Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Ispent my lunch hour splayed out on the sparring mat, catching my breath.
“Hey, little buddy…” Josh spoke softly from outside the ring, where he’d been sliding things toward me like water and snacks. “You doing okay?”
After he and Brad jumped in the ring, Brad pulled Elaine off me, and Josh thumped my back so hard, it was like he’d pressed a reset button on my diaphragm.
I’d gasped for air, lungs greedy and desperate as I pulled in huge gulps of it.
When I finally caught my breath, Elaine was gone, and I’d collapsed back on the mat and hadn’t moved since.
Pity party for one?
Sign. Me. Up.
With limited time to solve my clues, prepare for the obstacles, and learn about my opponents, I’d spent most of the last three days doing none of that.
Instead, I’d obsessed over the other pieces on the board—Max confusing me, Kingston and Landon suffering in silence, Elaine driving me insane, and Vivian flying under my radar—up to my eyeballs in anxiety, with no leads on how to find relief or answers. And running out of time.
I couldn’t afford to lose any more of it.
Getting nowhere had become the theme of the day, and I refused to keep doing it.
Slowly pushing my upper body off the mat, I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. My chest twinged. I winced, but I clenched my teeth and pushed through until the pain passed.
Overall, aside from my bruised ego, I was fine. And sitting here throwing myself a pity party was just doing more of the same—wasting my time.
“I’m fine, Josh.” Nodding to the snacks and water, I met his gaze. “Thanks.”
He gave me a tight smile, his eyes sympathetic and a little wary. “You really should get some ice.”
I pursed my lips, but when I got to my feet, the pinch in my side told me he was right.
“Fine. I’ll be right back.”
After grabbing ice from the kitchen, I spent the rest of lunch in the center of the sparring ring, lost in thought. Since my first clue came from the first person I’d met at Camelot Court, I stuck with that theme.
Compiling a short list in my head, I ran through everyone who’d impacted my time during the Trust Challenge to start.
Aside from my three broody assholes, I reluctantly added Merle to the list, along with Elaine and Vivian.
As if my thoughts conjured her, the latter walked into the room, and her puzzled expression at my seated position in the center of the ring irked me.
I glared, and her furrowed brow morphed into a frown.
She turned away and unpacked her water bottle and towel from her bag. Then, she sat down and waited for the guys.
I stewed silently, trying to figure her out.
It wasn’t until my Succession training with Paul, when, as he led me through another round of yoga, Elaine and Vivian’s motivations became clear.
Elaine had gone the route of baiting me to get inside my head. A trap I’d easily walked into. She’d gotten under my skin so thoroughly I’d gotten my ass kicked by her.
Vivian had taken the opposite approach by doing nothing, but she’d thoroughly and effectively gotten in my head, too. Just as much as Elaine. Maybe even more so.
She’d been doing exactly what I’d needed to do, being strategic and—since she hadn’t fought with me—being safe.
I cursed myself for not having seen it sooner.
If I didn’t get my head in the game, I had no chance of winning The Quest, so I had two options: Put them both out of my head completely or get under their skin.
The more I thought about which option to take, the more it brought up what Paul had said yesterday.
At the end of our session, I asked him the question I’d had in my mind since he’d switched gears to yoga, taking a different approach to the class and hoping I’d get somewhere.
“Paul, how will I know?”
He cocked his head in question. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, you said if we took the wrong path, we’d have to go back to the beginning and start again. So, if I’m not taking the right path, how will I know?”
He grimaced. “You won’t. Not until it’s too late.”
I balked. “What? How does that even make sense?”
“The only way out would be to go back to the beginning, but by that point, it’s too late.”
“So, I could make it to the end and not be able to go farther? That sounds like we’re being set up to fail.” I threw my hands in the air, running my hands through my hair and gripping hard. “What is wrong with this place?”
“Or…” he offered gently, with a grimace that assured me he didn’t completely buy it. “You’re being tested to rise above failure. Remove it as an option altogether.”
