Chapter 29 #2
Tears well behind my eyes. What is my problem? So I was almost raped, my absent father suddenly appeared in my life, and the guy I’m in love with is too overburdened for a real relationship. Okay, that is all pretty fucked up, but I can’t let it cripple me now.
I drop my head back and gaze at the blue sky. I will not compare the painted protection symbol Lewis gave me to Jaeger’s purchase of a car for Cali. They’re not the same. They can’t be. I’m reading things into it because I want to be with Lewis, even if it’ll hurt me in the end.
We attach anklets that track our times and Cali squeezes the bejesus out of me. “Good luck!” she shouts, trilling her tongue in catcalls to my teammates and me from the sidelines.
I line up at the start. We’re one of the last heats, our times clocked by the anklets and broken down by men and women. Since we’re one of the final groups, we should know right away how well we did.
Lewis approaches my side. “The guys and I decided to pair off. You’re with me.”
My gaze shoots to him. “What?” He’s staring straight ahead. “Lewis, what are you talking about?”
“Get ready. They’re about to start.”
I glance around and note our teammates dividing into twos. “You could have asked me. We’re not a good fit,” I tell him, frustrated.
Lewis heightens every frenzied atom inside me, putting my entire existence into a state of overstimulation. He’s not the calming presence I need right now. Definitely the worst partner I could have asked for.
His jaw tightens, his gaze flickering to me. “You were wrong, Genevieve. Wrong about how much you mean to me.”
“If I’m wrong, then why did you leave when I explained I needed more?”
“What you said about Mira was right. I haven’t put enough effort into getting her some help. I had things to work out and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
What’s he saying…? God, I can’t think about this right now. It will consume me, and I need all my faculties for the race.
I focus on the barren hill. “That’s not why I think you should pair with someone else. You should have chosen a teammate who can keep up with you.”
“I did,” he says, and takes off.
A heartbeat later, I realize the gun has gone off, and people are bursting past me.
Crap! I sprint to catch up, forcing my panicked breaths into a steady rhythm, relaxing my hands that had tightened at Lewis’s words.
The first two miles are uphill, and once I get my breathing in check, I’m able to catch up to Lewis with energy to spare. This isn’t the time to overanalyze what he said and what it means for us. If I don’t concentrate on the race, I won’t get through it.
The crowd is one large mass, and I can’t tell where our heat begins and another ends, but we’re passing people left and right.
I focus on staying relaxed and conserving energy for speed and tracking the ground, which is riddled with rocks and divots capable of spraining ankles and knocking a person out of the competition.
The first obstacle we approach is the one that looks like a playground monkey bar set, except it goes uphill. Swinging bars immediately follow. Both obstacles are slicked with mud and oil.
I leap for the first rung and almost slip and fall in a muddy gully.
That little shake-up has my head entirely in the game and not on the man a few feet in front of me, skipping bars two at a time like Tarzan.
I can’t skip bars, but I trained for the greased apparatuses.
A technique that involves speed and grip adjustment gets me across the initial set.
Lewis is nearly to the next obstacle, a wall a quarter of a mile away, by the time I exit the second.
My first test of upper body strength is made of flat, vertical boards smeared in mud from competitors who didn’t make it through the monkey bars without a bath. My heart sputters in a panic. The wall is twice Lewis’s height.
A sudden image of him above me at the cascades runs through my mind, along with the split second when I nearly fell to my death.
Lewis waves with frantic, full-bodied arm movements for me to hurry, and I shove aside my fears, pump my legs at full speed, and leap onto the wall. He boosts my foot, propelling me up until I loop a leg over the top.
This is why I didn’t want to partner with him. I’m slowing him down.
A random stranger boosts Lewis and he reciprocates by giving the guy an arm lift to the ledge. Okay, maybe we all need help in this competition.
“Go!” Lewis shouts in my ear, and shoves me over the other side.
Son of a bitch! He had climbed to the top of the wall and helped the guy in the time it took me to wiggle around without falling, and that’s what I do anyway.
Bales of hay cushion my fall, but I land hard, jolting my spine. Lewis rolls off beside me and beelines it for the next obstacle.
I stumble after him, passing people along the way. Even at this stage, competitors look haggard.
