The Love Lie

Chapter 1

One

Sydney King, formerly the nineteenth best women’s tennis player in the world, sat with her body curled up on the sofa at The Stone’s Throw Inn. A plush blanket covered her bare legs, and she snuggled in deeper until it enveloped her completely.

Nothing but her head poked out, which was a shame since her blonde hair, tied up in a messy bun, had seen much better days.

She liked the feeling of being hidden right now, not even the writing across her shirt visible.

She loved this shirt—soft after hundreds of washes, a reminder of how far she’d come.

It was from her first professional tennis tournament, the letters spelling “Puerto Vallarta Open” all but faded into obscurity.

Just like her career.

Her muscles twitched from disuse in a way that she tried not to let gnaw at her.

The television across from her played a talk show, but it couldn’t drown out the noise in her head.

She could still smell the faint scent of the lobster roll that had been delivered from the kitchen thirty minutes ago.

She took in a shallow breath as her stomach roiled, nauseous from all the fried food she’d consumed in the last few days.

How the mighty had fallen.

She rolled her neck and stretched her arms to alleviate the energy pent up inside of her, fingers snagging on something sharp, stuck on the blanket, as she did. Without looking down, she flicked a leftover piece of last night’s tortilla chips away from her.

Guess she hadn’t eaten the whole bag after all.

Since returning to her hometown of Stoneport, Massachusetts, three days ago, she'd rarely ventured out of The Stone's Throw, a charmingly outdated inn right next to downtown. This was her trip to do with as she wished. And right now, she wanted to pretend like the outside world didn’t exist.

Which was why, as her phone vibrated somewhere underneath the blanket, she let the call go to voicemail.

Her lips twitched as she considered standing up, but she found the option overwhelming enough that she ended up sinking deeper into the sofa.

She let out a frustrated groan into the empty room.

Where had it all gone so wrong?

It was a question Sydney had spent the last few months thinking about tirelessly.

On paper, everything should have worked out. It felt like she was staring at a perfectly executed rally, yet she’d still lost the point. The match, really.

Stretching out her knee along the couch, she felt a phantom twinge. After months of rehab, she knew it wasn’t real. It still hurt, though. All of the rehab had hurt, too, and, ultimately, it had been a lot of pain for nothing.

Professional tennis had been her dream for the last fifteen years—the pursuit of it all she’d ever known, really—and now she was staring down the barrel of what came next.

She’d attended her dream college on a full ride to play tennis after dedicating her adolescence to thousands of hours training at a local academy.

It had meant forsaking her junior and senior years of high school in person in favor of two years of homeschool classes, but at the time, it hadn’t felt like she was giving anything up.

For years, she’d slogged through the lower circuits before finally getting a wildcard entry into the pro tour four years ago.

She’d been twenty-four. Young, in the scheme of life, but she was up against women who’d started playing professionally at fourteen, with already a decade of experience in major tournaments under their belts by her age.

Still, she’d finally been making her mark.

Last year, she’d made it to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and then the semifinals at the US Open in the fall. She’d lost both matches, but she’d never forget the high that came with entering the stadium, under bright lights and a sold-out crowd.

She flexed her bare, extended foot, missing how the different surfaces she’d played on felt beneath her sneakers.

Until a few weeks ago, she was tennis. Her lifestyle, diet, training regimen, and the place she’d called home were all oriented around a simple, singular goal: to see how far her career could take her.

And now, with a stupid series of decisions made because she couldn’t keep her emotions in check, she’d lost everything.

What’s it that they say? Love means nothing in tennis? She’d sure proved that right.

“Idiot.” Frustration was laced through her voice as she searched for the bag of M&M’s she’d placed somewhere within reach earlier.

Whether she was talking about herself or Grant, she didn’t know.

“Hey! Are you about done with your pity party this morning?”

Hallie Thatcher, her childhood best friend, stared at her from the door to the hallway.

Wisps of Hallie’s dark hair haloed her temples, her face flushed.

She’d already accomplished more in the morning than Sydney had in the last few days since she’d arrived back in Stoneport.

