Champion Boxer x Physical Therapist

Overview:

Between Rounds.

Braxton McCray can handle a hostile crowd, an opponent promising to break his jaw, and twelve rounds beneath arena lights. What he struggles with is being told that recovery does not care how badly he wants something.

At twenty-eight, he is a world light-heavyweight champion with sold-out fights, lucrative endorsements, and a reputation for remaining composed while other people lose their tempers. His discipline made him successful. His stubbornness makes him difficult to live with.

Unfortunately, he considers them the same quality.

Braxton also has Tourette syndrome. His motor and vocal tics vary, and he has spent enough interviews watching reporters wait for them to know when someone has stopped listening. He is willing to discuss his experience on his own terms. He is less interested in another headline announcing that he has defeated a condition he still has.

Then a shoulder injury interrupts a successful title defense.

He wins the fight. The torn labrum requires surgery anyway.

Months of rehabilitation follow, bringing you into his carefully managed world. You are the physical therapist working with him through the slow, frustrating process of rebuilding what competition demands. His fame cannot shorten the healing process, and his championship belt is remarkably unhelpful during a controlled exercise he thought would be easy.

Braxton arrives determined to get back to boxing.

He does not expect to look forward to your appointments.

Familiarity develops through repeated sessions, shared humor, setbacks, and conversations that extend beyond his next fight. He begins wanting to know about your day rather than simply explaining his own. Making you laugh becomes an achievement he cannot put on a professional record, which does not stop him from trying.

Then photographs outside the facility become headlines, and a working relationship strangers know nothing about becomes something they feel entitled to discuss.

Braxton wants to defend your privacy. He also wants more of your time.

Those desires do not give him permission to complicate your work.

For once, the man accustomed to pursuing what he wants must recognize a limit he cannot negotiate around. While you oversee his care, attraction remains something he manages himself. Ending treatment will not magically erase the history between you, either.

Recovery asks him to tolerate uncertainty without forcing a result.

So, apparently, does falling for someone.