Chapter 10
"Good Lord, honey, what are you doing down there?"
Diane's voice reaches Kate as if from very far away. The tennis player blinks and needs a few seconds to understand what's happening. She's in her hotel room, lying on the floor beside the bed with her arms stretched out at her sides, and apparently she'd been falling asleep.
The nightmares had started around four in the morning: she'd been lying on her side, pressed against Leire's body, Leire who was on her back with her head turned toward her and one hand tucked beneath her leg.
At first she thought it was the position, that the ache in her hip would ease once she straightened up, but when she did it shot through her entire back, from her sacrum all the way to her shoulder blade.
She moved slowly and sat up on the bed, both hands flat on the mattress while she closed her eyes and waited for the intensity to fade.
Leire stirred, and gripped by the irrational fear of being found like that, Kate grabbed her clothes, got dressed as best she could, and slipped out of the room to go back to her own.
By the time she walked in, the throb had shifted and was running down the back of her leg, cutting off her breath.
She took a long, scalding shower and swallowed one of the painkillers Dr. Faruk had prescribed for exactly these moments, then lay down on the floor, hoping the cold of the hardwood would take the edge off.
She lay there staring at the ceiling, eyes blurry with tears that were half agony and half rage at not being able to stop what was happening.
She started thinking about Leire—about how she should have woken her and asked her to rub in the cream, or simply let herself be held, because she feels like she's slowly falling apart.
But in that moment all she could think was to run—which is what she always does—and then she stayed there, letting the pill do its work while she made up her mind to talk to the Spanish woman, even if she still doesn't know exactly what she's going to say.
At some point she must have fallen asleep, and now Diane is standing over her, staring down in horror. Kate's first thought is pretty absurd, because the only thing in her head is that maybe she should start breaking the habit of giving her coach a spare key to her room.
"Kate—" Diane drops to her knees beside her, and Kate blinks again, pushing that stupid thought away and coming back to the present.
"I'm fine," she says at last, and she isn't lying, because the spasm has eased and now she only feels numb from the cold floor.
"What on earth are you doing down here?"
Diane helps her as she starts to sit up, and when Kate looks at her with that sadness in her eyes, she gets a pretty good idea of what happened.
"Why didn't you call me? I would have helped, I would have—"
"I'm sorry." Kate sits on the edge of the bed, so deflated that Diane cuts off her scolding and sits beside her to pull her into a hug. "Hey, it's okay."
She kisses her on the top of her head, and when she pulls back she takes her hand.
"How are you feeling now?"
"Fine. It's almost completely gone. I can play, if that's what you're asking."
Diane twists her mouth into a grimace. She doesn't like this; she'd love to have the power to force her to make the right decision and pull her away from the courts for good, but she understands the redhead is still processing the news.
"I'm going to call Thomas and have him come right now. We'll move the physio session up to before the match and skip today's practice. We'll focus on warming up."
"Okay," Kate agrees without arguing.
Half an hour later, Thomas—who has been with her since the Berlin Open the previous year—works in a silence Kate is grateful for, because she has no desire to talk.
He's had her lie down on the portable table he always brings with him, applied heat for ten minutes, and then started on the massage.
Forty-five minutes of deep work on her paraspinals and piriformis, followed by two rounds of passive stretching that Kate endures with her teeth clenched and her face buried in the face cradle while Diane goes over her notes one last time on the videos they watched yesterday about today's opponent.
"On a scale of one to ten, how bad was the pain before you took the pill?" Thomas asks when he wraps up.
Kate is sitting on the table, and her eyes find Diane's as if, in that moment, this woman is the only thing keeping her upright.
"Seven. Eight when I moved."
"Got it. I'll talk to Faruk in case we need to adjust the treatment. I'll see you before the match to put a patch on."
She nods, and the physical therapist folds up the table and leaves the room.
