Cam
He’d heard Teagan calling his name from the locker room door, hadn’t answered. Knew she’d come in anyway. It was one of the things he liked about her. Seeing a barrier, deciding it wasn’t. It was also one of the things he didn’t like about her. Today anyway.
Her voice was gentle. Kind. Not disappointed like it should’ve been. Would be if she knew the truth.
“What happened out there?”
He’d lost. Not just to Ryder. He’d lost his moral compass. His dignity. His pride that he did things the way his dad did: honestly.
She was waiting for an answer. He couldn’t give her one. Not the one she wanted anyway.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cam.” She wasn’t buying it. No surprise there. “You’ve been hitting under 6:20 for months. It was yours. And then you just…”
Handed it to Ryder?
“Quit,” she said.
He pulled his sweatshirt over his head. Didn’t look at her when his head poked through. “Guess I choked.”
“No, sorry,” she said. “You didn’t choke. Not when an invitation to the National tryouts was on the line. That’s Olympic track.”
Both of them knew how badly he wanted that. More than just about anything. Just about being the important part of that sentence.
“Did you throw the race?”
“Mind your own business,” he snapped, shocking both of them. Him for admitting it, her for getting it right. He pulled a bunch of stuff out of his bag and shoved it back in again. It was stupid, but it gave him a reason not to look into her eyes and see what he already knew.
“Cam! ” Teagan persisted. “A bad score will follow you for the rest of your career. Ryder’s out there talking to the scout when the person they should be talking to is you. You get that, right?”
“Of course I do!” It was all he could do to keep himself together. Teagan rattling off things he already knew wasn’t going to change anything.
“Then why?” She sounded so sad. Sadness ranking around the same level as disappointment in terms of things he hated making people feel. “Please, tell me why you did this.”
He didn’t have to tell, didn’t want to. It wasn’t like he could feel worse than he already did. “I did it because there are some things that are more important than this race.”
“Like what?”
“My family. The shop’s about to go under and I needed the money.”
Teagan went quiet, absorbing what he’d said, then piecing together the pieces of the puzzle. “Someone paid you to throw the race, didn’t they?”
He didn’t bother to nod.
“Ryder. Wasn’t it? Oh, Cam.”
He could tell she didn’t get it. She felt bad for him, but even knowing what she did now, couldn’t understand why he’d done it.
“There had to be a better solution.”
If there had been? He would’ve done it. He knew she wouldn’t get it.
Rowing was the most important thing in the world to Teagan. The thing she prioritized above everything else, like it was a sacred act. The one thing she did in life that made her feel whole. Pure.
Up until now, she’d thought it was something they shared.
He knew she would have given Ryder the answer he had when he’d come to the shop. No way. But she wasn’t standing where he was. Watching everything his dad had worked for teetering on the brink.
“It was forty-eight thousand dollars, Teagan. That’s how much my dad owes. If not? He loses everything. How was I supposed to get that kind of money?”
She shook her head, his predicament finally beginning to register. “I don’t know.”
Not that easy, was it? Finding a solution to a problem like that. Standing here watching her try to come up with an answer when it was too late wasn’t an option. “So why don’t you go focus on our own race, okay?”
He shouldered his bag and left, charged past groups of guys sharing times and war stories. He caught a glimpse of Baloo talking to someone from Westvale, but hurried past them, too.
The sprawling woodland beyond the rec center offered him somewhere to take some deep breaths and disappear for a while. Not that the fresh air would help. The only scent filling his nostrils right now was the stench of his own self-loathing.