Her eyes flash.
Color blooms across her cheeks, fast and unmistakable.
“Training’s over,” she says crisply. “Go hit the showers.”
“Oh, I showered before I got here. So did you, come to think of it.” I push to my feet.
She stands up from her table and follows me into the kitchen, where she promptly pours herself water from her fridge pitcher.
“You need electrolytes,” I say, but she doesn’t listen. She drains the glass in one long drink. Then she sets it down firmly and looks at me … less firmly. In fact, she’s worrying her lip.
“What you heard yesterday wasn’t for you,” she says.
“I disagree,” I say.
“It could ruin his career.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.” I keep my voice even. “But Scottie—Jake choked a teammate in the dugout last year. The worst thing that happened was …nothing. You don’t have the power to make or break him, no matter how much he needs you to believe you do.”
“He just got an Old Spice endorsement because of me.”
“Good for him. But he’d have gotten it in a stable relationship withanyone. You’re not the variable. You’re just the one paying the price.”
She shakes her head and looks at the floor, and something about the smallness of the gesture makes my chest ache.
“You don’t have a lifetime of experience saving him.”
“Neither should you!” The heat in my voice surprises me. I try to dial it back but can’t quite get there. “My sister spent yearsdoing this for Logan and me. Worrying about us, protecting us, micromanaging our training schedules—like she’d made some oath she never actually took. She was so busy being a mini mom, she stopped being our sister. All it did was wear her out and drive us apart.” I stop short. The hurt of itsits in my throat, lodged there. “I don’t want that for you.”
“It would hurt Jake if I stopped.”
“So?” The word comes out harder than I mean it to. “What about how it’s hurtingyou?”
She laughs. Just one short, flat sound.
“No,” she says.
Not “it doesn’t hurt.”Not “I’m fine.”Just?—
No.
Like her pain isn’t even a category on the spreadsheet.
I’ve been around a lot of hurt in my life—Liesel’s avoidance, Logan’s anxiety, my mom’s long illness, my dad sitting at the edge of her bed on a thousand quiet nights. I know what it looks like when someone’s learned to live so far inside themselves that they’ve stopped expecting anyone to notice.
I just didn’t expect it to look like her.
“Your family,” I start. “Do they know what this costs you?”
She looks down and fidgets with a hangnail. Her veins are too bright through her pale skin. Her eyes well for just a second before she blinks the tears back.
“They don’t know,” she says quietly.
“Then tell them.”
“I can’t.” Her voice is barely above a breath. “If they knew how I’ve felt all these years—it would hurt them. It would hurt them too much.”
This woman.
