AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And that was how we spent the night, pushing boundaries, sinking
into each other with passion that left both of us breathless, sweaty, panting, and ultimately falling asleep with big, fat, satisfied smiles on our faces.
§
Emma had never been to New York City, so I took her there for a few days in October. The leaves in Central Park were crisp and bright. The sun was still strong enough for long days of walking around and sightseeing. And my father was in town on business, so we met up with him for dinner.
Halfway through our meal, an old friend of my father’s, Mark Fisher, joined us. He’d known me since the day I was born, he liked telling me, and he wanted to come congratulate the Olympic champion. We got to talking. It turned out Mark had made tens of millions as a venture capitalist, and now he wanted to make a difference. He had a bunch of ideas and was especially concerned about childhood obesity and the increasing reliance on screens for entertainment.
“Kids don’t run around and play outdoors anymore,” he lamented. “I used to spend all summer climbing trees and riding bikes. Now kids stay indoors playing video games.”
I didn’t have any answers, but I knew what he was talking about. I believed strongly in the benefits of physical activity, exercise and athletic pursuits, and I saw what he was saying. A lot of kids didn’t do that anymore, especially kids whose parents couldn’t afford all mine had, with the club and team fees, the gear, the constant driving back and forth to practice.
We didn’t decide anything that night, but Mark and I kept talking, texting and emailing which then grew into scheduled phone calls. In November, when he flew down to Vero to spend the day brainstorming, I knew we might be on to something. I believed passionately in swimming. You could do it from the day you entered this world until the day you exited. It kept you healthy, didn’t impact your joints, engaged your body and your mind. Not to mention that drowning was one of the leading causes of death in children. I knew something about that topic.
We started hatching the idea for a center, called Swim For Your Life. Mark would fund the construction and set up a generous scholarship fund for kids with limited means. Emma and I would run it.
The center would be open to the public, offering a recreational pool, swim lessons and a swim team. It would have all that, plus a fitness center with, you guessed it, physical and massage therapy. Emma was a big part of the planning process, at the center of creating the vision and helping us articulate not only the big ideas, but the logistical planning.
“We should offer a camp in the summers!” She got just as excited about it as me, brainstorming ways to keep kids active and engaged, swimming and playing and, of course, with Emma, running. “We can have a big field outside! With a track!”
The possibilities were endless, as were the needs. With more and more schools strapped for cash, cutting funding for physical education programs, kids needed a place to go and be healthy.
In the winter months Emma and I worked together to start making our dreams a reality. We found a fantastic lot at an affordable price, thanks to the comparatively reasonable real estate prices in Florida. While we got all the engineering surveys done, the soil reports, the structural calculations, my mom flew down for a couple weeks and worked with a landscape architect to design the grounds. There would be flowers, lots of them, and a vegetable garden that the kids could tend and learn about how food grows.
Emma’s parents got in on the fun as well. Her mom gave a lot of input into the rehab component, especially the water therapy programs we could offer. Her father managed commercial properties for a living, so he was a natural to not only consult, but offer the manager position. We had lunch one day, just the two of us, and I proposed it to him. He’d get a raise, the opportunity to work with his daughter and full oversight of the facilities.
“I’d be honored,” he said, shaking my hand.
I hoped to get that same reaction from him to a question I planned on asking sometime over the coming year. I still felt the way about Emma that I had from the start. She was the one for me. We hadn’t talked marriage and kids yet. I was making myself wait, for once in my life not rush after the goal but let it unfold, at a natural, comfortable pace. But that was hard for me. A large part of me wanted to haul her caveman-style down to city hall that afternoon. We could seal the deal quick, making her mine, forever and ever.
But I knew she’d like a wedding with her family involved. And my mom would like that, too. Liam would want to be there and, who knew, maybe Jax and even Ian would show up. And there were my teammates, they’d want to come, and Emma still lived in the town where she’d grown up so she’d have a bunch of friends and family she’d want to include. Hell, we’d be lucky if we got away with a guest list of a few hundred.
Not that I assumed she’d say yes, but I hoped she would. Seeing her there in meetings, planning for our new center, I couldn’t believe how I’d hit the jackpot. She was the real deal, so kind and nice and thoughtful. And a naughty, hot freak in bed. I’d caught myself a unicorn. And I planned on never letting her go.
