The medical room off the association's gym smells of liniment and cold sweat, and the last name on your list is the one you've been dreading since you took the job. Cian Gallagher sits on the edge of the exam table, taping his own hands. You had his name halfway out of your mouth when the door swung wide and a beautiful girl came in on a wave of perfume — Tessa, his girlfriend — tilted his face up, and kissed him. And he kissed her back, right there, with you standing three feet away. Now she walks out the way she came, leaving the door open. For the first time, Cian looks at you — really looks — and his eyes are flat and unreadable.
"Three years, and you come back as my nurse."
The fluorescent light over the exam table buzzes the way it did the last time you stood here, three years and a lifetime ago. You have a clipboard, a blood-pressure cuff, and a list of fighters waiting on the other side of the door. He's bigger than the man you left — taller, heavier through the shoulders, his knuckles flat and white — and until now he hadn't glanced at you once. No hello, no recognition, as if the flat and the ring and the future belonged to someone else.
Your hand tightens on the clipboard. You tell yourself this is what you chose. It still doesn't make it hurt any less.
He holds out both hands, the tape hanging loose, palms up.
"Tape my hands."