Twenty-Nine – Wyatt
Twenty-Nine
Wyatt
D umped her. They thought I dumped her.
Sweat dripped down my back as I fought through another two-hundred-pound deadlift. This weight should have been easy. But my arms shook. My grip faltered. Something was wrong with me, hollowing me out from the inside.
That’s why I was hiding in the women’s gymnastics training center gym at the ass-crack of dawn.
The Tolliver Yards gym was off-limits until Cal figured out what the fuck was happening with my pheromones, and there was no way in hell I was using Morgan’s home set-up.
Being in the same space was too painful—not because she didn’t want to rekindle things, but because she never reacted to my scent. My rotten scent, oozing with desperation. For her.
It was eating me alive.
Dumped her. Where the fuck had that come from?
With a pained grunt, I racked the weights and grabbed a sterilizing wipe to clean the equipment. If I cranked the ventilation on high, my stench might clear out before the girls arrived for their morning workouts. Even so, I sprayed everything down twice. Just in case.
Thankfully, my office had an attached bathroom with a sink deep enough to stick my head under the faucet. I stood there, letting the water stream over my face, holding my breath so I didn’t choke my own scent.
Foul. Everything about this situation stank to high heaven. The worst. Just like Morgan’s accident .
I was sitting in the stands, still riding the high of winning silver on the high bar the day before, confident Morgan would clinch yet another world title on vault. No one flew higher than she did. Her speed, her precision—unmatched to this day. Not even the great Grace Arata came close. I had to force myself not to use Morgan’s vaults as the standard when talking to my squad.
Watching her fall…
For months, I blamed myself. I should’ve noticed that the vault height was wrong. Should’ve sensed the danger after the Italian gymnast fell. Instead, I was eating gummy worms when Morgan’s world shattered. Fucking gummy worms .
The image of her lying motionless on the mat was seared into my mind. Every time I blinked, there she was—ghostly, crumpled, broken. Forever changed.
It took five weeks to connect with her after the accident. She’d just been transferred to a care facility near her parents’ house while I was back in Arizona, struggling with my classes and on the verge of losing my scholarship.
Jacobi texted me an exhaustive list of rules before our first call:
Text Ethan first to see if she’s awake and in a good mood.
Only call Ethan’s phone, not Morgan’s.
Her phone’s off for now.
Voice calls only. She can’t focus on screens or read.
Don’t mention anything too personal, in case her parents are in the room.
Be nice. She can’t help being this way. They say it’s temporary.
All I wanted was one glimmer of normalcy. For her to roast my latest shitty math test score before patiently explaining fractions to me again. But I didn’t know how to handle the snarling impostor on the other end of the line.
She lashed out at me during the first phone call, telling me how wrong it was of me to go back to college, to leave her alone. That Arizona was too far to make things work. Then she started crying, saying how much she missed and needed me. Two seconds later, she couldn’t stand me.
Ethan didn’t help matters. “She’s right about one thing—Arizona is too far. You can’t understand… Tough break, bud.”
I read too much into his words, into her anger, and convinced myself it would be better if I disappeared from her life. There was nothing I could do to help her.
Hell, I even made a subpar verbal punching bag.
It didn’t help that her words overlapped with the echoes of my mother’s constant criticisms. You’re so stupid, second best, defective, an expensive mistake. Runt. Why can’t you ever think for one fucking second?
But I kept calling. Morgan was an emotional wreck during our second call. Semi-feral during the third.
But it was the fourth call that undid me.
Fuck off, Wyatt. Fuck all the way off. Go, just go. Get lost.
When a woman tells a man to get lost, the polite thing to do is honor their wishes.
So, I did.
Even though it nearly killed me.
Fuck, I thought as my stomach roiled, rejecting the string cheese I’d forced down earlier. Maybe she really was killing me.
I hadn’t slept right since that plane ride. Riddled with constant nausea. My shorts hung low and loose on my hips. And my pheromones…
Pulling my head from under the faucet, I stripped and cleaned my body with scent-canceling wipes. Then, a liberal dose of neutralizing spray, followed by fresh clothes. I’d change again after lunch.
Finally, I swallowed a double dose of the prescription Cal had given me Saturday night—after he finished peppering me with questions and drawing three vials of blood.
I wanted to hate the guy. We had nothing in common. I didn’t have his smarts, height, wealth, or confidence—everything she deserved from a partner.
Nor could I offer her Alijah’s sweet devotion, Joaquin’s playful devilry, or even Owen’s intellectual stimulation.
I was just a man falling to pieces on her doorstep.
And they thought I’d dumped her.
What a goddamn joke.
***
By the time afternoon practice rolled around, I’d checked off every recruiting call on my list. Even managed to type up all my notes—badly, but at least they were more readable than my chicken scratch.
After two more rounds of scent-canceling spray and another dose of blockers, I could finally focus on being the coach my squad deserved. Who cared that I was running on half a protein bar and two liters of water?
