Page 9 of Going for Gold (Sweet Cravings 3)

Me? I didn't need any of that. I just needed the sound of the crowd cheering.

"Ready?" asked Kristen. Red, white, and blue Kinesio tape ran down her arms and legs.

"Ready," I replied. I took a deep breath and got ready to run through the tunnel onto the court. Butterflies fluttered around in my stomach.

The second we burst onto the court, all my pregame jitters dissipated. The atmosphere was electric. Twelve thousand people were seated around Maracanazinho Stadium, all waiting to watch us play. In any other setting it would have terrified me to be the center of attention of so many people. Public speaking in front of all these people? Forget it. But volleyball was different. I had practiced volleyball for years. I knew I was good at it. Damn good. When I was on that court, it was my time to shine.

Kristen served a practice ball low and hard right over the net. I easily dug it to our setter and got ready for the next serve. We did a few more of those to get comfortable and make sure the other team was watching, and then Kristen started serving high to my left. I lunged for the ball and missed. Not because I was bad, but because we were setting the other team up. High and to the left was actually where I preferred the serves. A little gamesmanship never hurt, right?

After a half hour of warm-ups, we lined up in two parallel lines. The bench players were called first, and then they got to my name. I ran between the two lines of my teammates, them all slapping my ass as I ran. At the end I jumped up to high-five each of our coaches and then took my place on the back line. God, I loved the feeling of the announcer calling my name and everyone cheering. It was such a rush.

While I waited for that to finish, I looked around to find Chris in the audience. Usually it was pretty easy, but normally the crowd was nowhere near this big. Before I could spot him, the introductions ended and it was time to high five the other team under the net.

Including Gabriela Santos.

I went down the line giving high-fives. When I got to Gabriela, she locked eyes with me and smiled, just like she always did when we played each other. And just like always, it crawled under my skin. God, I hated that bitch.

I took a deep breath and tried to channel my hatred into positive energy for the game.

And it must have worked, because we crushed them in the first game of the match. I was getting all my digs, and Kristen was nailing all her spikes. It seemed like it only took a few minutes for us to take them down 25 to 11. The match was best out of 5, so if we could just keep it rolling for two more games, we'd win the match and knock Brazil and Gabriela out of the tournament. After Brazil was gone, there weren't really any other teams that would pose much of a threat to our bid for the gold medal.

Coach Hammond high-fived me as I walked over to the bench to sit down for a second and grab some water. There was an envelope on my spot, so I pushed it onto the floor and...Wait a second. Did that have my name on it?

I grabbed the envelope off the floor. Sure enough, ALINA was written on it in bold letters.

"What's that?" asked Kristen.

I shrugged. "No idea."

"It's probably a cute note from Chris. Open it!"

Aw, he's so sweet! I flipped the envelope over and pulled out the contents. At first I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "What the hell?" I mumbled.

Kristen leaned over to get a look. "Oh my God. Is that...?"

"Chris sitting next to a topless girl at Club Blue? Yes, it is." I flipped to the next photo, which was a selfie of Chris and the girl, who I could now see was Gabriela Santos. That bitch!

"Alina! Kristen!" barked Coach Hammond. "Get out there!"

I looked up and saw the second game was about to start. I got into my position and prepared for the serve, but my head was still spinning from what I had seen. How could he hang out with Gabriela after I left? He knows how much I hate her! How far did he go with her?

"Alina!" Kristen yelling my name brought me back to reality.

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you go for that? That was your ball."

What ball? I looked up and saw we were losing 1 to nothing. Shit, the game already started? "Sorry, I thought you had it."

Brazil hit another serve at me, but this time I was ready. I bumped it to our setter, who set Kristen up for a spike. Her spike was saved, and then Brazil set it up to Gabriela for a back-row spike. No way I'm going to let her win this point. Not after those photos.

Just as she went to spike it, I caught a glimpse of Chris in the audience cheering for me like everything was totally normal. Or is he cheering for Gabriela? The spike should have been easy to deal with, but my brain was distracted by all the anger. I hit the ball slightly off center and it went nowhere near where I wanted it to go. Two to nothing, Brazil. Two to nothing, Gabriela.

The rest of the game was a similar story. Not all my shots were horrible, but I definitely wasn't as sharp as I needed to be. I tried to avoid looking at Chris, but it was impossible with where he was seated in the audience. Brazil, and Gabriela in particular, seemed to feed off of my poor play. Every time she hit a good shot it just made me more and more angry, which in turn made me play worse.

Brazil won the second and third games. Chris got up to get some nachos or something during the fourth game, so I was able to pull myself together and do enough to get us a victory. Maybe we can win this match after all.

Six points into the final game, Chris came back to his seat and our best server, Nina, finally allowed back from her four game spell on the bench for violating the sex ban, jammed her thumb and had to leave the game.

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