Chapter 2 RECOVERY WEEK ONE
RYAN
It's been a week since my body betrayed me.
Seven days of gauze, ice packs, midnight throbbing, and pretending the ceiling has answers. Seven days of everyone walking on eggshells and me pretending I'm fine when I can't even pee without help.
And I haven't left the room once.
Well, unless you count the 3 a.m. rolls to the bathroom while wheezing like an eighty-year-old with a collapsed lung.
Rae says I look like a molting lizard. Emma says I need vitamin D and a better pain management routine. I say they should both mind their business—but only because I secretly love that they won't.
Today, we're going over investment banking summer internship interview questions. Because nothing screams "healing" like prepping for battle with Goldman Sachs, the Morgans and Lazard while your hip and femur are held together with screws and your spirit with sarcasm.
Emma sits cross-legged at the end of my bed, highlighters in an aggressive rainbow beside her, while Rae lounges at my desk chair like it's a throne, spinning lazily and sipping coffee that smells way too good to not be mine.
"Okay," Emma says, flipping to the next page in the prep packet she printed from some preppy LinkedIn guy's blog. "Technical round. McKenna, walk me through a DCF."
I blink. "Like, seductively? Or with the crippling anxiety of someone who knows she might never walk right again?"
Rae snorts behind her mug. "Definitely the second one. Add a stutter and some light sweating for realism."
I throw a stress ball at her head. Miss, obviously.
Emma sighs patiently. "Discounted Cash Flow. Start with the basics."
"Right. Right." I push my tangled hair off my face and sit up straighter, pain slicing through my side like an unwelcome guest. "So you project free cash flows for about five to ten years, discount them back using the WACC, and—"
"What's WACC?" Rae interrupts with a smirk.
"Weighted Average Cost of Capital. Also the sound I make when I get up too fast."
Emma's trying not to laugh, I can tell. Her lips twitch. "Okay, and how do you calculate terminal value?"
"Exit multiple or Gordon Growth model," I say, waving my hand vaguely. "Or just cry and hope the interviewer gets bored."
"You're gonna kill it," Emma says softly.
Rae nods, surprisingly sincere for someone who once described finance as "numbers and nightmares in a suit." "Seriously. You're already sharper than half the econ boys I've dated."
I raise a brow. "You dated an econ major?"
"Briefly," she says, wrinkling her nose. "He ghosted me after I asked what he thought of the Eurobond market."
Emma giggles. "That's not why he ghosted you."
"Okay, true. I also corrected his Excel formulas mid-date."
We all laugh, and for a second, I forget that my bones feel like they're wrapped in barbed wire. For a second, I remember what it felt like to be myself before the injury—loud, fast, electric.
But then the pain creeps back in like smoke under a door, slow and suffocating.
Emma notices. She always does. "You took your meds this morning?" she asks, reaching for the little plastic pill organizer on my nightstand.
"I was gonna," I lie.
She gives me The Look—equal parts gentle and terrifying. "Ryan."
"I hate the way they make me feel," I admit. "Fuzzy. Slow."
"Yeah, well, you can either be in pain and sharp or pain-free and slightly loopy. Pick your poison,"
"She's not wrong," Rae says, still spinning in the chair like she's testing gravity. "And if you get loopy enough, we can finally film that TikTok of you doing valuation formulas in a Southern accent."
I sigh like it's the greatest inconvenience in the world, but I take the pills from Emma's hand anyway and chase them with warm Gatorade that tastes like caustic soda. "Happy now?"
Emma just smiles. "Deliriously."
The TV is still playing in the background—muted but alive—showing a college hockey game between two teams I don't recognize. But Rae's eyes keep drifting toward it like a magnet.
"You know someone playing?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"Of course, we all do," she says easily. "It's the Terriers."
Right. The Boston University hockey team, the Terriers. And with them lies Zach Astor Hughes. Rae's weird... whatever-he-is. They're two halves of the same unholy coin—overachievers with matching resting bitch faces and a shared brain cell they pass back and forth depending on the day.
"What is it between you and Zach these days, anyway?" I ask, pretending to scroll through interview notes on my iPad.
Rae shrugs. "He's Zach. I'm Rae. I guess we just make sense."
"That's not an answer."
Emma stretches and glances at the screen. "They've known each other since, like, diapers. It's a childhood trauma bond thing."
Rae shoots her a glare. "It's not trauma."
