Read Chapter 1: Cold Hands

The air inside the Stade Toulousain training ground smelled of Deep Heat and old sweat. Camille Roussel stood in the corridor with her bag at her feet, watching a cleaner push a mop over scuffed linoleum. Through a half-open door to her left, a television blared post-match analysis—some pundit shouting about “disgraceful discipline” and “a side that’s lost its nerve.” She recognized the footage: last night’s defeat to Clermont, a match the commentators kept calling a “choke job.”

She didn’t watch rugby. She treated bodies. But she’d read the dossier on the drive down from Paris, and the name at the top had made her stomach tighten.

Julien Fournier.

The physio office she’d been promised was, apparently, still being painted. The caretaker—a thin man named Gianni with a cigarette behind his ear—had shrugged and pointed her toward the locker room. “The boys will be in after the meeting. You can set up in there for now.”

Camille hoisted her bag. “The first team locker room?”

“You’re with the first team now, no?” He grinned and walked off.

She pushed through the heavy door. The room was vast and cathedral-quiet, rows of wooden benches and steel lockers carved with names and numbers. A long table ran down the center, scattered with tape rolls, water bottles, a half-eaten baguette. Light from high windows fell across the floor in pale slabs.

She found a clear spot near the physio bench and started laying out her tools—ultrasound gel, tape, scissors, a tens unit she probably wouldn’t need. She’d worked with elite athletes before, in Paris, but always in the controlled silence of a clinic. Here, she could feel the residue of violence in the walls: dents in the metal lockers, a deep scratch across one bench that looked like it had been made by studs.

A door slammed somewhere behind her, and then a tide of noise hit—voices, laughter, boots on concrete—as the squad streamed in from the meeting. Camille turned, ready to introduce herself. The first players through barely glanced at her. One, a young flanker with a shaved head, said something in quick French to his teammate and nodded in her direction. She caught the word *physio* and then a joke she didn’t quite hear.

Then the mood changed.

A man came through the door with the kind of silence that pulled the air out of a room. He was tall, broad through the shoulders, dark hair damp and pushed back. His jaw was set so hard the muscle in his cheek was a white line. He wasn’t walking so much as stalking, and the players nearest him parted without a word.

Julien Fournier.

Camille had seen photos, of course. Press shots, action shots—him mid-leap for a high ball, him smashing through a tackle, him roaring at a referee. The photos didn’t capture the sheer *mass* of him, nor the fury radiating off his skin like heat off tarmac.

He didn’t notice her. He moved to the center of the room, ripped a towel off his neck, and hurled it at the bench. It hit a water bottle, which clattered to the floor. No one picked it up.

“That was a *fucking* disgrace,” he said. His voice was low, wrecked—like he’d been shouting for ninety minutes. “Twelve points. We handed them twelve points. And Delacroix wants to talk about *structure*. Structure like we’re a goddamn bridge.”

“Julien, it’s done. Let it go,” someone said.

Julien’s head snapped toward the speaker. “Let it go? We let *them* go. We let them walk through our line like we were training cones. I’m thirty-four years old. I don’t have another season of this. I don’t have another *chance*.”

His eyes fell on the medicine balls stacked in the corner of the locker room. Before Camille could open her mouth, he had crossed the room, grabbed one, and whipped it against the nearest locker.

It missed.

It hit the long mirror above the bench instead.

The crash was enormous—glass spraying across the floor, skittering under benches, glinting in the afternoon light. A few players flinched and swore. Camille put her hand up to shield her face, felt a tiny shard nick her forearm.

And then the room went very quiet.

Julien stood over the wreckage, chest heaving. He looked down at his left hand. Blood was running from a deep cut along the base of his palm, welling in the crease of his thumb. He didn’t seem to feel it. He just stared at the red as if it belonged to someone else.

A scrum-half with a pained expression started forward. “Jesus, Ju. That needs stitches.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding like a pig.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Camille heard her own voice, flat and clinical, cut through the murmur: “Sit down.”

Julien’s head came up. His eyes found her for the first time, and for a moment, something flickered in them—surprise, perhaps, at a stranger in the sanctuary of the locker room. Then his mouth curled into a sneer.

“Who the hell are you?”

“The new physio. Sit down, or you’ll need more than stitches. There’s glass in that. I can see it.”

He looked at his hand again, and whatever defiance had been in his face faltered. The blood was dripping onto the floor now, a steady patter against the shattered glass. He was quiet for a long moment, breathing hard through his nose.

