her sport—like, why would that even come as a surprise? When you were an athlete heading to the most important competition in the world, focus on the end goal was imperative. Still, things were different this year.
We’d had to wait five years for the Olympics because of last year’s pandemic, and training had been tough. Only special dispensation had allowed some of our team to use the pool, and even then, I knew palms had been greased as we evaded the lockdown.
Unfair, definitely, but I wasn’t about to complain. Not when I’d have gone insane without being able to swim and train every day.
That extra year had put pressure on us though. We were a year older than we should have been, and that changed things. Not just our bodies, but our relationships too.
“I’m fine. Jonas wasn’t much support in the end. I used the fact that I want to get in his face, smack around the pretty boy a little, as motivation. I think that’s why I did as well as I did,” she said dryly.
I knew how vengeance worked. Hadn’t it been a part of my life since I was sixteen years old?
To this day, I wore the scars of it on my psyche. So, because I understood, I squeezed her again just as hard as she had me when I’d been sitting with my toes dipped into the pool where I’d just made a name for myself, and muttered, “He’s the fool.”
“Oh, you got that right, honey,” she replied sassily. “I’m determined to win a medal just to spite him.”
I snorted. “Well, there’s one reason to win.”
She scoffed, “We lesser mortals need to get our kicks somehow, Thea.”
“Yes, because I’m all sex goddess,” I retorted.
With a whack of my arm, she mumbled, “I’ll need you to swim super fast just so we win the relay. I need to go back with some hardware. It can be my silent ‘fuck you’ to him.”
“Your wish is my command.”
Lori laughed at my droll reply, and said, “Come on. Let’s get changed. You got a medal to accept.” She was about four inches taller than me, so she peered down at me as she asked, “Your family will probably be waiting on you, won’t they?”
I thought about those eyes... “Yes,” I answered huskily, even if, technically, the Ramsdens weren’t my family.
We weren’t related. Not by blood. But they’d taken me from the ‘gutter,’ or at least, what they considered the gutter, and had helped catapult me into this world. A world where I was written into the record books.
I knew what would come later on. There’d be the press junket, then the medal ceremony, but after, I’d see him.
Adam.
The poison in my blood.
As I shook a few hands with some competitors I’d come to know since making it to the Olympic Village, where athletes stayed during their time at the competition, I smiled as Lori muttered names in my ear.
It was ironic that she remembered all the names and faces, where I couldn’t remember a damn one, but I wasn’t about to complain. Names never interested me. Nor did the faces behind those names. They were all walking stories I didn’t need to know. Their auras told me too much, any more would have just been overload.
After patting myself down with a towel, I grabbed my gear before we headed off to the side and got changed. I rubbed at the damp strands of my hair, trying to give the limp braid some life before the ceremony, but it was impossible. I had to accept that I’d look like a drowned rat for the most important moment of my life.
Already, the next competitors were stepping out of the changing rooms, waiting on their time in the water, reminding us that we needed to hustle and move our asses.
Happiness filled me as I thought about my own upcoming races, and I hoped I did as well as I had today, but even if I didn’t, I had what I’d come here to do.
A gold medal.
Records smashed and slashed.
The Kinkade name no longer associated with death and poverty and injustice.
What more could I hope for?
With my sweatpants on, I headed over to the press line where a few reporters were waiting to speak with me.
I wasn’t great with people, was even worse at answering questions that seemed pretty obvious, but I knew it was part of the game.
I’d been born with nothing except the talent I had in the water and a couple