I muttered, “And they wonder why someone died.”
“You’ve been given the means to do it.” He offered me an encouraging smile that did nothing to ease my outrage. “And as unfair as it might seem, those are the expectations here. There’s no room for failure. If you make the wrong choice, it can ruin everything.”
His smile wilted, and I didn’t know what to say.
Max had said something eerily similar once. The night I’d found him upset in the shower, he told me he’d ruined everything before we met.
I’d reassured him, trying to be optimistic, but I hadn’t known what he’d meant. I still didn’t, really.
But maybe he’d been right.
My spirits lifted slightly during Escape with Tristan. When I met him on the back lawn, he took one look at me and eased me onto a seat under the covered patio.
As he explained the Freeze response, how the body becomes immobile, often to be less noticeable to a threat or assess a situation, I pictured myself.
Standing in the Round Tableau.
Lying on the table in the poker room. Unmoving.
“You go still.” I nodded, filling in what I’d experienced. “Freeze in place until it feels like the danger has passed.”
“It’s more than just going still, though. The person experiencing it often wants to move but can’t. They feel unable to, and it can come with a sense of being numb.”
“Sounds terrible,” I said dryly. “So, it’s like when someone says something completely unexpected, and you just stand there like you aren’t crushed, right?”
“Yes…” he hedged, assessing me out of the corner of his eye.
“You want to run, but you can’t move. You just struggle to breathe and lock up your emotions?”
Realizing I spoke from experience, maybe even guessing which one, he cocked his head. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” I blurted. Then I shook my head with a sardonic laugh. “As far as surprises go, it sucked. But I got through it. We’re fine. End of story, right?”
I didn’t bother giving him the play-by-play with Max since we were still stuck at it sucked.
Tristan’s lopsided smile assured me he had opinions on my approach to healing old wounds, but thankfully, he kept them to himself. “I have an idea. How about we enjoy this lesson down by the lake with some of Miss Alice’s homemade ice cream? How would that be for a Freeze response?”
I laughed, unable to help myself. “That sounds perfect.”
After following him to the kitchens, we sat out by the lake talking about ice cream, Izzy, and his plans for law school. I thought of what he’d said during our session in the woods.
I nudged him with my elbow. “I see why she likes you, too.”
His warm smile brightened. “She has excellent taste, that Izzy Gold.” He held up his ice cream between us, nodding at the cone in my hand. “Cheers to being the chosen ones.”
“Cheers.” I tapped my ice cream against his. “So, what’s on the agenda tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, we’ll cover the Fawn response, people-pleasing to de-escalate a threat.”
“Oh, joy!”
The idea of appeasing anyone, or trying to win over an aggressor to gain safety, was hard to imagine. But since I didn’t make up the rules for this confusing hodgepodge of trials and challenges known as The Quest, I’d have to hear him out.
I doubted it would help me get answers or figure out how to get through to Max. But who knew?
Maybe it’d come in handy one day.
As I headed to my next lesson, I walked by the garages to try locating the gym again.
On my way, I passed the shed where Kingston kept his motorcycle. The door was open, and the headlight appeared as the bike was pushed through the doors.
“Kingston?”
Morty popped out instead.
That shouldn’t have surprised me, but I jumped. “Hey! What are you doing with Kingston’s bike?”
“Special permission to go off campus.” He pushed the bike onto the grass. “Want a ride?”
“Ew, no.” I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t be gross.”
Morty’s equally disgusted expression relieved me. “Yeah. Felt weird even as I said it.”
“Glad we agree.”
With a quick nod, he resumed pushing the bike. I propped my hands on my hips and stood in front of it.
“Where’s your brother? I need my second clue.”
He stared expectantly, as if waiting on a tip for his trouble.
“What?” I demanded, and when he tapped his foot, I heaved an exasperated sigh. “What do you need to help me?”
“You have to choose.”
He shrugged like that explained everything, then tried to push the bike around me.
I side-stepped in front of him. “What do you mean?”
