Page 26 of The Longest Shot
The darkness presses in, and for the first time in three years, I wonder if safety might actually be killing me. If the walls I built to keep the James Fitzgeralds out have left me with nothing but my anger for company. I sit in the dark, listening to my breathing, the mechanical rhythm of survival without living.
Somewhere across campus, the men's team is probably at a party, doing keg stands and making bad decisions that at least involve other people. James is probably holding court, making everyone feel part of something bigger, and making loneliness look like a choice only idiots make.
Being everything I can't be anymore because I've chosen not to.
And, probably, forgotten how to.
My phone buzzes. It's probably Mills, checking with that earnest loyalty that makes me feel fraudulent, or Coach Walsh with another scheduling conflict, or my mother asking about the LSAT because apparently being pre-law means your future is already carved in stone.
Someone needing the woman I've convinced them I am.
But I don't answer, and the phone goes as dark as the room.
As dark as me.
For another few minutes, I sit in my perfect fortress, indulging in self-loathing. The whole time, I try not to think about how James's hands looked, bleeding but not letting go, strong in a way that had nothing to do with muscle. Try not to think about how, when he looked at me, for a moment, he saw me.
Past the ice, to the girl drowning under it.
But then I shake it off. Because tomorrow I'll wake up and choose it again, because the alternative—needing someone, trusting someone—is the one thing I can't survive a third time. The first betrayal was surgery without anesthesia. The second was proof the wound won't heal. A third would be fatal.
"Is this it?" I ask myself. "Forever?"
But the darkness doesn't answer.
It never does.
eleven
MORGAN
The cold wateris the last straw that turned the cold war hot.
As arctic needles drill through my scalp and down my spine, the sound that tears from my throat isn't remotely human. It's the noise you make when your body decides that over a week of pressure has finally broken through and you're done playing nice.
Seven fucking days, and they've finally found my breaking point. Not with their music, or their equipment colonizing our benches, or even with the systematic theft of our supplies that Mills has been documenting in a notebook she's titled "Evidence for the Hague."
No, they've broken me with water temperature.
Because in the hierarchy of needs at Pine Barren University, the men's team apparently requires forty-five minutes each to achieve peak male performance—which apparently involves enough hair product to stock a salon and the kind of preening that would make a peacock file for inadequacy.
I slam my palm against the shower handle hard enough to sting, and the sudden movement makes my shoulder scream, right where I'd been checked into the boards during practice.But the pain is nothing compared to the ice-cold shard of rage and hate that feels like it's buried in my skull like an ice pick.
After a week of practicing in substandard conditions while the men's team gets the good ice, the good equipment, the good everything—I'm done. Not annoyed-done or frustrated-done, but that pristine kind of done where your prefrontal cortex takes a coffee break and lets your lizard brain drive.
The towel waiting for me is yet another insult, thin enough to read through and rough enough to exfoliate a rhinoceros. It barely covers the essentials, hitting mid-thigh if I'm generous and leaving my shoulders completely bare, but I'm past caring about modesty.
I storm into the shared locker room, andtheirpresence assaults me with all the subtlety of a bachelor party in Vegas, a cocktail of testosterone and entitlement that comes from never having to question whether you belong. Ignoring the laughs, my eyes find him before my brain can intervene.
James stands with his back to me, and the universe officially has a doctorate in cruel irony, because it's clear he'snotfreezing and that hedidtake the last of the hot water. But now it's like I'm stuck in a trance, furious but frozen, angry but gawking.
He runs a hand through his hair, and the movement makes every muscle in his back shift in ways that should require a permit. My body responds with heat that starts low in my belly and spreads through my veins like I've mainlined pure stupid.
No. Absolutely not.
But my hormones apparently missed the memo about dignity. They're too busy cataloging the breadth of his shoulders, the way his wet hair curls slightly at his nape… all details I have no business noticing, let alone remembering how they felt under my fingertips.
He turns—maybe hearing the stomps of my feet or perhaps feeling my murderous stare boring holes in his spine—and oureyes lock. The locker room doesn't go silent and time doesn't slow, none of that cliche bullshit, but his easy grin does die mid-formation because he realizes it's me.
