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 mySuccessiontraining 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, itcanruin 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.
