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His words were arrows that hit the proverbial bull’s eye perfectly. The old wound gaped open. As the pain seared through me, I closed my eyes. Until I felt the warmth of his hands wrap around my face, felt the soft brush of his lips on my own. “He loved you. He wanted what was best for you.” His voice trailed off. I wiped at the tears threatening to slide down my cheeks.
“What’s best for me?” I scoffed, disgust following on its heels. “I could’ve done without the high priced education, believe me.”
“I always have,” he murmured. The sympathy on his face transformed to determination. “I want to show you something.” Taking my hand, he pulled us both up off the floor.
“Not tonight, Sebastian,” I pleaded, shaking my head. “I’ve had enough for tonight.”
“It won’t take long.”
He dragged me out of the library and down the hall to a part of the estate I seldom visited. Most of the rooms in that wing were locked up, the furniture covered and the drapes drawn shut. He walked up to a panel of double doors that were beautifully decorated with etched glass. Pushing the doors open, he turned on the lights that revealed the beauty within. Mesmerized, I didn’t know where to look first.
The ceiling was entirely covered in etched glass tiles. A gorgeous alfresco graced the walls, and an Olympic sized pool decorated with Italian hand painted tiles stretched from wall to wall.
“Wow,” was all I could say as I took everything in. Sebastian walked over to a wrought iron lounge chair and sat down. “Why do you have this room closed up? Why is the pool drained?” I asked offhandedly.
Sighing, he raked his fingers though his hair in a gesture I knew meant he was about to discuss a topic he didn’t want to. I walked over to him and smoothed his hair back into place while his eyes fluttered shut.
“What is it, Lover?”
Clasping my wrists, he brought my hands down and held them between us. “Remember when I told you that after my parents divorced I spent the summers here with my father?”
“Yes,” I replied in a hesitant voice.
“My father and I had nothing in common. Even when he wasn’t working, which wasn’t often, I barely saw him. Obviously there were no kids for me to play with so most games were out of the question… That’s why I started swimming. Out of boredom, at first. But then I got hooked––on the silence, on the single mindedness of it. Swimming focused my thoughts…kept the loneliness away.”
The last words were barely a whisper. And yet they were spoken loud enough to crack my heart open and leave it bleeding. I bent down to kiss him, but he placed his fingers over my mouth and stopped me.
“I have to get this out,” he said, his eyes holding mine. With a nod, I let him continue. “One day my father happened to be walking by and saw me. By then I had been training for months. I was already pretty good––for an eleven year old,” he clarified, adding a quick grin.
“He never said anything. He just started showing up every day at the same time to watch me. I was so excited. My father had never shown any interest in me whatsoever––other than to make sure I was breathing.” Wincing, I laced my fingers through his and squeezed.
“Then he started showing up with a stopwatch, timing me. Everything changed after that. At dinnertime, we talked. We started discussing different training methods, what strokes I needed to work on. He bought me videos of past Olympic meets. It was like we were finally speaking the same language.”
“What happened?” I asked, my voice strained from a growing sense of dread. It was like watching a horror movie. I could see where this was leading, and yet I still couldn’t stop my stomach from clenching painfully.
“I started winning. I would’ve killed myself to please him…I almost did,” he continued, his gaze falling to our joined hands. “After training with him that summer, I went back to Texas obsessed with being the best. By spring of the following year, I was ranked second in the U.S. for my age group. That summer I flew back and forth for my swim meets, but I couldn’t break through to number one. The title was held by a kid from California twice my height.”
I held his gaze, willing him to continue. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled.
“We met for our usual training session. I hadn’t slept well the night before. At dinner we’d discussed the last meet, and he didn’t say much. He was still pissed about a meet that I’d lost badly. I was tired––I’d been training too hard. During sprints, I kept hearing him shouting, pushing me. So I kept going, way past my lactate threshold…and then I blacked out.
