Page 86 of Tangled with the Tight End

“Sore in your upper body? Or … ?”

I might as well be honest. “My ankle’s achy and throbbing a little.”

“A pain spike?” she asks. “Did they stabilize it during your workout?”

“Yeah. They’re careful. It still moves around and the muscles around it get worked a little.”

I close my eyes when the throbbing intensifies. When I open my eyes and blow out a slow breath, Winona’s staring at me, her eyes narrowed.

“I’m exhausted,” I tell her.

Normally I’d suck it up, but she has a way of opening the floodgates.

“Therapy exhaustion,” she says. “Let’s get you home.”

I nod, moving the last few feet toward the car and handing my crutches over to Winona after she places the box in the back seat. Instead of jogging over to the driver’s side, she watches me lower myself into the car, standing by in case I need her.

Needing someone is new territory for me. She looks me over before leaving my side of the car to get in and drive.

“Don’t try to be the tough guy,” she says.

“I am the tough guy,” I remind her. “I’m a professional football player.”

“Oh, really,” she says with a smirk. “Tell your baby toe.”

I laugh despite the pain feeling worse.

“What do you want for dinner?” she asks.

“Dinner? I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“We’ll just see what Claudette whipped up for you.”

“Are you staying?” My words sound as desperate as I feel.

“Is that even a question? You’re in pain. I’m staying until I can leave and not worry about you.”

We’re quiet the rest of the drive. Winona doesn’t turn on the radio. She drives over the speed limit, leaning forward in her seat as if her posture will add extra propulsion to her car. I watch her and then I stare out at the fields, some tilled with dark red-brown earth exposed, others full of papery tan stalks of ready-to-harvest corn. Cotton blooms white on another field.

I’m focused on my breathing and taking in the Tennessee landscape while my ankle throbs with an increasingly inescapable ache.

We pull into my neighborhood and Winona huffs out a small laugh. “Why do you need three gates? In Waterford?”

“Beats me,” I say. “I think it makes people feel important.”

“You are important,” she says.

The softness to her voice tells me her words have nothing to do with football.

We drive through the third gate and then we’re at my house. Winona kills the engine and looks over at me.

“What’s your pain on a scale of one to ten?”

“Six? Seven? It’s getting a little worse. There’s a burning now.”

“You overdid it,” she says, almost to herself. She looks in my eyes, her brows drawn in. “And it’s no one’s fault. You’re with amazing trainers. You know your body. This just happens. I was reading about recovery the other night …”

I cut her off. “You were reading about recovery? On your night off?”