7. Ralph
Ralph
Her face went white. All at once, like she'd taken a hard punch to the gut and the blood had dropped straight into her boots.
Theo knocked again. Three rhythmic, familiar raps that rattled the heavy timber of the front door. "Ralph, come on. Open up."
Emma's eyes locked onto mine. The panic in them hit me square.
She looked cornered, all that old champion's pride with nowhere left to run.
I gave her a sharp nod toward the back hallway.
She didn't need a formal invitation. She disappeared down the hall.
The guest room door clicked shut, and I turned to face the music.
I pulled the front door open, stepping into the frame.
Theo Carrow blew past me, shouldering the door the rest of the way open before I'd stepped clear of it, moving like the clock was already running.
Suit jacket over one shoulder, phone in hand, already mid-sentence about some fire he needed me to put out or some sponsor I'd managed to piss off before breakfast.
That was Theo. He loved hard, but he managed harder, and the two impulses had been baked into the same aggressive gesture for so long he couldn't tell where the brother stopped and the businessman began.
"I tried calling your cell three times," he muttered, tossing his keys onto the entry console and dropping his frame onto my leather couch like he'd paid the mortgage on it. "Your phone dead?"
"Charging in the bedroom." I shut the door, deliberately positioning my bulk against the island, anchoring myself so the entire length of the hallway remained behind my left shoulder and safely out of his field of vision. "What's the crisis?"
"Multiple things. All urgent. None of which you're going to appreciate before your first cup of coffee." He glanced down at his watch, his jaw tight. "Abbie's waiting at home, so I'm going to give you the short version."
I'd known the guy since I was nine years old.
Coach Iris Vance had spotted me thrashing around like a drowning dog in a Bakersfield community pool, somehow convinced there was an Olympic engine buried inside a scrawny, loud kid who dove off the blocks wrong but moved water faster than anyone else in the county.
She'd called in a lifetime favor with Theo's father, Martin Carrow, who ran the biggest elite sports management firm in LA.
Martin drove down on a blistering Saturday, watched me grind through six grueling laps in borrowed, scratched-up goggles, and told Coach Vance he'd cover my training out of his own pocket.
Theo was thirteen. He'd been sitting in the backseat of his dad's luxury sedan when I climbed in after that first practice, my skin smelling like cheap chlorine, my eyes bloodshot and burning.
He looked at me, looked at the canvas swim bag I was clutching like it held the crown jewels, and said, "You smell like a swamp.
" I looked right back at his clean polo shirt and said,
"You smell like old money." He'd laughed so hard his old man nearly missed the freeway on-ramp. We'd been locked in ever since.
Twenty years later, Theo had taken his father's blueprint and scaled it into a multi-million-dollar sports empire.
His heaviest current investment? My final Olympic run.
He was my manager, my strategist, my shield against the press, and the closest thing to blood I had on this earth.
He was also, when the mood struck him, the most exhausting bastard alive.
"Alright," he said, his eyes narrowing into corporate mode.
"The European sportswear deal is back on the table.
They want your face on the global aquatics line for Paris.
Massive money, incredible exposure. The catch is the morality clause—it's so aggressive it practically requires you to take a vow of celibacy and join a monastery. "
"I already live like a monk, Theo."
"Yeah, I've seen the inside of your fridge.
It's a graveyard of protein shakes and old eggs.
It's depressing." He scrolled through a document on his screen, his thumb moving like a piston.
"I'm killing the morning show request for next week.
You don't need to sit on a white couch with two talk-show anchors who are going to smile to your face while replaying that fan video for the fifty-millionth time.
We keep you dark. We keep you quiet, controlled, and locked on the pool.
From now until the trials, I need you to be the most boring man on the North American continent. Can you manage that?"
"Boring is my baseline."
"Debatable. Boring guys don't trend globally on Twitter for putting a spectator through a concession stand."
"I didn't punch the guy. I crowded his space."
"You know that, I know that. The algorithm doesn't give a shit about semantics." He dropped the phone onto the coffee table and rubbed the bridge of his nose, his shoulders dropping an inch. "We'll kill the noise. We always do."
