Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Backflips - Wyatt
I’m just about to get out of my car at the Ocean Cove Gymnastics Complex when my phone rings. As soon as that familiar ringtone blares, I grimace.
It’s Dad.
I barely responded to his texts about the scrimmage yesterday because I didn’t want him to ruin my night. I had a yellow jersey, and I scored goals. I know I have a very real shot at starting on that first line with Antoine on opening night.
And I have Grace.
That’s all I wanted to think about last night. Long after I took Grace home, I was thinking about her. How she’s fucking mine, and I still can’t believe it. I wanted to live in those memories and forget everything else, including my dad.
But I can’t ignore him anymore. I reluctantly pick up my phone and answer. “Hi, Dad.”
“I was about to wonder if your phone was lost,” he jokes.
“Just busy. I had a lot of homework last night.”
Homework as in learning how Grace likes to be kissed and touched.
“You wouldn’t have to deal with homework if you’d opted to play junior hockey.”
I clench my jaw.
“But here we are, so do the minimum you need to do,” Dad continues. “All you need to focus on is the draft.”
“Dad. The draft is in June. It’s August. I can’t think about it twenty-four hours a day.”
“You need to be locked in, Wyatt. I mean it. I don’t care about your grades as long as you can play.”
“Oh, I know,” I snap.
“Hey, Wyatt, don’t get grumpy. I just want what’s best for you. I know how much the draft means to you.”
I swallow. Yes, it means something to me. But it’s my draft. My life.
Not his.
Yet when he talks like this, I feel as if Dad is taking every hockey experience I have and trying to live through it for himself. To achieve the things he never could through me.
He begins rattling things off to me about my stats, asking me how practice was today, what feedback I got from the coaches, reminding me to become valuable with face-offs, but I’m not digesting it.
Instead, my gut is churning with the pressure he’s putting on me, and anger about him taking my dream for himself.
What I do on the ice is mine. The resentment I try to keep locked up is threatening to break open, and I don’t want to deal with that now.
I don’t want to say things I’ll regret or things I can never take back.
“I hear you, Dad, but I’ve got to go. We’ll talk tomorrow.” I hesitate for a moment. “You should call Rachel. See what she’s up to.”
There’s a long pause. I swallow as I wait for his reply.
“Is she … in trouble? Is there something I need to know about?” Dad asks cautiously.
This time, I can’t keep my anger checked.
“Jesus Christ, Dad! She’s your daughter.
It’s her first year at USC. She’s not playing hockey, but she’s achieving things.
She’s a freshman, and that’s a lot to deal with.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that you need to check in with your daughter because you should care, but here we are. So do it.”
Then I do something I’ve never done before. I not only end the call but turn my phone off. I toss it into the passenger seat and rub my hand over my face, taking a deep breath.
I can’t believe what I just did.
It wasn’t standing up for myself but standing up for Rachel. I’m angry, but proud of myself at the same time. I don’t know what snapped within me, what made this call different from every other call I’ve received since I’ve been at OCU. Or what made me respond differently.
I absently watch people enter and leave the gym from my car, and I think about the first game of the season. That’s when I’m going to tell Mom and Dad about Grace.
It will not go well. I know that. But I also know that I don’t care.
Grace is my girlfriend. And no matter what they say, that’s not changing.
I take a breath and exhale, my mind letting go of my dad’s words and thinking of her instead. I’ve never talked with a girl in the way I did with Grace in my arms last night. That’s all we did. Kiss and talk. Whatever she’s comfortable with doing, I’ll do it.
I still can’t believe she’s a virgin. Even more than that, I can’t believe she thought I would even care about it.
I don’t. At all.
Then I smile to myself. Actually, I feel so damn good that she wants me to be the one to touch her.
I pick up my phone and keys and get out of my car.
I’m excited to see Grace train tonight. I had no idea she had to do this kind of work to be an artistic swimmer.
Gracie and the other flyer on the team both have acrobatic training here, working on what they’ll do in the water with an acrobatics coach.
I’m happy she wants to share this part of her life with me.
I enter the gym and check in at the front desk. “Hi, I’m Wyatt Jacobs, I’m here to watch Grace Walsh train,” I say, reaching for my wallet and retrieving my student ID.
“Let me check,” the girl behind the desk says, typing on her keyboard.
“Yep, you’re listed as a visitor.” She swipes my ID card and has me sign in while she prints a visitor sticker for me.
She hands the sticker back to me with my card.
“Just put this on your shirt and you can go on in through the doors on your right.”
I thank her and affix the sticker to my T-shirt.
Then I open the doors to the gym. For a moment, it feels like I’ve entered a new world.
There’s all the typical gymnastics equipment.
Trampolines. Mats everywhere. Foam-block pits.
On the back wall is the Ocean Cove Golden Sharks logo in gold and black, with the lettering “Ocean Cove University Gymnastics" underneath it.
A female gymnast sails across a mat doing a tumbling pass, and I see a male gymnast on the rings.
Music is playing while another gymnast practices on the balance beam.
All of them are talented athletes, but I’m not interested in watching them. I continue looking at all the students in the gym, and then I stop.
Because I’ve found her.
Grace is bouncing down a trampoline, her hair pulled back in that bun at the nape of her neck, wearing shorts and a fitted black T-shirt.
I watch as she launches herself high into the air.