Sydney was at least five inches taller than Hallie, not that anyone in the inn would know, given that she had spent most of her time glued to this spot on the couch.

She and the furniture had become one. Where she ended and it started was really no one’s business these days.

Hallie’s voice cut through the, to quote her friend, ‘pity party’ she’d maybe been throwing herself. “I’ve been standing here for like a minute. Don’t think I didn’t see what you did with that tortilla chip.”

Sydney pitched her body forward over the sofa in a fluid movement, her fingers sliding along the carpet until she found a sharp edge.

“Gotcha,” she said, holding the chip up in triumph like she’d just accomplished something.

Hallie only lifted her eyebrows and stepped farther into the shared living room, their respective bedrooms flanking both sides.

Hallie had taken over day-to-day operations of the inn from her parents two years ago. She worked possibly even more hours than Sydney had—back when she’d still had a career.

And since Hallie lived on-site that meant that, in a way, Sydney did now, too. At least, she did while she figured out what came next.

Which she would do. As soon as she managed to separate herself from the couch.

She could always go back to Florida and live in the house she’d purchased for her parents a few years ago.

But when she’d finally accepted that continuing the tour this year wasn’t possible, it hadn’t taken long to realize that being enveloped in her parents’ sympathetic yet mildly concerned hovering wasn’t what she needed.

She’d needed a reset, and coming back to the place where she’d fallen in love with tennis—coming home —while maybe a touch masochistic, felt like the right next step.

She was grateful that her friend, with very few questions asked, had offered her a place to stay.

Sydney had tried to make it work on the tour for as long as she could, but as the days wore on and her ranking continued to plummet, she’d been caught in a vicious cycle that had chewed her up and spat her out in no more than a few months.

“I’m sorry, Hal,” she said when she placed the chip on the end table, promising herself she’d throw it away when she got up.

And truly, she was. Sorry, that is. It was terrifying how easy it’d been to fall apart when it felt like there was nothing anchoring her to the world and her place in it anymore.

Hallie was already moving toward the small kitchen nestled along the wall to dig for her midday smoothie ingredients when she finally threw Sydney a bone.

“You’re fine, Syd. I know this year hasn’t been easy for you.

Plus,” she said, leveling a smirk in Sydney’s direction, “you’ve always been the messy one. ”

“Messy, not dirty. There’s a huge difference,” she muttered back, but it was drowned out by the sound of the blender.

And truly, there was. Clothes strewn about her bedroom after a shower and deprioritizing weekly deep cleans in favor of hitting a few extra balls on the court were far different than living in the detritus of sparkling water cans, chip crumbs, and stray M&M’s that had overtaken her life recently.

She couldn’t seem to pull herself out of the rut that deepened by the day.

When she’d been injured during last year’s final pro tournament of the season, it had been a blow… to put it mildly.

She’d done everything they’d said she should. Rehab. Rest. Okay, she likely could have done that one better, but she couldn’t stand the idea of coming back this season in anything less than peak physical form.

But when she’d hit the court for what she hadn’t known would be her final year, she could feel her body still wasn’t right. Her knee’s range of movement was still too limited, exacerbated by her preference for hard surfaces and quick hits.

She’d lost during the first round of the Australian Open, and it had only gone downhill from there.

If the body keeps the score, hers was looking to take her out without allowing a single point .

Her serve was weaker. She couldn’t cover the court as easily, even at a few inches shy of six feet.

The nail in the coffin was that she was afraid to make the quick adjustments that were crucial to her almost imperceptible edge in reaction time, something she’d been honing for years as she’d reached the next levels of play.

The end came not with a bang, but with a whimper. There was no singular moment, no reopening of her ACL tear that had forced her to be carried off the court. Just a slow degradation of stamina, focus, and confidence in her game.

She didn’t trust herself—and that was the worst thing that could happen to an athlete at the professional level.

Finally, at her coach’s recommendation, if not downright insistence, she’d retired from the tour a week ago, officially rescinding her spot in the next open, which she’d originally been set to fly out for in a few days.

Wimbledon, which had made the knife twist in a little harder.

And then she’d accepted—still hoping this was all a bad dream—that her career was over.

It felt like she was proving everyone right.