I nodded, keeping my posture loose, my arms crossed over my chest while every nerve ending in my spine was dialed into the absolute silence twelve feet behind me. The guest room door hadn't moved. The hinges hadn't groaned.
Good. Stay put, Em.
Then Theo's gaze drifted. It was casual at first, just an idle sweep of the kitchen layout, and then it happened in brutal, slow-motion clarity.
His eyes hit the base of the barstool. Right where Emma had dropped her pink, water-logged suitcase during our shouting match. He stared at the bag for three seconds.
"Going somewhere?" he asked, his voice leveling out.
"No."
"Interesting." He tilted his head, his sharp eyes tracking the pink nylon. "When did you start traveling with luggage that looks like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol?"
"It's Athena's," I lied. "She left it here the last time she came."
"Athena was here." He folded his arms, one dark eyebrow climbing into his forehead. "With a three-week roller bag. And she just walked out the door without it."
"She's forgetful."
"Or…" That familiar grin started creeping into the corners of his mouth. I'd seen it a thousand times since we were kids: Theo catching the scent of blood, already working out how deep he could sink his teeth. "Option two. There's a woman breathing your air in this house right now."
"You have a wild imagination for a man who gets paid to look at contract metrics."
"Looking at metrics is exactly why I know when numbers don't add up." He pointed a finger at me. "Athlete handbook, page fourteen. Domestic distractions during peak training cycles are a liability. We talked about this."
"It's a piece of luggage, Theo. Not a marriage license. You want to go stick your head in my shower and look for hairpins, or can we get back to Paris?"
He held up his palms, laughing, and let the bone go. But his eyes flickered onto my face. "And since when do you wear reading glasses? You look like a defense attorney."
"They're blue-light filters," I lied without blinking, tapping the frame. "Sponsors say my eyes look too aggressive in morning training clips. Trying to soften my brand."
"Your brand is concrete, Ralph. Softening it just makes you look like you're about to audit my taxes."
"How's Abbie?"
"She's growing. She asked me last night why I don't eat breakfast at the house anymore."
He stared down at a microscopic scratch in my hardwood. "She's seven years old, Ralph, and she's already looking at me like I'm a ghost who visits on weekends. I didn't have a single line of dialogue to give her."
"She's a kid, man. They don't understand the hours it takes to build what you're building for her."
"Don't defend me. I don't want it." He rubbed the back of his neck until the skin turned red.
"I keep telling myself it's just one more quarter.
One more endorsement cycle. One more gold medal for Brandt, and then I'll pull back and be a father.
But 'temporary' has been my default setting for seven years now.
I'm giving every stranger on Madison Avenue the absolute best of my energy, and my daughter is getting the scraps left over at nine o'clock at night. "
"Abbie knows who her old man is."
"Does she?" He looked up, his blue eyes bloodshot.
"Or does she just know I'm the guy who pays for the house and stares at an iPhone during dinner?"
I didn't have a textbook answer for that. Theo didn't want one anyway; he just needed to drop the weight in front of someone who wouldn't try to clean it up with a motivational speech.
The silence settled into the high ceilings, gray and heavy. Then Theo shifted his weight, his eyes tracking the light off the massive glass wall, and when his voice dropped low, my shoulders went tight before he'd said a word.
"I've been thinking about Em."
My pulse kicked. I didn't move a muscle in my face.
"I should've broken her door down when she went dark," he muttered, "Should've disturbed her until she had to look me in the eye, instead of sending those texts she could just swipe into the trash.
" He looked down at his palms. "I was so goddamn terrified of pushing her further into James's corner that I chose to do nothing.
And doing nothing... it's just a clean word for abandonment, isn't it?
I acted like her agent when she needed a brother. "
"She'll find her way back," I said, my voice thick.
Theo looked at me for a long, unreadable moment.
"Yeah," he said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket with a single, practiced motion. "I hope so."
The businessman slid back over his features like a steel shutter.
He clapped his heavy hand against my shoulder on his way to the entryway, telling me to get my laps in, telling me to stay off the blogs, reminding me that the only thing that mattered was the wall at the end of the pool in two months.
