Page 30 of Crew Girl

Was she naked?

Maybe her clothes had fallen off in the mud pit.

She checked.

No. Not naked. Just dehydrated. And short. Not wildly short. Just shorter than Cam.

If you added them together they’d be tall.

That was it! Cam needed to win this competition. And she was going to help him do it.

“What if I climbed on your shoulders? I could reach the net and pull it down.”

She saw the hope return to his eyes in a blaze of determination.

He deserved to win. Deserved the stroke seat. If her idea worked, it might repair the trust she’d broken between them. So she’d use every last ounce of energy she had to do it.

Cam crouched down, patted his shoulders.

She climbed on, praying her sweaty thighs around his neck wouldn’t scar him for life. After a couple of wobbly tries, she managed to find her balance. She could do this. Then run two more miles to the next one.

She channeled the version of herself who had won race after race, even though her body had been screaming at her in protest. This wasn’t for her. This was for Cam. For the rowing team. They deserved better than Josh Regis.

“Got it!” she cried, pulling the net down.

Then they both managed to climb up and over it without dying and grinned at each other before they faced the next run. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go dethrone the king and his jester.”

As great a plan as that had been, Teagan’s body disagreed and decided to cramp a mile in.

The kind that felt like King Kong was giving your waist a squeeze to see what happened. “You go on,” she said to Cam. She’d have to breathe this baby out. Or maybe lie down and see how long it took for the vultures to arrive.

Cam looked down the track, anxiety replacing the determination she’d seen earlier.

“That bell is pretty big,” she reminded him. “We’d hear it.” Meaning Josh and Ryder weren’t there yet. There was still a chance he could win this. “Go.”

She forced herself to stay upright until he was out of sight.

Only then did she let her body acknowledge the pain she’d been trying to ignore.

She bent double and closed her eyes as she hit the ground. She’d almost made it. Almost.

JOSH

Josh looked at Ryder. Were they hallucinating? Ryder was throwing him the same WTF look. “How did you get here?”

Cam pointed at his feet, too tired to talk.

“Didn’t we—” Ryder asked Josh.

“We did.” He knew he and his cousin probably looked like idiots right now. At least they’d shifted from enemy to frenemy zone. For now anyway. Now that they had a shared goal.

Beat Cam Dillinger.

There was no way Cam could’ve reached the net on his own. And yet here he was. Just like them. At the final obstacle.

“Guys,” Cam panted.

“What?” Josh wondered how much energy he’d burned saying that. Too much, probably. Given the mountain they had yet to climb. Every single part of his body was screaming at him to stop. Too bad, body. The stakes were too high not to press on. He would. In a minute. Sitting down had probably been a mistake.