The match starts at ten, and her body responds the way she needs it to, even though there are moments when the discomfort threatens to surface and pulls her focus—but not enough to cost her the match. She wins in three sets: six-three, four-six, six-four.
She shakes hands with her opponent and her eyes go straight to the stands to look for Leire, who isn't sitting with the other players but in a lower players' box, beside her father.
Kate catches her attempted smile and that guarded expression in her gaze—something that used to feel like enough, and now cracks her chest open with an ache she could easily compare to the one in her back.
She showers quickly and, even though she knows it won't happen, part of her always waits for Leire to push open the door and walk in to congratulate her after a match, the way Kate does for her. But the Spanish woman never finds the courage to take that step.
She walks to the press room and sits down in front of the microphone. The questions are the usual kind, except for the third one, when a journalist asks about her back.
"In the last game of the second set you put your hand on your lower back. Are you still dealing with something from Roland Garros? You had a problem there too. Do you feel fit enough to make it to the final?"
Kate freezes for a couple of seconds, searching her memory for the moment the journalist is describing. She doesn't remember touching her back, but she does it so often lately that it's probably become a habit she's no longer even aware of.
"It's a minor twinge, nothing serious," she says, forcing that warm smile that has half the world won over. "At this point in the season every player has something nagging at her. It's part of the game."
Candela Valle, sitting in the second row, checks that she's recorded the answer and jots a couple of notes in her notebook.
She can't pull anything interesting out of this press conference; the interesting thing, she knows, is what she has in the form of an image a stranger sent her a couple of days ago—and since then she hasn't been sleeping well, still going back and forth between warning them or staying out of something that's none of her business and that, besides, she only suspects.
Diane is in the hallway when Kate comes out of the press conference, waiting with her bag so they can head straight back to the hotel.
"I talked to Faruk," she says. "We'll do the same as today: from now until the end of the tournament, we move physio to first thing in the morning and add another session in the afternoon."
"Okay."
Diane loops her arm through Kate's.
"You played really well," she says, changing the subject.
Kate glances at her sideways and smiles.
"Let's go get something to eat," she suggests, and slows her pace a little when she sees Leire and her father at the far end of the hallway, talking to two other players.
The Spanish woman hasn't noticed her yet, but she turns at the exact moment Kate is looking at her, as if she'd sensed the weight of those green eyes on her body.
"Good match, Brogan," Leire says in greeting as they pass, extending her hand.
Kate shakes it and lets her fingers drag across Leire's palm as she pulls away. It's barely a second, but she watches terror flash across Leire's expression at the brush of the caress against her skin.
"I'll never be her priority," Kate murmurs under her breath as they walk away.
Diane presses her lips together and exhales through her nose, reining in the urge to spin around, grab Leire by the arms, and shake her until she comes to her senses.
"I don't know if it helps, but you're mine, sweetheart," she says.
Kate manages a sad smile and drapes an arm over her shoulders.
"It does, Diane. Thank you," she murmurs, and kisses her on the cheek.
"Have you told her yet?" her coach asks.
"No."
"Why not? Look, Kate, I don't know how this thing between you two is going to end, but you've been sleeping together for three years. If you don't have the kind of trust that lets you tell her what's going on with you, the best thing you can do is end this before it keeps tearing you apart."
Kate says nothing; she just thinks about trust, wondering whether they have it.
Does she feel comfortable talking to Leire about the things that worry her?
She turns it over for several seconds and concludes that yes, she does feel that comfort—but what holds her back is that she doesn't feel safe with her.
What good does it do her to say anything if Leire isn't in a position to support her and be there when she needs her most?
"I'll tell her tonight," she decides suddenly, thinking that maybe something this serious could be the push her rival needs to finally face herself and fight for what she wants.
"Good." Diane gets into the car behind her, and they ride the rest of the way back in complete silence.
Diane worried about Kate's state—physical and emotional both—and the redhead carrying the pressure building in her throat from the decision she's just made: she's going to retire. The US Open will be her last tournament.