“Those two things aren’t the same—baby bro’s location and your second clue. And I’m only in the mood to answer one question today.” He shrugged. “It be like that sometimes.”
As he swerved the bike around me, I clapped my hand on his shoulder. “Morty, do you know what my second clue is?”
Another shrug. This one, intentionally done to throw my hand off him. “Perhaps.”
“When were you going to tell me you had it?”
“Once you asked, of course.” He reached into his pocket. “I thought you might stare down that fork in the road forever.”
Bouncing impatiently, I itched to get a move on, so I ignored his riddled insult and forced my foot not to tap on the pavement. When he held out a small flashlight, I snatched it from him.
“What’s this for?” I clicked it on, and white specks of dust on his black shirt brightened. “Is this a black light?”
“Beats me.” He pushed his fingers at me in a shoo motion I didn’t particularly care for. “Now, you beat it, too. I’m late. I’m late for a very important date.”
I got out of his way, and he pushed the bike to the driveway.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll just figure it out myself.”
Seated on the bike, he kicked it to life and called out. “That is kind of the point of this whole thing, you know?”
I pretended I didn’t hear him over the rumble of the engine, and as he took off for his date with a wave, I prayed for the poor girl walking into that hot mess.
It wasn’t until Sabotage training with Austin that I realized what I needed to do.
At the start of the lesson, he walked me through the exercise circuit, again, set up like a miniature Obstacle Course.
I’d made it through the rope climb, tire run, and army crawl before wading across a small man-made pool that had been dug into the ground. Soaking wet, I had low expectations for my performance on the monkey bars that followed.
When my hand slipped off the third one, I landed in the mud with an oomph.
“Are you alright?”
I wiped mud off my arms with my T-shirt. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
He scrutinized my face with a frown, not buying that for a second. “You seem a little distracted. Want to take a break?”
Shaking my head, I declined. “No, I need to try again.”
I made it to the fourth rung only to fall into the water. I did that three more times. On the last try, instead of climbing out and failing again, I let myself sink to the bottom.
Austin rushed over to pull me out of it. “You know, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”
I glared at him. “Well, how should I know what to do? You guys tell us nothing and set us up to fail.” At his puzzled expression, I filled him in on my conversation with Paul.
He wasn’t sympathetic to my plight.
“Life comes down to our choices, Quinn. Sometimes, you have to be sure before you take each step. Sometimes, one choice leads us down the wrong path, clearing away all the progress we’ve made.” He shrugged. “What do you do then?”
He left it at that, not expecting an answer, which was good because I didn’t have one.
When he sat on a tree stump, leaving me to do whatever I wanted, I got up and wrung out my shirt.
I was grateful for the silence.
As soon as he’d said the word path, my mind drifted to the diner. Everything Max and I had talked about that day, when I shared my feelings with him about dance.
I’d found myself on a path that wasn’t right for me anymore. Max had reminded me it was okay to choose a different one. That I didn’t have to go back to the beginning and start over, although that always remained an option for dance.
Because I had a different choice, too.
Veer off my current path and forge a new one.
As I applied that to the monkey bars, I considered my approach to Max. Maybe a new angle during our sessions would be more effective. My risqué outfit and naked body affected him, sure, but I needed more than that.
And as much as I wanted to be sure of my next step, Max wasn’t making it that simple.
He needed to know I wasn’t going anywhere.
That I’d fight for him—the big, stubborn brute.
And I couldn’t stare at the fork in the path forever.
Maybe my next move wouldn’t get through to him, so it wasn’t about choosing the right path at all.
Maybe I had to veer off course completely. Forge a new way ahead by pushing the trees out of the way with my bare hands.
If so, then Max had given me what I needed to handle how this played out during the Honor Challenge. He’d increased the pressure and refused to back down for me, despite my efforts to stay in denial. I could do the same for him.
Maybe that was the leap of faith I had to take.
No matter what resistance I faced, I’d push harder.
So really, he was the only one to blame for what came next.