Chapter 5
LEDGER
The letter was waiting for me when I got home from morning training a couple days later. Thin, official-looking, and wedged under my apartment door like even the mailman wanted to be done with me.
I recognized the logo before I even bent down.
My sponsor. The company that had been covering my housing stipend and lane access for the past two years.
My stomach dropped so fast, it was a miracle it didn’t punch through the floor.
I tore it open with my thumb, breath held tight in my throat.
We regret to inform you …
The rest blurred.
I blinked, refocused.
… funding contract terminates in fourteen days.
Fourteen.
Two weeks until everything I’d built my life around—my schedule, my training, my housing—evaporated. I reread the paragraph three times, hoping the words would magically rearrange into something less catastrophic.
They didn’t.
I sank onto the couch, elbows on my knees, the letter held loosely in my shaking hands.
It wasn’t like this was a surprise, not completely. Coach had warned me the sponsorship was unstable. The economy was trash. Funding wasn’t guaranteed. But hearing it and seeing it printed in crisp, corporate font were two very different things.
The more I stared at the page, the smaller I felt. Like the letter wasn’t paper but a fist closing around my lungs.
I tried to breathe through the rising burn in my throat.
Fourteen days.
I scrubbed my face with both hands.
I needed a job.
Except I couldn’t get a job. Not a real one. Not with training hours like mine. My schedule was built around pool time, recovery blocks, strength training, and sleep. There wasn’t an inch of space left.
But I opened my laptop anyway.
And I tried.
And just like I had thought, it was hopeless.
Search after search. Job board after job board. Half of them required experience I didn’t have. The other half required hours I couldn’t give. Nights, weekends, full-time commitments, on-site work. I couldn’t balance that with training unless I gave up sleep entirely.
Or gave up swimming.
Just the thought made my lungs constrict again.
Swimming was the only thing I was good at. The only thing I’d ever had. The only way out of the kind of life my parents had lived—scraping by, paycheck to paycheck, choosing between groceries and repairs, patching holes in the roof instead of replacing it.
I rubbed at my eyes until they stung. I remembered being a kid, lying awake at night listening to my parents whisper in the kitchen about overdue bills.
Remembered pretending to be asleep so they wouldn’t know I’d heard every word.
Remembered the constant pressure, quiet but heavy, of wanting to help but being too young to do anything.
Now I was grown. And somehow still useless.
I clicked out of the last job posting and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
Maybe I should quit.
Maybe I should stop pretending I belonged anywhere near an Olympic pool.
Maybe this was the universe telling me the dream wasn’t mine to have.
My phone buzzed against the coffee table, and I reluctantly picked it up, not in the mood to talk to anyone.
It was my mom.
I almost didn’t pick up.
Almost.
But if I didn’t answer her calls, she worried. And when she worried, she called my dad. And when he worried, he tried to fix things by taking on more work.
They didn’t need that. Not from me.
I hit accept.
“Hey, Ma.”
Her voice came through, bright and warm, mixing with a clatter in the background. Probably the kitchen, definitely the old stove they’d been meaning to replace since I was twelve.
“Ledger, honey! How was training?”
I swallowed. “Good.”
Lie number one.
“You sound tired,” she said. “You’re eating enough, right? Are you getting enough sleep? You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m fine. Promise.”
“Your dad got called into another double shift today,” she continued, voice dropping. “The water heater ruptured last night. Flooded half the laundry room before we caught it.”
My stomach dropped.
“Is everything okay now?” I asked carefully.
“Oh, we’ll manage,” she said quickly, the way she always did when she didn’t want me to worry. “Your father’s seeing if he can fix it himself, but if not, we’ll get someone to come out and take a look.”
Translation: They couldn’t afford a repairman.
I gripped the phone tighter.
They’d already stretched themselves thin so I could chase a dream—one we’d never had money for in the first place. They’d driven me to every swim meet in a car that barely made it up hills. They’d sat on humid pool decks for hours because I loved it. They’d worked extra shifts to cover club fees.
They’d sacrificed everything.
A familiar guilt crept up my throat. My accomplishments were supposed to make things easier for them, not weigh them down more. They’d already sacrificed too much for my dream. Our family motto had always been “We make do.” And I’d promised myself I would be the one to break that cycle.
I was failing that promise spectacularly.
I couldn’t add myself to their pile of stress now. Not when they were barely keeping their own lives patched together.
“I, uh, need to get going,” I said, even though it wasn’t true.
Lie number two. But if I didn’t get off the phone, my mom would figure out that something was wrong. She knew me too well for me to fool her for long.
“I’ll call this weekend,” I said softly.
“We’d love that,” she replied. “We’re proud of you, you know.”
Something in my chest bent.
Not broke.
Just … bent.
“Love you, Ma.”
“We love you too, sweetheart.”
I hung up, dropped my head back, and let the quiet of my apartment close around me.
I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t put another weight on their already breaking backs.
So I took a long shower, shaved, threw on a shirt, and looked for a distraction from my own drowning.
There was nothing in my apartment to keep the thoughts at bay, so I tried going on a walk.
Except it wasn’t much of a walk. More of a wander.
Campus was settling into late afternoon—students huddled on benches, skateboard wheels rattling over pavement, laughter drifting across the quad. I let myself drift with it, hands shoved deep into my pockets.
When I looked at them—laughing, sprawled across the grass, arguing about assignments or weekend plans—there was this strange ache in my ribs. A memory of a life that used to be mine.
When I had been a college swimmer, the biggest things I’d had to worry about were early lifts, brutal sets, and turning homework in on time. I’d thought that was pressure back then. I’d thought drowning in essays and midterms was the height of stress.