A bottleneck up ahead blocks my view of the next hurdle, and it’s not until I’m nearly upon it that I get a good look. The ice bath.
A girl in front of me enters the water and screams.
No sweat. Lewis prepared me for this with the Cave Rock torture. Of course, what I remember about that day isn’t the cold water, but the way he warmed me afterward.
Focus!
I clamber over the side, and—Holy mother of God! My limbs lock, hands curling into claws. I’m in the Arctic, ice cubes burning my flesh. I clench my teeth and book it to the other side, my arms and legs moving like sticks. I hurl myself over the edge and land on my ass with a sting.
Hop-sprinting, I attempt to circulate warmth into the Popsicles that are my legs, and head for the mud ditch just ahead.
People exit the brown moat, groaning and covered head to toe in splatter.
A few unfortunate souls look like swamp monsters.
My first step inside explains why contestants appeared to be moving in place.
The mud acts like quicksand. With each step, I stumble and sink, the bottom sucking my shoes like a sponge.
My quads burn, my back aches—this is by far the most strenuous obstacle up until now.
Our team planned for walking through mud by lacing our shoes snugly and triple-knotting so we wouldn’t lose them.
I emerge on the other side exhausted, but with all my clothes.
I’m covered in brown goop and shaking because the mud was freaking cold, and after the ice bath, I really didn’t need it.
I ignore the chunk of dirt I swallowed and jog, picking up speed as my limbs warm.
I’m not sure if others have dropped out, or simply lag behind, or if I’m in between heats, but the competitors along this swath have thinned.
Lewis appears strong just ahead and is rapidly approaching the obstacle that psyched me out during training, because there was literally no way to prepare for it.
Dangling live wires hang from a wooden edifice, constructed for the sole purpose of shocking the crap out of people.
Some runners slow, possibly to determine how others cross successfully.
I kick it up a notch.
Lewis looks back. “Chin tucked, arms in front. Run hard!” he yells before bursting into the wires a few seconds ahead of me.
We couldn’t train for the electrodes, but we talked about them. Lewis and Zach agreed the best strategy is to not slow. You slow, you’re more likely to get hit by a pulse.
I’m doing as Lewis says, running full force when a guy on my left, using some sort of dodging strategy, jerks with a yelp and drops like a stone.
My pace falters, fear messing with my head, and a zap spears my bad arm, radiating pain down my side. I scream and nearly fall.
Hands braced on my knees, I look up, blinking. My side got hit by a pulse, that’s all. My arm is not in fact falling off.
Lewis is yelling from the other end for me to run. I raise my arms in front of my face and battle-cry my way out and into his arms. He squeezes me to his chest—then shoves me with a hard push onto the next stretch of the race.
Miles of rocky incline lie ahead. Lewis passes me, but we’re both moving fast compared to the others. Like the shale outcropping at the cascades, the rock forms steep, sharp stairs.
Center of gravity, legs instead of back. I repeat Lewis’s instructions in my head and push until my legs burn. It works because I’m catching up to him.
A big, beefy guy blocks my path up ahead. He has more muscle on one forearm than I do on my entire body, but he’s slow. I swivel a fraction at the top of a boulder and round him.
Something happens. The guy loses his balance and uses me to regulate, or he makes a blocking move. The only thing I know is that my ponytail gets yanked back, sending my center of gravity to hell.
This time, no sound erupts from my mouth. I’m just falling—arms windmilling. I land with a crunch on my hand and elbow, my knee taking the next brunt.
Competitors race past, the sound of panting and hard footfalls in my ear. One guy raises his eyebrow as he passes. “You okay?” he calls.
I gulp in air and clamber to my feet. Blood gushes down my knee and there’s a good chance I broke something in my hand, but everything else seems in working order, including my temper.
Motherfucker. Where the hell is the added security the coordinators hired?
I scale the few feet I dropped back and cut ahead of the people who passed me a moment ago. My face burns, sweat pouring down my temples. I shouldn’t be using this much energy until the finish, but I’m behind because of that fall.
The next mile is downhill, which I take at a dangerous speed the big guys don’t risk, including the one who made me tumble.
He glares as I sweep past him, the road wider here; he can’t grab me for support or a boost. Logically, I probably shouldn’t run this fast either, but the fear is gone, which will either help me or get me killed.