lucas. "Over there."

"Oh, we understand," Lucas says, already moving with a grin that says he understands entirely too much.

Elias takes the seat with his back to Mia's table. Deliberate—he doesn't want to look obvious. What he gets instead is Lucas's face, which is doing everything a face can do to communicate amusement without using words.

"So," Frank says, loudly and conspicuously, "what model did you use for the derivatives analysis?"

The non-sequitur lands in a silence that lasts exactly two seconds before everyone at their table realizes what he's doing.

Elias names a model flatly. Lucas contributes an extremely theatrical follow-up comment about Elias's financial acumen.

Elias kicks Frank under the table.

And then, from just behind him, he hears Mia laugh.

Quiet, unguarded, real.

He goes still.

"—the fascia doesn't lie," her voice carries, calm and precise, "most Western protocols treat the symptom. If you follow the tissue, you find the source. It's just anatomy with better listening."

"I fell asleep four times," Ellie says.

"You came to a six-hour lecture block voluntarily. That's already remarkable."

Elias realizes he's stopped eating to listen and picks his fork back up.

Lucas stands abruptly. "Salad dressing."

He's back in fifteen seconds, having taken a scenic route past Mia's table.

"Hey—weren't you the one who organized the Cultural Showcase?" He beams at Ellie with championship-level subtlety. "Massive success. We should exchange numbers."

Ellie looks at him, presses her lips together, and says politely, "Hi."

Lucas winks at Elias on the way back.

Watch and learn, coward.

Elias stares at his tray.

Then he hears a sharp cough from behind him—the involuntary, choking kind.

He turns without thinking.

Mia has one hand pressed to her breastbone, face flushed, clearly inhaled something wrong. Elias's arm moves before his brain signs off on it, one palm coming flat against her upper back.

Narrow. The thought arrives automatically. Barely wider than his hand.

He adjusts his pressure down, pats twice, and pulls back.

Mia reaches for her orange soda, takes several careful sips.

Ellie is frozen mid-concern on the other side of the table. When Mia waves her off, Ellie visibly deflates with relief and immediately goes back to watching Lucas with enormous interest.

"Thank you," Mia says, voice still slightly rough. "I'm fine."

It's the first thing she's said directly to him today.

"The noodle are dry," he says. "It happens."

She looks at him—one quiet, sideways look—and doesn't correct his Spaghetti -vs-noodle error, which feels, somehow, like a small mercy.

Elias finishes eating fast. On his way to return his tray, he takes a route that passes her table.

"Do you have time after this?" Casual. Almost.

Mia looks up at him, clearly aware of Ellie going completely motionless across the table. "An hour. I have class after."

"There's a covered walkway behind the building." He says it quickly, before she can reframe her answer. "Won't take long."

She considers him for a moment—that steady, unhurried look that gives nothing away. Then she nods.

***

The walkway is quiet, early-afternoon light filtering through the lattice overhead, dead leaves banked along the stone edges.

"What's this about?" Mia stops in her tracks, tilting her head.

"The infirmary...that was on me," Elias begins, the words sounding like they're being dragged out of him by force. "My attitude was out of line. I let my preconceived notions about your position dictate how I treated you, and for that, I'm sorry."

He tells her about the previous physio—not everything, but enough. The woman who'd mistaken proximity for permission, the behavior that had gone on too long before anyone believed him, the file that got locked away because the team had decided quietly handling it was better for everyone. Everyone except him.

His teammates all assume he's just an arrogant prick who thinks he's too good for the team's medical staff, preferring the elite, private facilities of the Weston family empire.

He doesn't dress it up. He just says it.

Mia is quiet through all of it. Her expression is harder to read than usual, which he's come to understand means she's actually processing rather than preparing a response.

"I accept the apology," she says finally. "But if you make that assumption about me again—or anyone else in my position—I'll request a transfer." Her voice is even, no edge to it. Just fact. "We're professionals. We deserve to be treated like it."

Elias watches her, his eyes tracking the serious set of her mouth before drifting back to her eyes. The tension between them shifts, losing its jagged edge and turning into something humming and magnetic.

"It won't happen again. You have my word," Elias says, raising his hand in a mock-solemn vow.

"Then we're fine," she says.

He now feels invincible. He feels light.

***

Three days later, Mia lines up her dry needling kit with the precision.

Elias drops his bag in the corner, the draft of air lifting the hair at her temple.

He's in a fitted black training top today, which does nothing to understate the problem of his general dimensions, and lies down on the table with the ease of someone who has made peace with being here.

Mia's fingers find the old injury site. The tissue is measurably looser than last time. "You followed the protocol."

"You told me to."

She picks up a needle with her forceps, holds it briefly in the light. "Dry needling shows significantly better outcomes for chronic rotator cuff compensation than manual therapy alone."

The tip catches the light with a clean, cold gleam.

"The trigger points in your posterior deltoid are exactly where I expected them to be."

His gray-blue eyes track to her face.

Her white coat has shifted at the collar—a pale blue neckline underneath, the kind of soft color that makes the clinical setting feel briefly like something else. He's looking at it. She knows he's looking at it.

"Your nail is cracked," he says instead.

The needle very nearly bends in her grip.

She remembers the cracked nail from last time—discovering it during her own recovery session afterward, pressed against muscle that had the density of reinforced concrete.

She'd had feelings about it.

"Occupational hazard," she says, and inserts the first needle with precise, unapologetic efficiency.

His shoulder muscle seizes. He breathes through it.

By the fifth needle, they've settled into something almost like quiet—not comfortable exactly, but calibrated.

Her fingers map the trigger point chain toward his collarbone, and his breathing shallows by one degree, which she notes and does not comment on.

"Does that hurt?" She looks up.

His eyes are already on her. Close range—she can see the exact shade where gray meets blue at the iris, the small shadow his lashes cast on the upper cheekbone.

"No," he says. His voice is lower than it needs to be.

The door explodes with Lucas and Tyler's faces pressed against the glass.

"Is our captain actually cooperating?" Lucas's voice penetrates the door clearly. "Mia, we'll hold him down if you need—"

Elias grabs the nearest empty bottle and wings it at the door without sitting up. The impact sends both of them stumbling back dramatically.

Mia's mouth curves before she can stop it.

When the treatment finally concludes, Elias rotates his shoulder, the joint moving with a newfound, fluid ease that speaks volumes of her skill.

He looks back at Mia as she meticulously packs her medical kit, his eyes tracking her every move.

"When is the next session?" he asks suddenly.

"Three days from now," Mia replies."If you feel like you need it, that is."

"I do."

The answer is instantaneous.

"You're very good at this, aren't you?" he says, his voice dropping to a low, intimate hum that makes her toes curl.

His eyes move briefly to the pink tip of her ear, then away. "We should exchange contacts. Easier to coordinate around the schedule."

Mia looks at him for a moment.

"Fine," she says, and holds out her phone.