Coming Home (Taking You Home #1)

Emma

"I failed at the only thing I was ever good at."

The words came out tired, worn smooth like shoes I'd walked in too long, all the give gone out of the soles.

Across from me, Camilla's pen hovered over her notepad.

She didn't write anything down. For four weeks, I'd been sitting in this exact chair playing the hits: the weather, my generic motel room, the coffee shop down the street that consistently managed to ruin an iced latte.

Safe, polite filler. Bus stop conversation, not the heavy stuff you're supposed to unpack when someone is billing your insurance fifty dollars an hour.

But today, the filter just failed. I hadn't planned it. I hadn't rehearsed some brave, heartbreaking monologue in the bathroom mirror this morning. I just sat down, stared at the stupid tissue box on the table between us, and the truth slipped out before I could bite my tongue.

"Tell me about that," Camilla said, her tone perfectly even.

I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. "Swimming. I was a swimmer."

Was. The past tense still stung, even after all this time.

"I won my first Olympic gold at sixteen.

" I focused on a tiny dark speck on the carpet near the leg of the coffee table.

"Sixteen. I was practically a baby. My face was on cereal boxes, morning talk shows, magazines.

I trained six hours a day, seven days a week.

I was really, really good." I paused, and for half a second I could feel it again.

The water. The roar of the crowd hitting me when I surfaced.

The scoreboard flashing my name at the top.

"I had the whole world telling me I was born for this. "

My voice thinned out on the last word.

"Now, I can't even get in a pool," I whispered. "I look at water and my stomach turns. It's not nostalgia. It's not nerves. It's literal sickness."

Camilla didn't flinch. No pity, no shock. Just that steady, expensive attention. I guess that's the perk of paying someone to listen to you. They've always heard worse.

"You said you failed at the only thing you were good at." Camilla tilted her head. "Is swimming really the only thing?"

"The only thing that gave me a reason to wake up."

She jotted something down. I wanted to lean over and read it, but that felt too pathetic, even for me.

"I failed as a daughter, too. And a sister.

" I was talking now, and stopping felt a hell of a lot harder than letting it ride.

"Three years ago, I packed a single suitcase and moved across the state just to prove I could.

I cut off my parents. My brother. I convinced myself that their love was actually criticism, that if they were worried about me, it meant I was failing. So I just… ghosted them."

My brother, Theo.

The name felt bulky and foreign in my mouth.

I hadn't spoken it aloud in months. We hadn't talked in over a year.

He called, I watched the screen flash, and I let it go to voicemail.

He texted. I read the messages from the lock screen and closed my eyes.

I pulled harder at the thread on my denim.

"Last Christmas, he sent a photo of his daughter.

Gap-toothed grin, party hat still on from her birthday the month before.

I've missed three of her birthdays. I'm an aunt to a little girl who wouldn't recognize me on the street. "

The silence stretched, and shame filled every corner of the room. Somewhere in my phone, there were twelve unread messages from Theo. I was too guilty to open them and too stubborn to delete them.

"And I don't even know what I'm punishing him for. He didn't do a single thing wrong. He just kept showing up for me, and I couldn't handle being seen."

"What made you pull away from him, Emma?"

"Because I looked like this." I gestured vaguely to myself.

All of it. The extra weight, the permanent shadows under my eyes, a girl who used to sprint a hundred meters in open water but couldn't handle two flights of stairs anymore.

"And because I let a man erase me. Which is the grand prize of my failures. "

Camilla rested her pen against her pad and simply waited.

"I stayed with someone who told me I was nothing.

Every single day, for three years, until his voice became my internal monologue.

He was an artist with it, you know? He knew exactly where the skin was thinnest. The weight gain.

The swimming. The fact that my parents had stopped calling because I'd pushed them away first. He'd bring it up under the guise of sweet concern.

" I swallowed. "'I'm just being honest with you, Em.

Nobody else loves you enough to tell you the truth. '"

Hearing it out loud made me want to crawl out of my skin. But the poison was out now.

"And I believed him. It had nothing to do with him being right.

I was just so damn tired. And when you're that exhausted, you'll accept any lie as fact if it means you can stop fighting.

" My hands were fists in my lap. I forced my fingers to uncurl.

"I'd left. But I still hated myself for what I'd become. "

Camilla's pen scratched against the paper.

"It's the ambush of it all that kills me," I murmured, staring up at the ceiling.

Nobody tells you that hitting bottom isn't one big breakdown.

It's small. It's agonizingly constant. It's brushing your teeth at seven in the morning and your brain randomly playing a tape of something cruel your ex said in 2024.

Word for word. Same smug inflection. It's standing in the grocery line holding a bag of frozen peas and scrolling through a highlight reel of every bad choice you've ever made.

I took a slow breath through my nose. "I don't invite these thoughts. They just squat in my head, and I don't have the strength to evict them."

Camilla set her pen down. "Emma, look at me." I raised my eyes. "What you just did, naming those things out loud to another human being? That is massive progress."

"Doesn't feel like progress."

"What does it feel like?"

"Like I just compiled a highly organized, bulleted list of reasons to give up."

She didn't offer a hollow, reassuring smile. Instead, her gaze sharpened. "What do you actually want, Emma?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Not what you think is realistic, or safe, or what you think you deserve," she said, eyes locked on mine. "If I could wave a wand and hand you anything right now, what do you want?"

Outside, the distant hum of traffic and the muffled, rhythmic bass of a car stereo three floors down vibrated through the glass.

I tried to answer. Nothing came.

