temperature could drop within a matter of minutes like she’d been sitting in a fucking freezer for hours on end. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t believe in any supernatural bullshit, but as it stood, I was seriously just waiting on the day vampires were outed.
Grunting at the thought, and wanting to get her temperature leveled off, I muttered, “Bathroom. If you don’t want Dad to suspect anything—”
“I don’t!” was her immediate response, and she pushed her face into my throat.
God, the move annihilated me.
It reminded me of simpler times. Moments in our past where things hadn’t been as monstrous and complex as they were now.
What I wouldn’t give for the chance to start over… For the past to be the beginning of our present once more.
If only.
ADAM
“Please, Coach. Come and see her. Give her a chance.”
If my tone was urgent, that’s because that was exactly how I was feeling, but Coach Ryder shook his head. “I don’t have time to—”
“Sir, I’m telling you—she’s the best swimmer I’ve seen. And her speeds?” I whistled. “They’re phenomenal. She’s on the team at her school, but it’s crappy. There are no gains to her being a part of it.”
“She’ll get spotted eventually if she’s that good.”
My mouth tightened. “She’s more than good, but she never competes. Why would she? She’s not in the NCSA. The only competitions she’s done are for the school, and it’s not like they’re going anywhere groundbreaking with one decent person on board.”
Ryder squinted at me as he sank back against his seat. His chair rocked under his not insubstantial weight—I always found it ironic that the old bastard was constantly telling me to diet when he needed to drop at least fifty pounds. Kicking his legs up onto the desk, he rested his hands on his belly as he pondered me.
At his back, there were a collection of certificates and pictures from his own time swimming competitively for the nation, but more than that, there were the countless kids he’d helped kickstart onto the national sphere.
A sphere that would be worse off without Thea in it.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I urged, “She’s fantastic, sir. Absolutely incredible. I timed her the other day. Her freestyle? She whooped the shit out of Maria’s last race.”
Ryder cocked a brow. “How many meters?”
“Fifty. But that was after she’d been training for an hour, Coach,” I stated. “She timed me, and I timed her.”
“What was your time?”
“Thirty-two seconds.”
Ryder shook his head. “You need to drop ten pounds. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“I’d been training for an hour!”
“You just used that as an excuse for how fast this Theodora swims!”
“Theodosia,” I corrected gruffly. “And this was different. I’m not pleading for my place on the team.”
He plucked at his chin, scratching along the wisps he had growing there. He had the face and the belly of a pit bull, and his bark? Just as mean. “How do you even know this kid anyway?”
“She’s not a kid. She’s my age. I met her at a fundraiser.”
“A fundraiser?” He snorted. “If she’s a friend of your family then she doesn’t need your charity, does she?”
“We met at the Hawkvale Community Center, sir. She isn’t rich. She’s a foster kid. But she’s so much more than that.”
“I can see you’ve got stars in your eyes.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I do, but her stats don’t lie.”
“You and I both know that I don’t let any hanky-panky go down between kids on my team if this is some BS excuse so you can spend more time together. Or, sweet Jesus, so you can both go to camp next month—”
And this was exactly why I’d been keeping things cool between Thea and me. Even if it fucking killed me. It was easier to stop when you hadn’t started something, and while we would eventually, I could wait. She deserved so much more than a quick tumble. I wanted to wait until we were eighteen, free from ties, and I could make love to her somewhere special.
Somewhere that meant something to us.
Without any artifice, I told him, “If it makes a difference, I’ll break things off with her.”
“You think I was born yesterday?”
Hitching my shoulders again, I muttered, “No, Coach. I don’t.” But it was bullshit that he was getting high-handed with me when Maria and Cain were boning each other like they were the only people who could repopulate the Earth—and my tone called him on that BS.