"Tell Abbie I said hi," I called out.
"I will." He paused with his hand on the brass lock, turning his head slightly. "You look rough, Ralph. Get some sleep."
"Always do."
He stepped out, and the heavy door clicked shut behind him. I let out a breath that emptied my chest.
I gave it thirty seconds to ensure his car had cleared the gate, then I walked down the hall. The guest room door was swung wide. The mattress was empty.
I followed the faint sound of a breath to the bathroom.
She was sitting on the white tile floor, her spine pressed hard against the porcelain of the tub, her knees pulled tight into the center of her chest. The gray hoodie swallowed her, her small hands lost inside the cuffs. She was crying without making a single sound.
I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe, looking down at her.
"He asked about you."
Her head turned just enough for her eyes to clear the fabric of her sleeve. They were red, swollen, and rubbed raw.
"Your family's missing you, Em."
She shook her head, her chin dragging against her knees. "They miss the girl who won the state championship. They miss the portrait on the wall. Not the mess I've become."
"That's not the man who was just standing in my kitchen. That's a man who loves his sister so much the silence is killing him."
She looked away, her throat jumping as she swallowed down another sob.
"Why are you acting like this?" she snapped, her voice turning sharp through the tears.
"You've seen what I look like now. You can see it, Ralph.
I'm different. I'm... I'm heavier, I'm slower, I'm broken in every way that used to matter.
And you're standing there in your expensive kitchen acting like I just walked out of a practice lane from 2020.
Why won't you ask the damn questions? Why won't you look at me like I'm a disaster? "
"Because you're not a disaster."
She let out a laugh that splintered into a cough. "You've always been too decent for your own good, Brandt. It's infuriating."
"So I've been told."
She dug the back of her sleeve into her eyes, clearing the dampness, and then her chin came up. Then she lifted her eyes to mine, already hunting for a fight, the same flat stare she used to level at whoever had the nerve to line up in the lane beside her.
"If you're so decent," she said, her eyes narrowing into slits, "then how did a man that gentle end up body-checking a spectator into a row of metal chairs on national television?"
I went still.
Then the corner of my mouth started to tug upward. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. "You've been tracking my media schedule?"
The flush hit her face so fast I could practically hear the heat of it. "It was on ESPN, Ralph. The entire country saw it."
"Yeah, but you specifically watched the clip."
"I did not go out of my way to search your name.
" She scrambled to her feet, her hands shoved deep into the hoodie pockets, her wet eyes bright with an indignation that was so beautifully, violently familiar I had to drop my eyes before it showed on my face.
"The television in the motel was already on that channel.
I didn't have the remote. I didn't seek you out. "
"You remembered the metal chairs pretty well for a girl who was just looking for the weather report."
"Because it was everywhere! I couldn't scroll through a single platform without seeing your massive shoulders blocking out the sun."
"So you were scrolling for me."
"I was not scrolling for you!"
"I'm just stating the facts." I crossed my arms over my chest, digging my back deeper into the wood frame, letting the grin have the room. "If you want an update on my rap sheet, you don't need the internet, Em. I'm twelve feet away. You can skip the comment section altogether."
Her mouth stayed open, her cheeks bright crimson. Watching her come back to life did something to me I wasn't ready to name. Thirty seconds ago she was on the floor. Now she wanted to take my head off. I'd missed that.
"I absolutely hate you," she mumbled. She didn't mean it. The left corner of her mouth was twitching toward a smile.
"You called me last night."
"Out of pure, unadulterated desperation."
"You're going to wear that word out."
"Because it's the only one that fits."
I held her gaze, dropping the banter, letting the weight of my voice anchor her to the floor. "You can be as mad about it as you want. Doesn't change the shorthand of why you did it."
She stared at me through her lashes. I stared right back. The bathroom was small, white, and flooded with that hard morning glare coming through the frosted glass window, catching the damp black strands of hair sticking to the side of her neck.
"It's like time hasn't changed a damn thing," I murmured, mostly to myself. But she heard me.
"It's changed though. It's been three years."