Page 65 of Coming Home

The athletic facility was ghostly dark when I arrived.

The parking lot held only three cars, none of them Ralph's truck. Coach Vance's office window was dark. The front glass doors were unlocked, but the reception desk was abandoned, the overhead lights dimmed to an eerie, after-hours amber.

I walked down the long, echoing corridor toward the natatorium, my sneakers squeaking against the polished tile. The air grew warmer, thick with humidity, carrying the chlorine that used to make me physically sick but now felt like home. I pushed through the heavy doors. The pool lights were still on, illuminating the water from beneath the surface, casting massive, rippling azure reflections across the high vaulted ceiling.

The Olympic-sized pool was empty. Flat, glass-still, without a single ripple to break the surface. The lanes stretched out in undisturbed blue lines, the thick black markers on the concrete bottom perfectly visible through six feet of motionless water.

He wasn't here.

I pulled out my phone to try his number one last time. Voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message. What could I even say into the void? I'm sorry I told you the truth? I'm sorry I love you enough to be terrified?

Neither phrase felt big enough to cover the canyon between us.

Then, the doors clicked open behind me.

I whirled around, my pulse spiking, expecting to see damp blond hair, navy eyes, and the man who had driven around the coast until his anger had finally burned down to ash.

Instead, James walked into the light.

My body recognized him before my brain could even process the visual. A violent contraction gripped my stomach. My shoulders tightened, and my feet took a half-step backward. Three years of psychological conditioning didn't just vanish; my nervous system still remembered the drill.

But he looked different. Thinner. The polished, impeccably tailored edges of the man I had lived with had eroded, leaving behind something raw and unkempt. His linen shirt was wrinkled. His eyes carried dark shadows, and his hair, which he used to style to an almost obsessive standard, was overgrown and messy.

"What are you doing here?" My voice came out steady, cutting through the damp air.

"I went to the motel. You weren't there," he said, stopping about ten feet away from me, his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets. "Then I went to Nadia's. She told me to go to hell and threatened to call the police, which was quite the scene."

"How did you find this place, James?"

"I'm not an idiot, Emma." His voice wasn't aggressive; it was just deeply tired. "I've known about your little swimmer since the night he shoved his way into my apartment and took your suitcase. It didn't take much effort to find out where his team trains."

"You need to leave. Right now."

"I didn't come here to start a fight."

"I don't care why you're here. Turn around and walk out."

He didn't move an inch. He stood on the slick tile in his wrinkled clothes, looking at me with an expression I had never once seen during our three years together. It wasn't the chilly stare, nor the condescending amusement he used to make me feel small. It was something foreign to his nature: pure desperation.

"I can't stand not knowing," he whispered, his eyes locking onto mine. "It's eating me alive, Emma. Every night, I sit in that empty apartment, looking at the space where your things used to be, and I can't sleep. My brain won't stop looping the same question over and over."

"James, stop."

"Are you in love with him?"

The question crashed into the vast, echoing cavern of the pool room. He hadn't moved, hands still buried in his pockets, his jaw tight, watching me like my answer was the only thing holding him upright. And I still couldn't quite believe we were standing in the same room again.

"You need to leave," I repeated, my tone dropping.

"I need to hear you say it."

"I don't owe you a single syllable." The words came out beautifully clean. No trembling. No hesitation. A year ago—even six months ago—I couldn't have uttered that sentence without my vocal cords failing me. I would have folded under his gaze. I would have softened the blow, apologized for the inconvenience of my own boundaries, and made myself small to keep him comfortable.

But the woman standing on this pool deck was no longer the broken girl who had stood on his porch in the pouring rain. She had been fished out of the water. She had been sheltered. She had been told she was precious by a man who meant it with every fiber of his being, and she had finally started to believe him.

"You're right," James said softly, taking a half-step forward. "You don't owe me anything. But I'm asking anyway. Because three years of my life meant something to me, even if you've decided they meant nothing."

"Three years meant everything to me." My voice was quiet, but it carried effortlessly across the still water. "That's the tragedy of it, James. I gave you three entire years of my youth, and you spent every single day of them making me smaller. You controlled what I ate. You critiqued what I wore. You dictated who I could talk to, who I had to avoid, when I was allowed to smile, and when I needed to shut up. You made me ask for permission just to have dinner with my own brother. And when I finally found the courage to walk away, you locked your door and let me freeze in a storm because you were so arrogant, so utterly certain I'd come crawling back, that you turned my humiliation into a spectator sport."