and disliking it, I rolled up my mat, tucked it under my arm, and headed over to the door.
I didn’t want him inside, but he wouldn’t stop, and fuck, I wanted to see him.
Like a junkie, if I could just look at him, something inside me would feel better.
Yeah, I knew I was sick.
My poison. No antidote.
When I jerked open the door, glowering at him in welcome, I felt the electric shock to my system as our eyes connected.
For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.
There was nothing to say.
Five years on, and the link between us was as powerful as ever. More powerful even. Probably because we denied it and had done so for years.
Still, I was angry at him. Still so fucking angry for how we’d parted the last time I’d seen him before the debacle with Charles Linden, and my annoyance had me snapping, “What do you want?”
“Did you do this?”
I frowned. “Do what?”
Twisting his phone around, he revealed a picture that made me want to smile and puke at the same time—the photo that Rachel had been bitching about back in the locker room before the race.
I jerked my chin up. “While you might want to cast more sins on me than Lucifer himself, no, I didn’t somehow engineer that going viral.”
Seeing it again, I was transported to those moments after I’d been awarded my first gold medal, when I’d gone to greet the family the day of that first race. Anna and Robert weren’t there, having just started to walk off through the crowds to get to the car, and he and I were just standing together, staring.
Something we tended to do a lot of when we were in each other’s vicinity.
Someone had taken the picture, and it had been trending on Twitter every time I won gold.
Most things like this washed over me without my giving much of a reaction, because those people meant nothing to me. And if that made me a horrible person, then so be it.
I guessed it was different for him though. His personal situation and mine weren’t the same.
“I didn’t come here to start a fight,” Adam muttered, his gaze trained on the screen. Then, with a plea in his voice that surprised me, he asked, “Do we always look at each other like that?”
His tone made me wonder if he hoped we did look at each other that way.
Confused, I whispered, “I think so.”
“Why do you think so?” Ever analytical.
“Because I feel it. You do too. I’m just surprised that it was captured so well by a camera.” My voice turned gruff as I stated, “You already know what you are to me.”
“You’re the one who backed out on us.”
“You’re the one who changed the goalposts,” I growled, and though this was futile, I couldn’t stop myself from snapping, “You left me before we even had a chance at more.”
His eyes narrowed into slits before he grated out, “It’s been a long time since you even thought of me as more than a pain in the ass.”
“That’s because you are one.” Defeat hit me and I shrugged. “I don’t understand you, Adam. I don’t know how things went so wrong between us. We had that one summer, where everything was wonderful, and then, everything changed.”
“Life happened.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m the one still dealing with the aftermath.”
“And I’m not?” He sighed as he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, I hate Cain.”
“Present tense?”
“Of course. He affects us every day whether we like to think he does or not.”
I pursed my lips. “I don’t think of him.” I refused to.
“You don’t? How can you not?”
“Because what he did affected my life” —some might say Cain had wrecked it— “and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking about him. It gives him too much power, and he deserves none.”
He shook his head as he leaned against the doorjamb, and his brow puckered as he whispered, “I miss you.”
Though that broke my heart, I knew I was living up to my ice queen tag on my team when I retorted, “You’d never tell.”
“I made choices, decisions that I can’t go back on.”
“Have I asked you to?” I snapped, my body going rigid at his presumption. If anything, I was the one who lowered myself, who morphed into a hypocrite where he was concerned.
I wasn’t a cheater, but he’d made a liar out of me.
“No. But—”
“But what?” I released a mocking laugh. “You were supposed to leave