Page 111 of Racing Hearts

“You,” he says with enough conviction that I pulse with joy. “I was making you take all these risks, forcing you out of your comfort zone, but I wasn’t doing the same for myself. Then I watched your races here and I was so impressed and so proud and—I guess that’s how I finally saw it. What you said sank in. Maybe I can coach national team athletes because I’ve already done it. This summer. I coached the strongest, fiercest, most obstinate national team athlete I’ve ever met. I helped make her better. And if I can do that, I can do just about anything.”

Tears leap to my eyes. I’m so desperately, viciously proud of him. At the same time, I’m lost in a haze of recalibration. Berkeley might be only five hundred miles away from the training center, but it’s still five hundred miles. Adrian is smiling like the distance is inconsequential. Of course, it’s worth it. He’s worth it. It is easier this way. But it still won’t be easy.

“But, Adrian,” I say, “you need to know I lost my deal with Carla and USRowing. And then I got second in the final—it’s not enough to get reinstated outright. I needed to win.”

Adrian shakes his head. “That’s not what Carla told me when she offered me the job.”

“She didn’t?”

“No, she specifically mentioned that you’d be in the training center, too.”

I’m so confused. My mind is racing for a contingency or an explanation. Clearly, I’m missing something. “I don’t understand. How could I possibly have my spot back?”

The sharp falsetto of Carla’s voice stabs at us from around the corner of the tent. “You would understand if you had come to talk to me when you got off the water like I asked.”

She rounds the corner, eyes flaming, hair sprawling wild in the wind. She’s at least a few inches shorter than Adrian, but she still seems to take up as much space as he does.

Her eyes pin me like a nail to a board. “Katherine Parker, I’ve been looking all over tarnation for you.”

“I’m sorry?”

She folds her arms, but even so, her eyes skate over my fingers, still twined with Adrian’s, and a smile tweaks her lips. “We need to discuss your residency.”

“Okay?”

“I submitted my recommendation to the board this morning. I said they should reinstate your residency at the Olympic Training Center effective immediately. They voted to confirm you an hour ago.”

Am I hallucinating?

I’m certainly not attached to the ground anymore. I’m rocketing upward, above the tents, into the sky, into the stratosphere.

Desperately, I look to Adrian. He’s smiling at me, broad and expectant. I’m still floating, my heart is still rattling around in my chest, hammering in my ears over the buzzing, over the wind, over the shouts of spectators as the next race descends the course. But Adrian’s smile is a single star in a moonless sky.

“You…” I swallow. “You asked them to overrule before you even saw me race?”

“Yes,” Carla says. “Before your race.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Don’t you remember what I told you,” she asks, “when we discussed this in Italy?”

My mind leaps back, pulling me into the sinking moment in her tent when she broke the bad news. The memory has been reduced to no more than a blur at this point.

So, it takes me more than a moment to say, “You said the board was concerned about my lack of flexibility.”

“Right,” Carla says. “And we have it on good authority that’s changed.”

I look to Adrian, but he shakes his head. “Not me,” he says.

“Sofi has been giving me regular updates,” Carla tells us. “She brags about you so much it’s frankly gotten irritating. That said, I can always trust her to tell me the truth. Plus, there’s everything I’ve seen directly, too—your willingness to work with Adrian, the way your views changed in that recommendation, the flexibility you’ve demonstrated this week.”

My chest is expanding under the pressure, a balloon of hope and happiness. Even still, I’m worried that Carla will take this too far. Even though I’ve changed some, I’m still me.

“I still like routines, though,” I say. “I like making plans and sticking to them. I still do a long stretching session every night and eat the same stuff for breakfast every day before an endurance session. And I have specific supplements I like to take and—”

Carla taps a finger against her windbreaker. “I saw an uneaten lemon bar at the hotel last night. That was yours?”

I nod sheepishly. “Yes.”