His Best Friend Was My First Love

"This photograph is cropped," I said, enlarging the image on the compliance officer's tablet. "The original camera angle would show Dr. Shah and two assistant trainers three feet to the left."

The officer folded his hands over his legal pad. "We agree. The problem is that the public will see the crop, not our hallway footage. For the road trip, all player contact outside scheduled treatment windows must be witnessed or occur in designated medical spaces."

"That's already how I work."

"Then keep working that way. And document everything."

Brooke's article had gone live at eight that morning. It never accused me of leaking Jace's medical information outright. It did something more strategic: it asked questions, placed Ethan's agency connections beside my new job, and described ordinary clinical contact as "unusually intimate access."

At the mixer a month earlier, Brooke had barely cared what I did. Now she had discovered that my credentials were useful if she could make them look suspicious.

I spent the next hour uploading treatment timestamps, witness names, room-access records, and every approved change to Jace's rehabilitation plan. I did not ask Callum to defend me. I did not ask Jace to correct the press. My best protection was a clean record.

The communications director offered to issue a statement calling the article misleading. I asked her to keep my personal life out of it. The team eventually released three sentences: treatment had followed protocol, no medical breach had been found, and credential access was under review. Nothing about Ethan. Nothing about Callum. Nothing that turned me into a wounded girlfriend instead of an employee whose records could be checked.

That was the first time all morning I felt as if I had regained an inch of ground.

Jace stopped beside the workstation with a blue resistance band looped around his wrist.

"What do you need from me?"

I pressed Submit on the compliance packet. "Follow the plan. Don't give anyone a second story."

He nodded. "Done."

Two days later, on the road, the team converted a hotel conference suite into a temporary medical room. A staff athletic trainer worked at the far station while I completed Jace's scheduled calf release and ankle mobility check.

"Are you this cold with everyone?" he asked, staring at the beige wall while I tested tissue tension near his Achilles.

"Only with people who keep trying to bargain with their ligaments."

The position required me to stand close to his knees, but Jace kept his hands on the edge of the treatment table and his gaze away from me. After the article, even his body language looked deliberate.

"Why not hand my case to someone else?" he asked. "It would be easier."

"Because I did nothing wrong. I'm not letting Ethan decide whether I'm qualified to do my job."

Jace looked at me then. The teasing was gone.

"Fine," he said. "Then I won't let him decide what I think of you either."

I stepped back and removed my gloves. "You don't get to decide what I am to you while you're my patient."

He absorbed that for a second. "Medical provider. Nothing else."

"Correct."

"Got it."

The door opened. Callum entered with the daily clearance sheet and stopped when he saw us.

His attention moved from Jace's bare chest to my gloves in the disposal bin, then to the athletic trainer working six feet away. His shoulders relaxed by a fraction.

"Coach needs the minutes cap," he said.

"Twenty," Jace answered, pulling on his practice shirt. "I have an agent call. See you at dinner, Lena."

When Jace left, Callum placed the form on the cart.

"Reporters are camped by the main elevators," he said. "Operations can move your room to the staff-only floor if you want."

"I'm fine where I am."

He nodded once. "You still hate when people confuse safety with control."

My hand stopped on the zipper of my medical bag.

I had said those words years ago after my mother tracked my phone during a late study session. Callum had been sitting beside me on empty gym bleachers, listening while I ranted about being treated like a child.

"Why do you remember that?"

"Because forgetting you and leaving you are two different failures."

My chest tightened.

"Memory isn't a pardon, Callum."

"I know."

I walked out before he could say anything else.

At dinner, medical and operations staff sat at one set of tables while players occupied another. Jace took a seat across the aisle. Callum sat near the head of the players' table, where the captain usually belonged.

They barely spoke to each other.

Yet every time a media coordinator crossed the room and said my name, both men looked up at once. The synchronized attention was almost worse than an argument. I kept eating and refused to reward it.

By nine, I was in the supply room counting tape because busy hands were easier than a busy mind. The door remained propped open under the compliance rule.

Jace appeared in the doorway with a sports drink. He stayed on the threshold.

"Can I ask one personal question without you throwing a resistance band at me?"

"You can ask. I can refuse."

His gaze shifted down the hall. "Callum is my best friend. Has been since we were both trying to survive our first pro season. So I need to know whether I'm walking into something unfinished between you two."

"That's not a medical question."

"No. It's a friendship question."

Footsteps approached behind him.

Callum came into view and stopped when he heard the last sentence.

Jace turned. "Did you two date?"

Callum looked at me instead of answering him.

"No," he said at last. "Not officially."

Jace's eyebrows lifted.

Callum's voice dropped. "But Lena was the first person I ever thought about staying for."

The supply room went silent.

For six years, I had wondered whether I had imagined the whole thing—whether the late nights, the almost-kisses, and the promises had meant more to me than they ever had to him.

Now Callum had answered that question in front of the one man who had every reason to care.

And Jace was staring at his best friend as if the floor had shifted under both of them.