But before I could ask, before I could even decide whether to ask, he nodded once and turned to walk away.
I stared after him.
My heart did something weird. Something that felt like concern tangled up with an awareness I didn’t want to understand.
Absolutely not.
Nope.
I slammed the door shut and leaned my back against it.
No. I didn’t have the brain power to think about Ledger. I didn’t have the sanity for it. I had enough storms of my own.
But as I slid down the door to the floor, staring at the water bottle he’d returned, one thought dug its claws in and refused to leave:
If Ledger Hayes was coming undone … then something in my world was about to shift, too.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready.
CHAPTER 3
LEDGER
Talon had been hovering all day.
Most people didn’t notice when I was off my game—not unless my split times tanked—but Talon noticed everything. Probably came from spending years living and breathing the same brutal routine I had—early mornings, aching shoulders, chasing fractions of seconds like they were oxygen.
After Tokyo, he’d walked away from competing.
Just walked away.
Said he was done grinding his body into dust, done structuring his entire life around a clock unless it was for coffee or Livvi.
I still didn’t fully understand how someone did that. How you spent your whole life clawing toward the top, actually made it there, then decided it was enough.
Not that he’d disappeared from the sport. Talon had slipped into helping Coach Saunders with the next waveof Olympic hopefuls like he’d been born on deck with a stopwatch in his hand. Hard not to listen when the guy giving stroke corrections had two gold medals—one in the hundred fly and another for a relay—and the kind of calm that only came from knowing he’d already proven everything he needed to prove.
He’d met Livvi during that insane year leading up to the Olympics. First online, both of them hiding behind fake usernames on some writing platform, then in real life without realizing the other was their anonymous late-night confidant.
After that, something in him had shifted.
He still had the same competitive edge, the same stupid level of talent, but there was a steadiness to him now. A kind of grounded happiness I didn’t remember him having back when we were freshmen trying to outswim our own shadows.
Like he’d found something that mattered more than shaving another tenth off his time.
I didn’t know what that felt like.
Most mornings he was on deck beside Saunders, stopwatch in one hand, protein shake in the other, calling out corrections like coaching had always been the endgame.
Which meant he’d had a front-row seat to my entire meltdown this afternoon.
He wasn’t supposed to know something was wrong.
Coach Saunders had talked to me alone when she’d told me about the sponsorship collapse. Talon had only seen what happened today—my pace off by tenths,turns that weren’t as sharp, a hollow tightness behind my breathing.
And he’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed.
So by the time I’d showered, grabbed my swim bag, and tried to disappear into the Florida humidity, Talon had already been texting.
