Weakly, she muttered, “I love you too.” And I knew, from how shaky she sounded, that I’d pretty much blown her mind with this shit.
My grin felt like it was plastered onto my face. “Well,” I said brightly, “we can do anything then, can’t we?”
And we did.
THEA
My time astonished Coach Ryder. Within the week, I was on the team, and kitted out like I was a rich kid just like Adam and Cain, with an Almanac Water Sports Team sweat suit displayed proudly in my closet, and three specialized swimsuits—the racer variety—in my drawers.
Maria Lopez wasn’t happy, considering my being on the team kicked her off it, but even though she bitched about it and had thrown the towel bin in the locker room against the wall, there was no real arguing. Coach had settled things easily.
A race.
I’d beaten her by four seconds.
That spring and summer changed everything. But it all started with Adam. He’d been the trigger, the catalyst. He’d taken me under his wing and helped me fly, because Coach didn’t just stop with a race against Cain’s girlfriend.
He put me into a U.S.A. swimming competition, an open water junior meet, and I’d won first in all six of my races. Then came divisional meets, tristate competitions, and nationals.
Gold, gold, gold.
Suddenly, I had more gold medals than I had places to store them, and pinning them up on my walls just felt all kinds of wrong. Kenny would come into my room and gape at them, then shake his head at me and ask if he could have some of what I was taking. I knew why.
It was unreal.
Things like this didn’t happen to people like us.
And crazier still? If it wasn’t too late for me to compete in the Olympic trials? Just by a couple of months? I had a feeling I’d be flying to Rio for the Games.
My talent opened doors for me in a way that it wouldn’t have without Adam shining a light on me. Suddenly, Coach stopped looking at me like a charity case. Instead, he had medals in his eyes, and me? I didn’t care.
I wasn’t doing this for gold.
I was doing this for Adam and for me.
Even though we weren’t allowed to be a couple, nothing had progressed between us that led to that anyway. We’d only been allowed to see each other in the morning, and on rare occasions in the evening, so it wasn’t like we could start a mad, passionate affair at Hawkvale, was it? This way, being a part of his club, I could see him for hours at a time. In my favorite place. Even if I couldn’t touch him.
Which, admittedly, sucked.
Still, this was for our future. Something we were both working toward, and for me? I was doing so in my favorite place imaginable.
The water had always been my home, and a coping mechanism, so it seemed insane to me that it was the means in which I’d found my jílo, and how I might secure a future for myself that didn’t belong in a poverty-stricken area of Boston.
I’d had no means of gaining a scholarship, not considering the high school I attended was a crappy one. We didn’t even have a guidance counselor—they kept leaving, traumatized by all the drugs and teen pregnancies.
But suddenly, I saw a glimmer of hope.
A chance to get out of there.
And I took it. I owned it. I made it mine.
I didn’t know what had happened. Didn’t know how or why. But in August, when I should have been rolling up to Madison Winthrop High School, instead, I rolled up to Rosemore Academy with Adam at my side.
I’d been sponsored, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out by who.
Things like this didn’t happen to people like me, but Rosemore Academy had seen my performance at the Open Water Nationals. Had seen my abilities. And somehow, I was attending Rosemore on a grant. A big grant. It covered one hundred percent of the fees, including the stupid uniform I had to wear, and all the gear I needed for sports—Kenny, my foster brother, was beyond jealous.
Adam had turned my life around a full one-eighty. It was like a dream. A beautiful fairy tale.
Until it wasn’t.
When I walked into the girls’ locker room the first day of school, I got the cold shoulder. But I’d expected that. I’d expected to be disliked because the new girls always were, and I’d been to enough schools to