Cradle

She can end his season with one line on a report. He can end her career with one kiss.

Brooks Whittaker captains Bramwell lacrosse the way he does everything: systems, counts, a plan for every body on the field. The one variable he cannot chart is the new athletic trainer with the calm hands and the clinical vocabulary, the woman who decides whether he plays or sits.

Cassie Voss has patched up enough athletes to know the rule cold: the handbook line between staff and roster does not bend. Not for a captain who shims wobbling chairs when he thinks nobody sees. Not for the way he says her name like a count he is keeping. Her certification is the life she built out of nothing. He is a section-four, paragraph-three violation with good shoulders.

The training room has a door. The door has a lock. The season has fourteen weeks left, and what starts as tape and protocol turns into the one thing neither of them can chart a recovery for.

He cannot captain a partner. She cannot treat a secret. One of them has to break first.