Then, with a grunt, he sat on the bench in front of the physio table. He laid his hand palm-up on the surface. His knuckles were scarred, his fingers swollen from years of impact. A fine tremor ran through them.

Camille snapped on latex gloves. From her bag she pulled out saline, a sterile tray, a small forceps. The other players hovered—a rough semicircle of muscle and concern, watching like she was defusing a bomb.

“Back up,” she said, without looking at them. “Give us room. And someone get a bin for the glass.”

A few shifted. The scrum-half moved first, turning to shoo the others away. “You heard her. Out, out. Let her work.”

The group broke apart, retreating to the other end of the locker room, their voices dropping to murmurs. Camille was alone with Julien Fournier and his rage.

She took his wrist. His skin was hot, his pulse hammering against her fingers. She tilted his hand toward the light.

The cut was clean, but deep. She could see the edge of something white—tendon, probably not severed, but close. Too close.

“You’re lucky,” she said, swabbing the wound with saline. The liquid hissed against the raw flesh, and his hand jerked. “Hold still.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“It will.”

He glared at her, but he kept his hand steady. Up close, she could see the fine lines around his eyes, the silver beginning to thread through the stubble at his temples. Up close, he looked less like the invincible warrior from the television, and more like a man carrying something heavy.

“You were there,” he said. “Last night.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then you saw the highlights.”

“I didn’t. I only just arrived.”

He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “You don’t follow rugby?”

“I follow injuries.”

That seemed to reach him. He studied her for a moment, the tension in his jaw easing a fraction. She probed around the edge of the wound, and he watched her fingers work—steady, methodical. The tremor in his hand began to fade.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“It needs closing. Maybe five or six stitches. You’ll want to keep it clean. You could have cut deeper—you’d have hit the tendon. As it is, you’ll need a few days off training.”

“No.”

“A few days,” she repeated. “Minimum.”

“I’m playing Saturday.”

“Not with this hand, you’re not.”

His eyes flashed. He leaned forward, close enough that she could smell the sweat and anger on him. “You don’t know what’s at stake. You don’t know what this season means. I need to be on that pitch.”

Camille met his gaze. She’d treated men like him before—men who thought their bodies were infinite, their will was a substitute for healing, their pride worth more than their tendons. She’d learned long ago not to flinch.

“I know what it means for your career if you play too soon,” she said, threading the needle. “And I know what it means for your life if you tear that tendon and never play again. I’m not here to be your friend, Julien. I’m here to keep you functional. That’s the only thing I care about.”

He held her gaze. The space between them was charged—not with attraction, exactly, but with something like a challenge. A test of who would blink first.

She didn’t blink.

When the first suture went through his skin, he hissed through his teeth. She worked quickly, efficiently. As she tied off the second stitch, she caught a glimpse of ink at the edge of his collar—and as he shifted, the neck of his training top gaped open.

A tattoo on his chest. A scrum cap, rendered in black and gray, the lines sharp and clear. Beneath it, she caught the edge of lettering she couldn’t quite read. Old ink, faded.

She tied off the final stitch and reached for the dressing. “Done.”

He looked down at his hand, now clean and bandaged, the bleeding stopped. Some of the fury had drained from his face, leaving behind something rawer—exhaustion, maybe, or fear.

“How long really?” he asked quietly.

She stripped her gloves with a snap. “A week, if you’re sensible. Ten days if you’re not. The hand will hold, but the first time you catch a ball wrong, you’ll tear it open. You can play through pain, but you can’t play through a severed tendon. That’s science, not opinion.”

He stood, flexing the bandaged hand experimentally. He was so close now that she had to tip her head back to keep eye contact.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Camille Roussel.”

“Camille.” He said it like he was testing the weight of it. “Welcome to hell.” He nodded toward the shattered glass, the scattered shards still glittering under the benches. “You’ll get used to the mess. Eventually.”

He turned and walked away, and the other players gravitated toward him like iron filings to a magnet. Camille stood alone by the physio bench, her heart rate only now beginning to slow. She packed her tools, her hands steady, and when she looked down at the dressing on her own forearm—a thin red graze from the flying glass—she felt the first prickle of doubt.

This was what she’d left Paris to escape. The chaos, the aggression, the sense that at any moment, someone’s body was about to break.

But it was too late to turn back now. She’d signed the contract. She’d taken the job.

And Julien Fournier’s name was already in her file.