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Maria, the holy.
Maria, the person that was beautiful.
Maria, the one that was way better than me.
Maria. Maria. Maria.
I know that it was bad to think ill of the dead, especially one that had died so terribly.
But I just couldn’t freakin’ stand it anymore.
She was all I heard about.
Everyone in town had so much to say about her, and had so much to relay to me that was about her, that I was literally about to lose my shit.
If one more person came up to me and asked how it felt to date a recently murdered woman’s ex-husband, I would scream.
Did none of the women at the gym, besides Sophia, realize that Maria was a complete and utter bitch to Taos? Did none of them see the torture that the woman had put him through over the last few years?
Did none of them care about that?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I would continue to hide the hurtful words from him, and I would do my best to keep it that way.
Like now.
He was smiling and walking up to me after he finished his part of the competition, and I couldn’t do that to him—make him aware of the whispers.
He would be upset.
So I kept the hurtful words and comments that everyone spewed to me quiet, and instead pasted on a smile.
“You did great, Taos.” I grinned.
He threw a sweaty arm around me and pulled me in close.
And, despite the excessive amount of sweat that was clinging to his Madd CrossFit shirt, I laid my head on his chest and sank into the embrace.
I was tired.
So. Freakin’. Tired.
I’d spent a really long time last night thinking about things that I shouldn’t be thinking about—i.e., the murder of women around town by a serial killer—and it’d taken me an irrationally long time to calm my mind down long enough to get some shut-eye.
Therefore, when I’d had to wake up at four o’clock this morning to get ready in time for Taos to pick me up by five for the competition an hour and a half away, I’d had less than two hours of sleep.
Not to mention, I’d already done two workouts.
Two workouts that, despite being what they considered ‘easy’ were actually quite hard.
I had two more workouts to go, and if things kept progressing like they had been, I’d be dead by the end of the day for sure.
“You want to go take a rest in our tent? We have about an hour and a half until we need to start warming up for the next competition,” he offered.
I actually didn’t. But only because it was so damn cold outside.
We were expected to get snow.
Again.
And it was raining and cold outside, despite Taos setting up a tent for us to use, and putting a small space heater in it to keep it warm while we were inside of it.
The sad thing was, it wasn’t cutting it.
And now, with me being wet with drying sweat, it would be even colder.
“I’m cold,” I admitted.
He pulled me in closer, wrapping his arms around me.
“I have more blankets in the car.” He paused. “And we can snuggle to keep warm.” He paused. “I just don’t like being around this many people.”
I reluctantly agreed.
But, when we finally got to the tent, I was surprised to find it a lot warmer than I expected.
Piling inside without opening the tent flaps all the way, I all but fell into the warm heat, happy to find it warm when I expected it to be cold.
“I’ll be right back,” he called out.
I smiled and fell onto the gray roll-out mat that he’d brought along, burying my face into the pillow that he’d insisted I bring today.
I was glad he’d asked me to grab it, because it was about to come in very handy.
I was lying there, my arms wrapped around myself, fallen over on my side with my head on the pillow, when I heard the first whispers.
“Did you see who Taos was working out with?” someone asked.
“Is that her?” someone else, a woman instead of a man this time, whispered.
They must’ve seen Taos taking off, but hadn’t seen me come inside the tent, or they wouldn’t be talking right next to our tent, loud enough for me to hear.
“I think it is.” The man paused. “I recognize her from the paper.”
The paper.
The damn Paris Herald.
I hated that fucking paper.
I hated even more that they’d published my life story, including an old race photo of me, to their front fucking page, without first asking me if I was okay with it.
Even worse, everyone in town knew what almost happened to me.
Everyone but one certain hero police officer that I couldn’t work up the courage to tell the truth.
I would tell him.
I really, really would.
When I worked up the courage.
Until then, I just hoped that he didn’t hear the story from someone else.