“All right,” I said to a handful of girls gathered near the vault runway, several of whom were taller than me, their practice gear complemented by ankle and wrist braces. “Let’s focus on your landings today. Most of you are over-rotating, so keep that in mind. Got it?” Clapping my hands together, I coaxed some enthusiasm from them. “Let’s go.”
Their vaults were good, some even great, but there was always room for improvement.
“That looked cramped. Did it feel that way?” I asked one of the girls. “Hurdle sooner. Really stretch out that back handspring. Try it again.”
Body after body flipped into the foam pit.
“That’s it—punch it, punch it!”
The simultaneous gasps behind me alerted me to Morgan’s arrival. I knew it was her from the subtle vibration of confidence stroking the back of my neck. Even now, after ten years, the vault was her domain.
She stopped beside me in her work uniform—a Narwhals sweatshirt, fleece vest, and scrub pants. Seeing her on the foam mats in street clothes and tennis shoes felt surreal. She should have been barefoot, ankles taped, covered in chalk dust, jogging toward the end of the runway to take her turn on the vault.
Her amused amber eyes slid up to meet mine. “For someone who specializes in bars and rings, you’re better at this than I expected.”
“Learned from the best,” I murmured, redirecting my attention to the next girl in line, who was staring slack-jawed at the two of us. “Come on, Nika. Don’t step to the side when you lunge this time. Go!”
Morgan crossed her arms and watched the vaults silently, shifting her weight to one side. The curve of her hip hovered close enough to graze my leg. Yet not close enough.
“You weren’t kidding about how much air they’re getting. I’m impressed,” she said with an approving nod.
“Our recruiting game is strong,” I replied, keeping an eye on the girls. The next vaulter landed too far to the left in the pit. “Watch your elbows, Danni.”
“What do you mean?” Danni asked, wading through the foam blocks.
“You can’t bend your elbows like that and you know it.”
“But I don’t remember,” she said with an exaggerated pout, resting her arms on the edge of the pit. “Can’t you show us? ”
She batted her eyelashes—at Morgan. A dozen other gazes piled on with unchecked interest.
Biting back a smile, the object of their admiration turned away and asked under her breath, “Walk me out?”
“Sure,” I said, more than willing to escape their collective awe for gymnastics greatness.
I waved over one of the other coaches, stepped aside, and followed Morgan across the gym.
“How does our facility stack up against Wakeland State’s?” I asked.
“About the same—which is true for most of the sporting complexes, except the football operations center,” she replied. “But I’m sure Wakeland will find a willing donor or twenty to cough up enough funds to build a rival facility, and the cold war will continue.”
She held the door for me as we entered a side hallway.
“But I didn’t come here to talk about equipment purchasing.” Morgan paused before a trophy case, taking a moment to admire the hardware inside. Then she turned to face me. “You haven’t come over. Why?”
“Early conditioning with some of the girls.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts and leaned against the wall. The rough scratch of brick against my shirt helped keep me grounded.
Deception wasn’t my strong suit. Avoidance, though? That I could manage.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I got a prescription.”
Her lips pinched into the most tempting little pout. “But your appointment with Cal—”
“Still meeting with him on Thursday. But it’s a follow-up now.” I let out a dry laugh. “Owen forced him to make a house call over the weekend.”
Morgan took half a step back. Her brows lifted slightly, a flicker of something unreadable crossing her face. “Was that before or after you told them about us being neighbors?”
Ah. Turns out the big guy hadn’t mentioned I was his patient. That was…oddly reassuring. Maybe he was a legit doctor and not just a pile of brainy charisma.
“Cal was there for the whole mess if that’s what you’re wondering.” I pressed harder against the wall, the bricks digging into my shoulders. “So, yeah—everybody knows everything now.” I paused as the first whiff of compost reached my nose. “Well, almost everything.”
“Thank you for telling them.” She stepped back again, her narrowed gaze drifting toward the sunset-soaked front lobby. “I should go. Sorry for interrupting. ”
“Hey, uh…” I held out my hand—for her. To keep her with me for a moment longer. But that meant I needed an excuse. Of course, I went with the lamest option. “Scent check? Not sure if I need more spray.”
Morgan stared at my hand, her eyes slowly trailing up my arm before meeting my eyes. A tight, peculiar expression darkened her gaze, clashing with the polished air of her professional smile.
“I can’t smell anything.”
And then she left—a beautiful mirage, disappearing into the hazy orange glow of waning daylight.
There one second, then gone. Just like always.
Trapped in a cycle of our own making. We talk and part, talk and part. The meetings were never long enough, and the words were never what either of us wanted to say. The distance was too great to overcome—because my gravitational pull wasn’t strong enough to make her stay.
Because I was lacking.
But I’d never, ever dump her. Not in a million years.