Shoulder Blades Uneven Novelas e Histórias

The breath completely caught in my lungs. I’d seen him on the court plenty of times. I’d seen the flawless, cut muscles that the sports magazines obsessed over. But the candlelight didn't lie, and from this angle, without his jersey hiding it, the reality was devastating. Right across the center of his shoulder blades, cutting through the smooth skin, was a cluster of jagged, uneven lines. They weren't neat surgical incisions. They were rough. Twisted. Some were thick and raised, others faded to a sickening, pale silver.

I stopped breathing. The silver scar across his collarbone was longer than I had imagined, raised and pale against the rest of him. It cut diagonally from the base of his throat toward his shoulder like a permanent reminder of a blade that had not been careful. Below it the hard planes of his chest and stomach were marked with older evidence. Faded lines. The faint map of healed breaks along his ribs. His arms flexed as he dropped the shirt, and the wrist tattoos shifted over bone and tendon that had clearly been damaged once and forced to heal wrong.

He favored his right leg, and his left shoulder dropped a fraction of an inch lower than his right side. "You have a torn rotator cuff," I pointed out. I gestured toward his left arm. "Or at least you have a severe muscle strain. You are compensating for the pain by shifting your weight to your right knee, which is exactly why your skating was so sloppy during our defensive drills yesterday. Coach Gregory will bench you the second he notices the injury." The smug smile vanished from his face. His jaw tightened, and he stood up straight to hide the uneven slope of his shoulders. I had hit a very raw nerve.

The city outside doing whatever it was doing and neither of us part of it. She looked up once. Caught me watching her. Held my gaze for a moment. Then smiled. I did not say anything. I held very still and let her draw. “Mr Rae.” Hana’s voice. I came back. The fitting room. The jacket. The mirror. Three people in the room going about their morning, none of them noticing I had been somewhere else entirely for the last forty seconds. “The left shoulder,” Hana said. “It is sitting slightly forward. Can you relax it.”

And then I just… couldn’t look away. Up close, he was unfair in the way he looked. His beauty was effortless. His messy hair wasn't styled messy, it just fell that way. His jaw was sharp, but softened by the slightly crooked smile. And his shoulders…. Okay. His shoulders deserved their own paragraph. They were broad, elaxed and gilling out his hoodie in a way that made it very obvious he did not skip upper body day. The sleeves were pushed up just enough to show defined forearms, veins faintly visible when he adjusted the books in his hands.

"Your left shoulder is dropping on the rotation. It's been happening for three days. You're compensating for the old injury, and you haven't noticed." She stopped. Straightened. Rolled the shoulder slowly, checking. He was right. She felt it now that he had named it, the subtle favouring, the unconscious adjustment her body had built around the bruising without her permission. She reset her feet without saying anything. He stepped up behind her. Same as the conditioning strip weeks ago, the same careful measured distance. His hands came to her shoulder, light, adjusting the angle with the specific touch of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and was being deliberate about doing it

I folded it and pressed again until the bleeding slowed. My hands were shaking as I reached for the vegetables. I pulled out a carrot and a knife and set them on the cutting board, but my fingers couldn't seem to grip the handle properly. The knife clattered against the board, and I had to stop and press my palms flat against the counter and take a breath. My shoulder throbbed with every heartbeat, and my jaw was stiff and sore, and I could already feel the swelling starting to puff up the skin under my chin.

I stayed right where I was, watching the way her hair fell over her shoulder. "You're still standing there," she said without looking up. "It's my yard," I said. "And it's my patient." She zipped the bag shut and finally looked at me. Her eyes were very clear in the daylight. "Your left shoulder has been tight for two weeks. You're compensating for it in your upper cut. You’re tilting your weight to the right to keep the tension off the joint." I felt a weird jolt in my chest. I thought I’d been hiding that perfectly. I hadn't even told my Beta.