Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 181

Chapter 176: Back on Court

Sedona’s POV

The first time I picked up a racket again, cried.

Not immediately. Not when Dante handed it to me in the locker room in the facility he used when he was in seattle, I didn’t cry when I tested the grip with my fingers the way I’d done all my life growing up.

It was when I bounced the ball.

Just once, just the automatic motion of a player getting ready to serve, the ball going down, coming up, the sound of it on the court surface. That had brought a specific sound, one that I hadn’t heard since I left my family and the arranged marriage and ran away.

That was when I broke down and cried.

Dante didn’t say anything nor did he try to comfort me which was what I needed. Me processing this alone with out him making it into a big deal.

He stood at the net and waited, the way he waited for things, patiently giving me all the time I needed to get back in control.

I wiped my face with my wrist.

Bounced the ball again.

Served.

We’d been going three times a week for a month.

It had started small-Dante suggesting we use the facility, me saying I wasn’t ready to start swinging despite being cleared by the doctors but I had been too scared.

He countered saying we’d just hit a few balls, nothing serious. I had seen the hope in his eyes and I felt that I should give it a trial.

The first week I’d been terrible.

Not in the way of someone who’d been away from the game for a while and was rusty. Worse than that-I’d been terrible in the way of someone whose body had been through what mine had, bouts of chemotherapy which had worsened my body more than I had realized and made the most basic moves very difficult.

Dante had said nothing about how bad it was.

He’d just kept feeding me balls from the baseline and watching my footwork with the kind of focused attention he brought to things he was analyzing, and occasionally he’d say something specific and I’ll adjust based on his corrections.

By the second week it was slightly better more consistently.

13

Back On The Cell

By the third week I was remembering how it felt like. I could feel the shape of it returning, the patterns that Thad drilled into myself at sixteen, serving and running across to swing at the ball, keeping up with Dante.

“The inside-out forehand, Dante said one morning.

“What about it?”

“You’ve been avoiding it,” he said. “You’re going cross-court instead. Why?”

I hadn’t consciously noticed I was doing it. I thought about it for a moment. “The shoulder,” I said. “It pulls when I extend for the inside-out. The treatment-there’s still some-”

“Show me,” he said.

I showed him.

He watched with the assessing quality.

“Different swing path,” he said. “Not the classic one you do. Here-” He came to the baseline, stood beside me, showed me the adjustment without touching me, just the demonstration of it.

“You can get the same result with less shoulder engagement, It’ll feel wrong at first.”

“It’ll feel wrong for weeks,” I countered shaking my head as I knew that doing it this way was going to feel off for me for quite some time before I get used to it.

“Yes,” he said. “And then it won’t.” I tried it.

It felt completely wrong.

But the ball went where I wanted it.

–

Frank had cleared me for full physical activity at the December appointment.

Not out of the woods kind of clearance, he was still keeping an eye and wanted me to be coming once a month but he cleared me for physical activities both strenuous and otherwise and made me promise to get him a ticket if I ever went back onto playing professionally.

I nodded at all of it and then drove straight to the facility and told Dante.

He’d looked at me for a moment.

“Good,” he said.

“I want to go back,” I said. “To the game. Properly. Not just hitting balls for rehabilitation. I want to-I want to see if there’s anything left.”

He’d been quiet for a moment. “There’s something left,” he said. “I’ve been watching you for a month. There’s something left.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” I said. “That’s old for a returning player.”

“It’s not young,” he said. “But it’s not impossible.”

< Back On The ebon

“You’re thirty-two,” I said.

Claim

“I’m ranked fourteen in the world,” he said, which wasn’t arrogance, just fact. “And I’m going back to the circuit in January.” He looked at me. “You don’t have to decide everything now. You just have to decide if you want to keep working.”

“I want to keep working,” I said.

“Then we keep working,” he said.

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