My mouth falls open as I see her body twisting and turning before she lands on the mat sitting in the foam pit.
I can’t believe what I just saw. How the fuck does she do that? Getting up in the air that high and completing those rotations?
Then I think of her landing in the water after doing that, and not a safety mat placed in a foam pit. She’s an incredible athlete.
Grace stands up on the mat, and I can see her looking around the gym. My heart swells because I know she’s looking for me.
She stops when she spots me. A big smile appears on her face, and I feel one forming on my own, too, as I smile back at her.
Grace says something to her coach, who nods, and then she makes her way across the gym toward me.
I can see her shirt says “OCU Artistic Swimming” on it in gold, and I make a note to swing by the OCU bookstore this week to see if I can get one for myself.
“Hi!” Grace says excitedly as she comes up to me.
I pull her into my arms, enfolding her body against mine. I give her a kiss on the top of her head. Her hair still smells like something sweet and chlorine.
It smells like her.
“I just saw what you did,” I say proudly. “I don’t even know how you do that. You’re so talented.”
Her cheeks turn pink, and I’m reminded of how they flushed that same way when I kissed her last night.
“You skate on knives and slam people into boards,” Grace counters.
“I’d rather do that than throw my body up in the air and land in water,” I challenge.
She grins. “But what I do is fun.”
“You have a very weird idea of fun.”
“I love it.” Grace pauses for a moment. “Thank you for coming by tonight. I know you have a lot to do.”
“Gracie. I want to be here. I want to see what you do.”
The look of happiness on her face is undeniable.
“Okay. Come over here. I’m working on tumbling off the trampoline now, but we’ll do the harness in a little bit.”
“Harness?” I ask as we walk through the gym.
“Yeah. Jordan—that’s my coach—will hook me up to it and run it. That’s where I can try some complicated things before doing them on the mat. There’s a whole evolution of learning the moves. Harness, mat, pool.”
My girl is fearless.
I stand by the wall at the end of the foam pit, where she’ll be landing after doing all these passes, and watch her go work. I can see the muscles in her legs as she jumps. A flash of her cut abdominal muscles when her shirt inches up.
I’ve never been with a girl who has a body like that. She’s powerful. Muscular. Strong.
Hot.
Everything about this is hot. From her banging body to the discipline she has for her sport, Grace is incredible. She has passion. Drive. Her face gets determined when she’s jumping, and I like this side of her.
I watch her do different acrobatic skills, along with another girl named Natalie. They’re both good at what they do.
“Okay, let’s take a break and do some harness work,” her coach says. “Grace, you’ll be up first.”
“Okay,” she calls out as she gets out of the foam pit. She comes over to where I am, and I hand Grace her water bottle.
“Thank you,” she says, taking a sip. “And don’t feel like you have to stay. I’m sure it gets boring watching this over and over.”
“Um, it does not,” I challenge her. “Besides, I need to see you in the harness. Sounds kinky.”
She turns bright red, and I burst out laughing. “Gracie girl, don’t worry. I won’t break out my harness until you’re ready,” I say seriously.
Her eyes widen. She bites her lip, and a crease forms in her brow. She’s so cute as she tries to work out if I’m being serious or not.
I bend down and whisper in her ear, “I have nothing against a good sex harness for other people, but I’m not into that scene.”
Now she’s bright red and giving me an embarrassed smile. “Okay.” She nods, looking relieved.
I can’t help it. I draw her against my chest and rub my hand up and down her back. Then I lower my mouth to her ear again. “Hey. I like you,” I remind her. “Whenever we get to doing that, we’ll do things we’re both into. Okay?”
She lifts her head and looks up at me, a beautiful smile spreading across her face. When I see it, I feel that familiar warmth flood through me. Grace is like my own personal sunshine. She lightens me up.
She makes me happy.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
“I hate that I can’t spend time with you later tonight,” she says, the smile leaving her face. “I’ve got to prepare for a quiz tomorrow in AI ethics, and I have plans to study with McCall.”
“It’s probably good you’re with McCall. If you were with me, we might not study much.”
She grins at that. “Fair.”
“Tomorrow?” I ask hopefully.
Grace frowns. “Only if you don’t mind meeting up after nine. We have a vision-board making night at the house tomorrow.”
“Oh, do you envision a house without Kaitlyn?” I tease. “You could put a picture of yourself as president or something.”
Grace clamps her hand over my mouth. “Wy, shut up!” But her eyes are dancing at my idea.
“I dare you to do it.”
She giggles. “I will not.”
“Come on!”
“Grace, are you ready?” Jordan calls out. He’s standing over at this high bar with a harness attached to it, waiting for her.
“Time for me to fly,” Grace says. “But first, I have a message for you. For what you said about doing … you know.”
I quirk a brow. “You know?”
“Wyatt, you know!” she says, playfully smacking me on the arm for pretending I don’t know that she’s talking about sex.
“I do know,” I concede.
“Well, I have something to say to you about that,” she says. “Give me your hand.”
I furrow my brow and extend it to her. She flips it over, so it’s palm-side up, and takes her index finger and draws a capital A and a plus sign in my palm. “That’s what you are,” she says.
Then she goes over to her coach, ready to put on the harness and work on her flips and twists.
Meanwhile, my heart is doing its own flips and twists.
If I could take her palm, there’s only one word I’d write in it.
Sunshine.