Chapter 30 #2
“Yes, I am.”
I try a different approach. “Don’t you feel like shit?”
“I did, at first, but then I realized you were here, on top of me, and I don’t know, I guess all the blood pounding in my head rushed to my dick instead. You’re like a magic hangover cure.”
I drop my forehead to his chest with a snort. “Nox.”
“Where did you come from?” he asks, awed, and I know instantly he doesn’t remember a thing about last night. The realization is frustratingly sobering.
“The airport.” I lift my head with a pointed stare. “I got on the first flight I could when I heard you dropped out of the race and disappeared. You scared the shit out of me. Out of Nova. What happened?”
He turns his face to the side, presenting me with a rather perfect view of his tightly clenched jaw. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not that serious.”
He turns back to me, finding my eyes, but his are hard.
It’s as if I can actually see that brick wall rising higher, blocking out the truth.
Is this what he saw every time I shut him out?
Every time I tried to push him away? This little taste of my own medicine is bitter as hell, but I won’t let it stop me when he never did.
“Let me get this straight,” I press, sitting up in his lap.
Playtime is over. “You dropped out of the Olympics. You gave up the chance of another gold medal. You went completely off the grid and left your phone behind so we couldn’t find you.
Then you drank yourself into a stupor even though you’ve been sober for as long as I’ve known you.
And it’s not that serious. Is that actually the argument you’re going with here? ”
“Clara—”
“No, Nox. Tell me the truth. Tell me as much as you can. Or tell me to fuck off if you can’t talk about it. But don’t you dare lie to me with a bullshit excuse like that.”
He drops his head back against the lounge chair, muscles in his neck pulsing as he works his jaw.
Tension pulls at his features. He rests his hands on my thighs and kneads his fingers into my quads.
I’m not even sure he’s aware he’s doing it or if it’s some innate need to feel grounded as he shrinks further and further into the recesses of his mind.
He snaps his gaze back to mine, only half present, I can tell. “Did they win?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you check?”
I’m not sure if he’s buying time to come up with another lie or just struggling to figure out how to admit the truth. I go along anyway and pull out my phone. “They won. By about a tenth of a second.”
A relieved breath seeps out of him as he nods, looking up to the sky. “Good. I thought they would. Jonah, my replacement, got the bronze a few days ago. He’s one of the best in the world.”
“Why didn’t you watch?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
He waits to answer, and this time, I know it’s because he’s wrestling with the truth. It comes out as the softest whisper, barely audible above the breeze swooping up from the canyon below. “I was afraid I’d let them down.”
My heart shatters for him. I know exactly how hard those words are to say, to admit, how weak they can make you feel, especially for someone like Nox, who wields his pride like a shield. But it’s not weakness. It’s strength in disguise.
“You did the right thing by walking away if you weren’t in the right place to swim,” I say, trying to make him see.
He snorts dismissively.
“You did,” I urge.
“Is that what Coach said? That I wasn’t in the right place to swim?”
“He told reporters you’d come down with a sudden bout of the stomach flu and decided to bow out for the sake of the team. According to Nova, you did spend a good portion of last night puking, so he wasn’t entirely wrong…”
The ghost of a smile crosses his face, replaced quickly by a glower. “The press must be eating it up.”
“Is that so bad?” I ask honestly. “If Coach wants to spread a little white lie to get the heat off you while you’re figuring out whatever it is that’s going on, let him.
You don’t need to do everything by yourself.
Lord knows, I didn’t. I was broken when we met, Nox.
You practically glued me back together. So talk to me. Let me help you.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point?” I ask, confused.
He finally meets my gaze then, and the raw torment in his eyes stops me short, the depth of it so vast, so consuming, I don’t understand how he’s kept it hidden for so long.
“What’s the point,” he repeats, firmer this time, a statement, not a question, and I know we’ve finally arrived at the crux.
“You want to know why I dropped out? Because I knew there were four guys on my team who wanted a win more than anything else in the world, and I wasn’t one of them.
I don’t need another fucking gold medal. What good are they to me?”
My brows knit. I don’t understand.
Everything, I want to say. I thought they meant everything.
“I was fifteen the first time I saw my dad for what he truly is,” Nox explains, switching the topic, but I let him.
There’s an important destination at the end of this detour.
I’m certain of it. “It was the day I broke my first world record. Not officially, it was just during practice, but I knew it would change everything. My training. My potential. My end goals. The Olympics were no longer a what-if, but a when. The question suddenly wasn’t one gold medal, but how many?
I turned toward my dad, so hyped up as I launched myself out of the pool, and I don’t know why or how but I could just see it in the way he was smiling.
Everything Nova had ever tried to tell me hit me all at once.
He wasn’t excited for me. He was excited for himself.
All that time he’d spent with me in the pool, at my practices, at my meets, it had never been about bonding with me.
It had been about extending his legacy, his story.
I almost quit right then. But I still loved swimming.
I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to push myself, to see how far I could go in spite of him.
So I doubled down. I upped my training. I stopped partying and spent all my time in the pool.
When I got that first gold medal, I felt like such a fucking king.
I’d done it. Me. Not him. And then I got my second.
And my third. And by the time that fourth one was draped around my neck, I saw the fear leak into his eyes, and I knew right then and there what my new purpose would be.
I wouldn’t continue his story. I’d end it. ”
“You wanted to beat his record,” I say, recognizing this part of the story.
He nods, still staring off into a distance I can’t see.
“I wanted to demolish it. I told you Nova and I were an accident. He blamed us for ruining his career, and he made sure we knew it. He blamed my mom too. He spent his life punishing us for his mistakes. Missing our birthdays. Skipping our events. Cheating on my mom. Anything and everything he could to inflict the maximum amount of damage. And then, when she finally found the strength to leave him, he battled her for every ounce of money he could squeeze out of her. He even fought for custody even though we all knew he didn’t want it.
And he still won’t let her go. He wields love like a weapon.
So I knew if I wanted to hurt him back, to take something from him the way he’d taken so much from us, there was only one way to do it. ”
“And you did.”