"You broke his nose with a lacrosse stick in seventh grade."
"Okay, that was trauma."
I raise an eyebrow. "So... not dating? Not hooking up? Not...?"
Rae rolls her eyes like she's bored, but there's a tiny flicker in her expression I can't quite name. "It's not like that. He's just... I don't know. He texts me when he's pissed off about practice. I roast him until he chills out. We don't need all the messy stuff."
"That sounds like emotional intimacy with extra steps," I mutter.
Emma grins. "Ryan, not everyone defines relationships the same way."
"Yeah, but most people define them with at least one kiss."
"Gross," Rae says, like the idea of kissing Zach is offensive. "He's basically like my platonic parasite."
I watch the screen. Hughes skates like the ice owes him something. Fast, controlled, the kind of athlete who's always half a second ahead of everyone else. A little like me, before my body threw in the towel.
"He's good," I say.
"He's annoying," Rae replies. "But yeah. He's good."
I let the silence stretch for a moment before asking, "Do you think it's weird that I don't feel like me anymore?"
Emma looks at me, really looks, the way she always does when I ask questions no one else would take seriously. "I think it makes perfect sense," she says.
Rae adds, "You're still you. You're just in a bit of a plot twist right now."
"I don't like this plot twist."
"No one likes the middle of the story," Emma says gently. "But that's where all the good stuff happens."
I stare at the ceiling again, letting their words wrap around me like a blanket I didn't know I needed. Rae starts texting—probably Zach, given the speed of her thumbs—and Emma reaches over to adjust my pillow so it doesn't press against the bruise.
In another universe, maybe I'm lacing up spikes and warming up on the track. But here, in this one, I'm in a dorm room with two girls who refuse to let me fall apart quietly.
And maybe that's something.
Maybe it's enough—for now—to be in motion, even when it's all happening inside me. Maybe stillness isn't the same as giving up.
Eventually, the meds Emma made me take start to kick in, softening the pain until the edges of the world blur.
I close my eyes. And then I'm somewhere else.
It starts like a race. Of course it does.
I'm at the starting line, spikes biting into rubber, the smell of sweat and sunscreen and synthetic turf thick in the air. My legs are coiled, ready. The gun hasn't fired yet, but I feel it in my bones—the need to run, to move, to escape whatever's closing in behind me.
Then the gunshot cracks.
I push off.
Or I try to.
But my feet don't lift.
I look down. Laces. Thick, rope-like shoelaces, black and winding, have knotted themselves around my ankles. They snake up my calves like vines, wrapping, tangling, pulling tighter with every heartbeat. The more I fight, the more they cinch—like my own body is betraying me again.
A bone in my hip gives with a sickening pop. Then another, sharp and white-hot, like a firecracker beneath the skin. I scream, but no sound comes out—just the echo of my own panic bouncing around a world that doesn't care I'm breaking.
I claw at the laces. They're endless. Wet with sweat. Slipping through my fingers like oil. Someone in the distance calls my name, but it sounds warped, like it's underwater.
The finish line is there—just ahead. Blurry and shimmering, like it's being held hostage by heat waves. I crawl, dragging myself forward inch by inch, pain screaming through every nerve like a siren I can't shut off.
Then, a hand grabs my ankle.
No, not one. Two. Gripping tight. Hauling me back. I thrash, nails tearing through the rubber track, but I'm not strong enough. I'm never strong enough.
I twist to see who it is, but the shadows blur their face.
"Let go," I try to yell. It comes out as a whisper. "Please—let go."
But they don't.
Instead, arms wrap around my body—firm, grounding, terrifying in their familiarity. My body freezes. Every part of me knows that grip. That stillness. That heat.
I look down.
Veins run like rivers over tan forearms. Thick wrists. Calloused knuckles. Fingers that could crush and cradle all at once.
And I know them.
I know those arms.
The track disappears beneath me.
I'm weightless.
Falling.
Or being held.
And I don't know which is worse.
I wake with a gasp, lungs burning, my heart pounding like it's still sprinting while the rest of me lies shattered and motionless.
Emma's not in the room anymore. The TV's off. Rae's gone too, just a crumpled hoodie on the edge of her chair.
I'm alone.
Except I'm not. Not really.
Because even with the door locked and the lights dimmed and the pain dulled to a manageable throb, those arms are still burned into my skin like a memory I never gave permission to come back.