CHAPTER 23
Emma
We spent Christmas together in Vero with my family. Chase met the whole extended Nelson clan, complete with cousins and aunts and a pet boa constrictor named Neil. That belonged to my Uncle Ralph.
This year, Neil didn’t eat anything. Last year he’d disappeared for a couple hours, then reappeared at the entryway with a suspiciously large lump in his middle. This year, Uncle Ralph kept him closer, wearing him like a scarf for most of the holiday.
Chase rode it out in classic style, nodding patiently to long explanations about how to make tuna casserole (Aunt Roberta) and showing my nine-year-old cousin Kenny how to swim butterfly. In the kitchen of my parents’ house.
“They’re best friends, not enemies,” Chase told him, moving his hands closer together at the end of the swoop. He was so good with kids, charming and funny and patient. Someday he’d make a great dad. He saw me gazing at him, all starry eyed, and he gave me a wink.
Geez, I was so head over heels for him. A fact I reminded myself of frequently as we flew up to Massachusetts to spend the week after Christmas with his parents. His father really rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed competitive with his own son, bragging about his latest business deal, displaying his latest girlfriend as if it were a competition, her against me. I did not do well around people like that. The more it felt like someone was trying to provoke a reaction, the more I clammed right up. The few days we spent at his father’s house, I spoke less and less, growing quiet as a mouse.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who saw it. It didn’t make me happy to see Chase upset over his father’s behavior, but it did make it easier that he didn’t like it either.
“I’m sorry. He isn’t always this bad,” he assured me.
“It is not your fault,” I reassured him. “And I’m fine.” Which was true, but I grew more relaxed in the following days as we visited his mother. She and I had had fun with the landscape architect, planning the grounds for the swim center. She struck me as quiet, thoughtful, and much more grounded than I’d originally feared when I’d seen her in Rio. It turned out she got really tense around her ex-husband. Now I understood why.
While we were visiting his parents, Chase headed back to the old pool he’d trained at while in high school. It was technically closed over the vacation week, but they gave Chase a key. For him, anything.
One afternoon, I accompanied him for a workout of my own. I lasted about a half hour in the water, then took a hot tub, sauna, shower, plus blow dried my hair and changed. When I came out, he was still swimming and went at it for another half hour. I sat by the side on a bench and scrolled through my Facebook and Instagram feeds on my phone. Lots of photos of Tori, having a blast. She hadn’t slowed down a bit. We hadn’t seen each other that much in the past few months, and, honestly, that felt about right.
“You’re Chase’s friend?” An older gentleman came over, introducing himself as one of Chase’s first coaches. “I came over to say hello.” He made his way
over to the pool and Chase and he talked for a few minutes, all smiles and laughter as they reminisced.
“He sure seems to be doing well,” the coach commented as he passed me again on his way out. “A kid with that kind of drive? I’ve seen it go both ways.”
We both watched Chase fly through the water, as if he had wings in an empty pool. Not in training for any future event, he was just enjoying himself by pushing himself to physical exhaustion.
“Some kids?” the coach reflected. “They push and push, but then they don’t know what to do when it’s all over. They don’t know how to stop. But Chase seems like one of the lucky ones.” He looked at me, kindly. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do with that.”
He walked off, leaving me to my thoughts as I watched Chase swim. Was he doing all right? Did he miss it, training for the Olympics? Maybe he wanted to do it again in 2020?
I’d get on that treadmill again if he wanted, support him however he needed down that long, arduous journey. But it would be a hard one, pushing uphill as the years and endless hours of stress and overuse took a toll on his body. Thirty wasn’t old in an objective sense, but for an elite athlete it was right on the cusp, if not over the hill. I’d hate to see Chase push and push, only to get sidelined by an injury, or make it to the games and not be able to recapture his former glory.
Plus, a small part of me hoped he’d be happy without it. It must be hard, having had such an exciting, coveted prize to pursue for so long, to now wake up each day with, simply, life. But to me what we had going on was thrilling. The chance to do something really fun and good, running Swim For Your Life together. It was my dream come true. But was it his?
I still had the question on my mind as we drove back to his mother’s house, about twenty minutes away. Snow flurries were falling, pretty from the inside of the car but Florida girl that I was I already felt cold before I’d even set foot in it. I put my seat warmer on high.
