Page 132 of The Unfinished Line

“Do they really call him that?” Seren rolled her eyes, handing the mobile back to Dillon.

Dillon shrugged. Outside, snow began to cling to the seventeenth-story hotel window, the tops of the trees covering Central Park dusted in white. She turned her attention back to the phone.

The surgeon’s profile photo had to be at least a decade old. The man she met this morning had wrinkles and a bad spray-on tan. But his handshake was firm and his confidence even firmer, his office littered with signed photos of his former patients. Tiger Woods. Tom Brady. Harrison Ford. Bill Clinton. That sort.

Three weeks ago, Kam sat cross-legged on Dillon’s bed and explained how she’d met with a surgeon renowned for taking on cases others found unsolvable. A specialist who focused on bio-medicine.

“He thinks you could run again.”

Dillon had looked over the material Kam brought with her from NYC.Paste grafting and stem cell cartilage repair.

As his moniker suggested, he dealt primarily with celebrity clientele, cherry-picking his patients. He was out of Dillon’s league, but that was no longer the case for Kam. A call to a friend-of-a-friend and she had been granted his full attention.

Dillon had set the pamphlet aside.

“You know I can’t afford this.” His practice worked outside the parameters of insurance—a cash-only basis which provided him the ability to pursue unconventional treatments.

“Please don’t insult me.” Kam’s jaw tightened. “I would give every penny I have if it meant you would be able to race again—if that’s what you want. If the tables were turned, I know you would do the same for me.”

The tableshadturned. It had once been Dillon who was at the height of her career. Dillon who’d traveled the world. Who’dearned the better living. Kam was lightyears ahead of her now—the disparity between them only broadening.

But if she could race again? If she could make it to Los Angeles? If she could etch her name in stone—ingold—to solidify her place in Sports History?

Maybe her story wasn’t finished.

If that’s what you wantKam had said.

There should have been no question.

Dillon’s entire world had collapsed with her wreck back in Hamburg. Everything she’d pushed for. Everything she’d fought for, suffered through, year after year, mile after mile, clawing tooth and nail to achieve. Gone in the fraction of a second—the clipping, or unclipping, of a cleat.

So why had she hesitated to jump on the opportunity? Why, in the last couple weeks, had a contentment crept in, whispering to her the promise of peace?

It didn’t belong there. She was born to compete.

Dropping her head into Kam’s lap, she’d closed her eyes to the familiar comfort of the fingers trailing through her hair and nodded her agreement. She would meet with Dr. Monaghan. See what magic he could weave.

And today, three weeks later, he’d stood in his office and assured Dillon eighty percent of patients who underwent this specific type of surgery returned to competition. If all went well, by the end of the week, she’d be on her way home with a different forecast for her knee. A month non-weight bearing. Another month in a brace.

After that, only time would tell.

Could she run by spring?

His pepper-gray brows had knit, wrinkling his bronzed forehead. He was not so arrogant as to guarantee a timeline. Every injury healed at a different speed. But at the door he’d stopped, clapping her on the shoulder. “A long shot is betterthan a final whistle.” He’d drawn his arm back to throw an imaginary ball. “After all, sometimes a Hail Mary finds the end zone.”

Dillon forced herself to sign on the dotted line—she wasn’t a quitter—and Kam wired over more money than Dillon made in an entire year.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Shifting her attention off the headshot of the doctor, Dillon’s thoughts returned to her sister. “Of course I am.” She tossed her phone on the bedside table. “What a stupid question.”

“It’s not, though, is it?” Seren set a tentative hand on her leg. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

Frustration building, Dillon shoved the hand away, angry at herself for wavering on her conviction, and angry at Seren for always seeing through her.

“Tell me, if something happened and you were told you would never ride again—but then an opportunity arose that offered you a second chance, would you not jump on it without ever looking back?”

“I think it’s a little different for me. Aside from you, from Mam, riding is what I love most in the world.”

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