Chapter 4
four
. . .
CONNOR
“Hold still.” Winnie, the team’s athletic trainer, smooths the last strip of waterproof film over my ribs like she’s icing a cake made of nerve endings. “I love how swimmers get ink like they don’t spend four hours a day marinating in chlorine.”
The fresh tattoo throbs under her fingertips—thin sailboat lines tucked under my left side, still tender enough that every stretch reminds me it’s there.
“Most people plan their tattoos around their training cycle.” Her brows lift. It’s part question, part scolding.
She’s right. All of my previous tattoos were completed post Olympics when my training time was tapered down.
“I could’ve waited,” I admit. “Didn’t want to.”
Before she can respond, Logan barrels into the training room like someone is handing out free sandwiches. It’s only been a few days, but I already know this guy is insane about food. Butterfly guys are always a little unhinged, but Logan treats it like a vocation.
“Fisk!” he crows. “Already broken? We haven’t even hazed you yet.”
He leans over my shoulder, eyes narrowing at my taped ribs like he’s assessing the damage.
“What is that? Shark attack? Lose a fight with a foam roller?”
“It’s ink,” Winnie answers, pressing the last corner down. “Not a crime scene.”
Logan brightens like this is the best news he’s gotten all week. “A new tattoo? Bold move, new guy. What’d you get? Skull? Coordinates? Mermaid? Your own initials so you don’t forget?”
Winnie slides him a look. “It’s a sailboat, Logan. Not a midlife crisis.”
Logan makes finger guns at me. “Boat guy. Did not have that on my bingo card.”
Winnie points at the taping table. “Speaking of bingo, your shoulder is one bad warm-up away from retirement. Table. Now.”
Logan groans but hops onto the table anyway, sprawling dramatically. “Every time. You act like taping me is some personal burden.”
“It is,” she says, cutting kinesio strips with surgical precision. “Also, butterfly exists as a warning.”
Logan gasps. “Wow. That hurts.”
While they bicker, I tug my shirt halfway down, careful not to snag the film.
Winnie glances back at me. “So. Boat. You sail?”
I swallow once. “I used to.”
She pauses, like she’s tempted to ask why, then doesn’t. It shouldn’t feel like mercy, but it does.
Logan twists on the table to face me. “Used to, huh? What happened? Dramatic storm? Ex-fiancée? High-stakes regatta drama?”
I shake my head. “Just…haven’t in a while.”
He nods, satisfied with the level of mystery. “We’ve all got skeletons. Mine is that I used to do distance free.”
Winnie snorts. “Your ‘distance free era’ lasted six months.”
“Six traumatic months,” Logan corrects. “You weren’t there. You wouldn’t understand.”
She presses the tape down. “I understand that if you don’t take recovery seriously, you’re going to be visiting me more often.”
Logan looks offended. “I take recovery seriously. I iced once.”
“After Worlds,” she says. “In April.”
“So maybe I like visiting you.” He shrugs like it’s common sense, not a confession.
Winnie rolls her eyes.
The corner of my mouth lifts before I can stop it.
This is why I came to Coral Cove. The interactions here aren’t performative.
There are no handlers. No talking points.
No brand directives. Just teammates chirping, room smelling like Tiger Balm and chlorine, and—for the first time in a long time—nobody is waiting for me to sell something.
For a second, the noise in my head quiets.
Belonging hits slower than loneliness, but it hits.
The locker room is loud until it isn’t.
The team finishes up their trash talk as they shower and change, tossing insults and stupid inside jokes over the stalls. It’s the kind of locker room bond that feels effortless when you’re part of it and hostile as hell when you’re not.
And I’m not.
No one is outright rude—they’re athletes, not assholes—but there’s a current running through the team I can’t tap into.
Years of shared meets, shared failures, shared wins.
And Rory. Always Rory. He’s the axis they all orbit; I’m the foreign object thrown into the system and expected not to break anything.
By the time I finish taping my shoulder and pulling on my jammer for recovery swim, the room has gone quiet. The guys have drifted out in a little pack toward the lobby, laughing about something I didn’t catch. Even Rory laughed. I haven’t heard that sound directed near me once since I got here.
I sit for a second, elbows on my knees, breathing through the reminder that this was supposed to be a fresh start.
New team. New training environment. New shot at fixing whatever the hell I broke.
Instead, it feels like moving schools halfway through senior year—everyone already has assigned seats and a shared history, and I’m stuck trying to figure out where the hell to put my lunch tray.
Eventually I push up and head toward the door. Water is neutral. Water doesn’t care who hates who. Water is the only place I don’t feel like a walking mistake.
But when I walk out into the lobby, everything shifts.
The team is gathered around someone, Rory front and center with a smile that could double as a solar flare. He pulls whoever it is into a hug, lifts them off the floor for a beat, sets them down like they’re breakable.
Charlie shifts to grab a backpack, and that’s when I see who they’re surrounding.
It’s her.
Whitney.
My heart slams into my ribs, then drops somewhere around my ankles.
Her golden hair is even lighter than it was a few months ago.
Her skin glowing with the result of hours training outside.
She looks sunlit in an effortless way, like summer followed her indoors.
Her smile hits the room the same way it lit up the coffee shop—bright, warm, infectious enough that half the people near her start smiling, too, without realizing they’re doing it.
The girl I left sitting alone in that coffee shop, stirring her drink, and checking the door. I left her with nothing but an empty chair and an apology I never managed to send. I told myself it was better that way—cleaner, safer, less humiliating for both of us. I told myself a lot of things.
Now I can feel every one of them cracking.
Because now she’s here. In Coral Cove.
I don’t move at first. My body is too busy trying to compute the fact that Whitney—my SailorGirl—is ten feet away, and I’m the last person on earth who deserves to be that close to her.
Like he senses my inner turmoil, Rory’s gaze cuts across the room and lands on me.
It’s not subtle. It’s not friendly. It’s a clear, silent “don’t even think about it” wrapped in history and territory and brotherly instinct.
Message received.
I take a step back before anyone notices me, then another, angling toward the pool entrance.
I’m not supposed to know her. I’m definitely not supposed to know her like that.
And I’m absolutely not supposed to want to walk over there and apologize for every stupid decision I’ve made in the past two months.
Whitney laughs at something Rory says—bright, unguarded, the same laugh she had when she told me about stealing chest loot in Sea of Thieves like it was a felony—and it hits me dead center. I’d forgotten how warm that sound was. How easy.
How much I liked being the reason for it.
It’s enough of a reason to let my mind imagine walking over there and apologizing to her. As if an explanation could undo the image of her alone at that table or the way my chest tightened when I saw her waiting.
Then the other voice—the smarter one, the meaner one—cuts in hard.
She’s too good for you.
She’s Rory’s sister.
You already messed up once. Don’t make it twice.
My throat goes tight. My palms go slick. I want to move toward her and run in the opposite direction at the same time, which feels about right for my life lately.
I force my feet to move—not toward her, but toward the entrance to the pool deck. Away. Safer. Or at least less disastrous.
As I push through the doorway and move toward the deck, my heart pounds hard enough to bruise. I knew Coral Cove was going to be complicated. I just didn’t know it was going to be like this.