"No."
"Joel—"
"I'm not going anywhere." His mouth pressed against my shoulder, right over the bruise he'd left. "I'm right here."
I wanted to fight him, to shove him away and deal with this the way I always dealt with things. Alone. Behind walls I'd spent years building. But his arms were solid around me and his heartbeat was steady against my back and I was so fucking tired of being strong.
"I'm not ready," I said.
"No one ever is."
I turned in his arms and pressed my face against his neck. He held me while I let myself cry, his hand steady on the back of my head, saying nothing, just holding on.
When I finally pulled back, Joel's thumb traced the wet tracks on my cheeks.
"I'll drive you," he said.
"Joel." I pulled back enough to look at him. "If you drive me there, Derek's going to know. His wife has posters of you."
Joel's expression didn't change. "Is that a problem?"
I opened my mouth to say yes, of course it was a problem, I wasn't ready, I hadn't planned this. But my father was dying and Joel was offering to drive nine hours through the desert to be there with me, and suddenly the closet felt very small and very dark.
"I was going to tell him after the season. I had a plan."
"Plans change."
"What if it changes things?"
"It might." Joel's thumb traced my cheekbone. "But I'm not letting you drive nine hours with one hand, and I'm not putting you on a plane alone when your father is dying. So either I drive you or you tell me right now that you're not ready and I'll find another way."
My chest ached. This man, who'd been so patient with me, even when I'd pushed him away, was still giving me the choice.
"Drive me," I said. "If Derek figures it out, he figures it out."
"You sure?"
"No." I leaned forward and kissed him. "But I'm done hiding from the people who matter."
He kissed my forehead and climbed out of bed. "Pack a bag. I'll make coffee."
He pulled on his jeans, his t-shirt, moving through my apartment like he belonged there, like this was normal, like we were the kind of people who took care of each other.
Maybe we were.
The desert stretched flat and brown in every direction. Nine hours of nothing, and my body was screaming for ice.
This was the longest I'd gone without training since I was fourteen. By now I should have been three hours into my morning session, running through the short program until every transition was automatic. Instead, I was behind the wheel of a rental car, the speedometer hovering at eighty, calculating how many days of conditioning I was losing with every mile.
Red was asleep in the passenger seat, his bandaged hand cradled against his chest.
I could have woken him, made him talk to me instead of retreating into unconsciousness. But he needed the escape more than I needed the company, so I let him sleep and counted exits instead. My father had trained that into me young: always know your way out.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder. Natalia. The third time in the last hour.
Your father won't stop calling. He's threatening to fire me if I don't tell him where you are. He says he'll call the police and report you missing. Joel, PLEASE.
I turned the phone face down and kept driving.
