Page 87 of Get Me to the Starting Line

His eyes flutter closed. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I was not expecting that. “Why the hell areyousorry? I’m the one that ...” My voice trails off and I gesture to the living room, my meaning clear.

He shakes his head, eyes still closed. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”

“I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”

“I wanted you.” He still doesn’t look my way, but his eyes shut tighter.

Wanted. Past tense.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat of the thick emotion burning my eyes, “it’s for the best.”

His eyes snap open, narrowing as he takes in my features. I have no idea what I look like, but I assume it’s haggard and unkempt, eyes swollen. I don’t have the energy to keep whatever emotion he’s seeing off my face.

“Come here,” he orders.

“What?” Why does he never say what I think he’s going to say? And why is he always bossing me around?

He doesn’t repeat himself, waiting for me to make up my mind. I take the few steps to cross the room and stand beside the bed. His hand trembles as it reaches for mine, tugging until I sit beside him.

“Stay,” he whispers, eyes closing again as the meds kick in. He’s drifting off into a drugged sleep, so I can’t be sure if he means what he’s saying. “Stay,” he says again, and then he’s out cold.

I want to stay. Everything in my body begs me to stay.

I don’t.

“Fuck!”

I do not give into my desire to throw the brace across the room. My prototypes keep failing—I can’t figure out how to give Julien more flexibility.

He says the brace is good, but good is not perfect. I need it to be perfect. My boss has been in and out a few times today, checking in on my progress.

If I can get this updated stabilization right, it’ll be a huge breakthrough, and the potential funding to fully develop it would be massive, making all of us a lot of money. Not to mention the impact it would have in the industry.

I don’t particularly care about that right now because the fucking hinge won’t align in the new configuration. Julien is still wearing my first prototype. This is the third—the second one was a step backward, so this one has to be better.

Attacking my computer in an attempt to ease some of my frustration, I use my development program to try to fix the design flaw I keep running into. The same one brace designs all over the world have in common.

The more stability, the less mobility.

There has to be a way to marry the two to promote better healing. If I can find the right way to stabilise a joint with mobility? Gamechanger. The old braces will be good for injuries that require less flexibility, when movement is a hindrance to healing.

But for an injury like Julien’s? Movement is important.

I have to make this perfect.

Paige and I talked it over this morning on our run. As a massage therapist she has a good working knowledge of how the body works and responds, what it needs for proper healing. It was a nice break from her peppering me with questions about Julien or the race I have us signed up for. All she needs to know is it’s in June and it’s a half marathon.

We discussed a few modifications, which pushed my research forward. But when I went to implement them on the actual brace, it wasn’t computing.

“I’m missing something,” I say under my breath. My research assistants ignore me, knowing it’s not an invitation for discussion—I mumble to myself when I’m frustrated.

The whole way home all I can see is the engineering problem. Why does the new hinge I’ve developed keep failing? The answer is on the edges of my mind, just out of reach. It needs something I can’t quite figure out. Levi is babbling in the background, and I have to pull myself out of my thoughts.

He’s playing with a few of the baby toys I haven’t quite had the time to get rid of, but he still likes them. The cute little jitter bug buzzes and vibrates as Levi tugs on it and it returns to its position.

I almost slam on the brakes.

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