“Were you doing rehab or something?” Ed’s voice cut into her reverie.

Eyes still shut, Rian grunted. “Lower back, my leg muscles, various things… why’d you ask?”

“I can feel where your muscles have been healing. You did a good job with the rehab, and I don’t think there are any knots in the muscles, where they may have been torn … which is a good sign because that means when they healed they knit together as well as you can hope for.  If not, there would have been knots in various places, indicating the muscles were not interweaving well … and that would be bad because those are the places where your muscles will easily break, and give you a lot of pain after.”

Rian only tightened her eyelids in response. The painful year of rehab and retraining muscles had been one of the worst things she’d ever experienced.  Even if Ed was complimentary, it

didn’t ease the sting of the memory of what she’d gone through. In fact, if she hadn’t opened up to Jade about all of this, and allowed Jade to help her go through it, it was likely that she would have cut short the whole rehab effort, and just resort to pills or something.

Aerin had fallen quiet, looking from Rian to Bette, and to Rian again. Her eyes were full of questions.  Bette mouthed to her, “I’ll let her tell you all about it.  It’s been really, really tough…”

Rian grew quiet again, and found she was succumbing to Ed’s massage, which was oddly relaxing. Soon she could barely make out that Aerin had resumed talking about her recent issues with Alyssa and was asking Bette’s advice.  Their voices faded from consciousness as Ed continued to massage her legs and feet.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Bette carefully pulled Rian’s door shut. She felt her phone vibrate.  Her eyes widened with pleasure when she saw the name of the caller.

“Hello, Cade. Yeah, I’m in the hotel already.  I’m whispering because I’m just outside the room of a friend of mine and she’s resting.  I don’t want to disturb her.  Give me a minute ‘till I get to my own room and I can talk more freely then.  No, you keep talking; you’re fine.  What’s that?  She’s here?  Awesome! Well, I hope you’ll give me a fair shot at her.”