But sitting here, surrounded by people who knew me, beside a woman who chose me without asking me to be anything other than myself, something new settled into my chest.
True happiness.
Not the sharp, fleeting high of a win. Not the relief of surviving another season. But something stable. Something that didn’t feel like it would disappear the moment I stopped earning it.
Roxie squeezed my hand, like she knew exactly where my thoughts had gone, and for once, I didn’t pull away from the feeling. I let myself believe that maybe this wasn’t something I had to outrun.
That this was something I could stay for.
Later, walking home with Roxie, hand in hand, I made the choice fully.
Worlds would be hard. Love would be terrifying. The future was uncertain.
I didn’t know how to balance training with vulnerability. I didn’t know what it would look like to fail in the water and still come home to someone who stayed.
I didn’t know how to be chosen without earning it first.
But I was done pretending I didn’t want that kind of life. Done believing that ambition and love couldn’t exist in the same lane.
Swimming had taught me how to push through pain.
Roxie was teaching me how to stay when things got real.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t running from that.
I was choosing it.
I was choosingher.
CHAPTER 25
LEDGER
Five weeks later, I was standing in a hotel room halfway across the world, staring at my suitcase like it had personally betrayed me.
“I told you,” Roxie said, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, lips twitching. “You don’t need three pairs of noise-canceling headphones.”
“They’re for different purposes.”
She arched her brow. “Oh?”
“Pre-race. Post-race. And emotional emergencies.”
She laughed, pushing off the wall and crossing the room to sit on the edge of the bed. “You are competing at the World Aquatics Championships, not preparing for psychological warfare.”
“You say that now,” I muttered, zipping the bag anyway. “Wait until someone touches my goggles.”
She snorted. “I still can’t believe I’m here.”
I glanced over at her. “Why?”
She gestured vaguely around the room. “Because fiveweeks ago, we were still pretending we weren’t a thing. And now we’re in another country, you’re swimming at Worlds, and I know your pre-race routine well enough to be genuinely concerned about how little sleep you got.”
Something warm settled in my chest.
Yeah. That tracked.
Five weeks ago, everything had shifted. We’d gone from carefully circling each other to … this. Shared meals. Shared conversations. Her coffee order memorized. My hand instinctively finding hers when things got loud or overwhelming.