I hadn’t known anything.
Back then, time had felt like something I had. Now it felt like something that was running out.
Gosh, those days felt stupidly simple now. Predictable. Secure. A whole world where swimming was all I’d had to think about and the biggest financial crisis I’d faced was splitting a pizza four ways.
I didn’t appreciate any of it until it was gone. And now? Every time I walked through campus, I felt like a ghost. Someone too old to belong, but too young to be this tired.
Eventually, my tired feet led me to the one place I didn’t have to force myself to breathe.
The Orange Blossom Café downtown on Main Street.
The scent hit me before the door even opened. Fresh citrus scones, sugar glaze, and roasted espresso beans. The café was small, warm, always humming with soft conversation and indie music.
I pushed inside.
And immediately regretted it.
Because sitting at the tiny corner table—curly hair down, blazer shrugged off, exhaustion clinging to her like a second skin—was Roxie Montgomery.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Of course the universe would give me this today.
She looked up from her laptop just as I froze mid-step.
Her eyes widened. Then narrowed. Then went flat in that signature I-tolerate-your-existence-against-my-will glare.
My attention snagged, briefly, on the blue of her eyes before I forced it back under control.
If she caught even a hint of the effect she had on me, she’d never let me live it down. Not that I ever let it show. I’d gotten good at shutting that down the second it started. But lately, it was getting harder to manage.
She lifted her iced coffee, took a measured sip, and arched a brow. “You look like someone stole your lane reservations.”
If only that were the problem.
I exhaled through my nose. “Not today, Roxanne.”
Her eyes snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?”
“At least one more,” I said, but it didn’t land like I wanted it to. My voice was too flat, too monotone.
Normally, I smirked. Teased. Poked at her on purpose just to see the tiny spark of fire she tried so hard to hide.
But I didn’t have the energy.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, voice lower now.
Heat crawled up my neck.
“Nothing.”
“You look like you lost a fight with a financial aid office.”
I flinched before I could stop myself.
Her eyes widened again. “You did,” she breathed. “Ledger—”
“It’s none of your business,” I snapped.
Her eyebrows pulled together, not in offense but concern. Real concern.
It rattled me so hard, I stepped back.
She stood slowly, one hand braced on the edge of the table. “Ledger, what happened?”
“Drop it.”
“Are you—” Her voice cracked for a second, barely audible. “Are you okay?”
The question hit me like a punch. Because she shouldn’t care. And I shouldn’t want her to. And yet …
Everything inside me felt stretched too thin, like one wrong word would split me open.
I shook my head. “I don’t … want to do this with you.”
A beat of silence.
Then her expression hardened. Not mean, not sharp, more like determined.
“Too bad,” she said quietly. “Because something’s wrong. And you’re not pretending well.”
My jaw clenched. My pulse kicked. I should’ve walked away. I should’ve ended this before she got any closer to the truth.
But I didn’t move.
And she didn’t blink.
Something churned low in my stomach—annoyance, exhaustion … something hotter I refused to name.
Gosh, she drove me crazy.
Roxie Montgomery was the last person on the planet I wanted to talk to about this.
About anything. She lived in a world I’d never been part of.
Polished, confident, papered over with degrees and internships and a future she’d never have to question.
She’d never worried about housing stipends or food budgets or how to keep a dream alive when the money ran out. She wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t.
Despite that—
My eyes always found her.
Even now, when everything inside me was collapsing like a bad dive, I couldn’t stop noticing the way a curl had slipped from behind her ear, or the faint flush creeping up her throat, or how she looked both exhausted and unfairly stunning at the same time.
Attractive. Annoying. Infuriatingly observant.
She was a contradiction I didn’t have the energy for.
“Ledger,” she said again, soft this time, almost careful.
I hated that my pulse skittered at the sound of my name on her lips.
“I’m fine,” I forced out.
“You’re lying.” No hesitation. Just simple and direct.
I let out a shaky laugh, humorless and brittle. “And you suddenly care?”
Her expression flickered—hurt, irritation, something else layered beneath. “I’m not heartless.”
I stared at her, swallowing the hard knot in my throat. Because that was the problem. She wasn’t heartless. She wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t even the enemy I kept pretending she was.
She was just … Roxie.
And somehow that made this worse.
I dragged a hand down my face. “Roxie, seriously. Not today.”
“Then when?” she shot back. “Because you look—Ledger, you look scared.”
My breath stalled.
Scared.
No one ever said that to me. Not Coach. Not Talon. Not my parents. No one saw through me like that, like I was glass instead of stone.
I stepped back again, creating space I suddenly, desperately needed. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Then you need to stop looking like the ground is falling out from under you.”
I let out a rough exhale. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough,” she whispered.
And something in her voice—quiet, certain, not pitying, not prying—hit a crack in me I didn’t realize was there.
For one terrifying second, I almost told her.
Almost.
But then the wall slammed back into place.
I shook my head hard. “I can’t do this.”
Her brows pulled together. Not frustrated, not angry. Just searching. As if she was trying to piece together a version of me I’d never shown her.
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else, but I didn’t let her.
I turned away.
Because if I stood there one more second—tired, unraveling, staring at her like she was the one solid thing in a day that had gutted me—I might break in front of her.
And that was something I couldn’t do. Not with her. Not with anyone.
I was almost to the door when she called out.
“Wait!”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, my feet stopped. I turned back.
She looked from me, down to a stack of papers spread across the table, then back up. Something shifted in her eyes. Uncertainty, resolve, and something I didn’t have the energy to decipher.
Several seconds stretched between us before she finally said, “I might be able to help you.”