"I don't know."

Camilla didn't break eye contact.

"That's not a cop-out," I insisted, my thumb tracing my knuckle.

"I don't know. I don't think I want anything anymore.

" I stared at the floor between my feet.

"I used to lie in bed at night making these massive, ridiculous plans.

What I'd do after the next Olympic cycle, where I'd travel, who I was going to be.

I used to fall asleep excited. Can you imagine that?

Being excited about tomorrow?" I let out a tired laugh.

"Now, I can't even answer a basic question in therapy. "

I rubbed my palms against my jeans.

"And that scares me more than the depression. Because failure at least means you tried. It means you aimed for something and missed. I haven't aimed for anything in years. I just exist. I wake up, I clear the day, I go to sleep, and none of it matters."

Camilla's expression remained grounded, patient but never patronizing. She'd mapped this exact terrain a thousand times over, and knew where the path went even when they couldn't see it.

"Apathy feels a lot like peace when you're in survival mode," she said.

"It feels like the hurting has stopped. But that peace isn't real.

Your mind just goes quiet, because feeling had become too much to carry.

" Camilla crossed one ankle over the other.

"And yet you walked through my door today.

You sat down, you felt the pain, you cried.

Those aren't the actions of a ghost, Emma.

You're still fighting. You just can't see it in yourself yet. "

I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand, knowing my mascara was a smeared disaster. Not that it mattered. I couldn't remember the last time I cared about what a mirror had to say.

"I'm pretty sure crying in front of a stranger doesn't count as winning," I muttered.

"It counts more than you think."

She held my gaze until I had to look away, my fingers twisting the hem of my shirt into a wrinkled knot.

Camilla straightened up, clicking her pen back into place.

"Here's your homework for the week. One thing.

Just one. Something you used to love. It doesn't have to be big, and it doesn't have to involve a pool.

A song you used to play on repeat. A food you loved.

A walk somewhere with a view. Just experience it, and try not to judge yourself while you do. Can you do that?"

I nodded.

I wasn't going to do it. We both knew it. But the assignment was given, the hour was up, and surviving forty-five minutes in this warm room without dissolving felt like enough of a victory for a Wednesday.

We did the polite, professional handshake. Same time next week. See you then.

The hallway outside her office was long, beige, and quiet, smelling faintly of warm copier toner. I caught my reflection in the window at the end of the hall and looked down. I'd learned not to linger on my own face.

I used to wear ridiculous disguises to appointments. Giant sunglasses, baseball caps pulled low, hair tucked away. Back when I had a face people recognized. Back when a stranger at the grocery store might tap my shoulder and ask if I was that Emma, the girl who broke two world records.

I didn't need the disguises anymore.

Waiting for the elevator, I leaned against the wall, listening to the cables groan behind the drywall. A woman in a sharp gray blazer hurried past without glancing up. A guy in scrubs stepped out of a nearby door, laughing into his phone. Neither of them looked at me. Nobody ever did.

The elevator dinged, and I rode it down to the lobby alone.

The ground floor was aggressive glass and white tile, a building that wanted to be important but settled for dental offices and therapists. I was digging through my oversized bag for my keys, heading for the exit, when I saw him.

He was standing near the directory.

Tall. Dark blond hair that was a little too long, curling slightly at the collar of his shirt.

He was dressed in solid black, a silhouette I would have known anywhere.

His skin had that deep, golden-bronze tan you can only earn from spending thousands of hours under open sky, breathing in chlorine, living on a pool deck before the rest of the world has had its coffee.

He was wearing sunglasses indoors. It was overcast outside.

My feet stopped. Everything stopped.

I didn't need to see his eyes to know they were navy blue.

I knew because I'd spent half my adolescence looking at them across my brother's kitchen table, at dusty backyard barbecues, at international meets where he'd wave at me from three lanes over like it was a private joke that we were representing the same country.

Ralph Brandt.

My fingers went slack. The keys I'd just fished out slipped back into the bag. I grabbed the strap with both hands, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs it made me dizzy.

Run. The panic fired through my whole body. Turn around. Hide behind the pillar. Pretend you dropped something. Take the stairs. Do anything except stand directly in his path to the exit.

But my legs refused.

He started walking toward the doors. Long, effortless strides, gear bag slung over one shoulder, still carrying himself like the deck was his. I used to move like that too, back when it was mine.

Ten feet. Five. I braced myself for the shock on his face, the double-take, the inevitable "Emma?" that would shatter my invisibility. I'd have to explain. The vanishing. The weight. The ruined girl standing in front of him where a champion used to be.

He stopped right in front of me.

He tilted his head. But his eyes weren't on me. They went right past my shoulder, toward the exit doors, like I was just an inconvenient obstacle in his path.

"Excuse me," he said. Polite, casual, indifferent. "Can I get past?"

I stepped aside. My body cleared the way automatically, like muscle memory from a life where I was always making room for someone else.

He walked right past me. I caught the scent of his sunscreen and fresh laundry. He didn't slow down. He didn't hesitate. He pushed through the heavy glass doors into the cool, gray afternoon, and just like that, he was gone.

I turned slowly, watching his broad shoulders recede down the sidewalk. The glass doors swung shut between us.

He hadn't recognized me.

The guy who used to chuck me into the deep end every Fourth of July, who had draped his own Olympic gold around my neck because he said mine was the one that mattered, had looked right through me.

I couldn't figure out which realization was worse.

That he didn't see me at all.

Or that I had spent the last three years getting exactly what I asked for.