Page 33 of The Clinch
“NCAA Women’s 100m — Post-Race Interview: Lillian Richardson”
She’s young. No more than twenty. Hair dyed sunrise-orange. Still breathing hard, a sheen of sweat across her collarbones. Her smile is wild—bright and reckless and proud.
The reporter asks her something. She laughs, tips her head back.
God, she’s radiant.
“Lillian, that finish was unbelievable. How did you make that last ten meters?”
She shrugs, still laughing. “Honestly? I just... decide I’m not losing.”
I feel that answer all the way through me.
“You’re one of the most confident sprinters we’ve seen this season. Where does that come from?”
She grins like the answer is obvious.
“My mother. She taught me.”
The reporter laughs. “Richardson is your mother’s name, right?”
She tips her head back, still breathing hard. “Yeah. Dad used to joke she got naming rights because she was faster.”
The interviewer asks what’s next. She beams. “Olympics, hopefully. That’s the dream.”
Olympics.
The clip ends with her laughing, that unfiltered joy lighting up her whole face.
I set the phone down.
The woman in those videos—confident, electric, unstoppable—is the same woman who flinched when Drake grabbed her arm. Who changed her name. Who crossed state lines and started over. Who’s sleeping in my guest room right now, convinced the safest thing is to run.
I lean back against the counter, arms braced.
She thinks sex complicates things. She thinks easy exits keep people safe. She thinks this fake relationship is temporary, controlled, something we both easily step out of.
She’s wrong.
Because she didn’t just pass through my life by accident. She’s been circling my awareness for months—half-glances, near-misses, the kind of presence that registers long before it makes sense. Two nights ago, I almost touched her. Almost finished what her body had already agreed to.
I thought that was the danger.
It wasn’t.
The danger is knowing who she is now.
Not just Liz Adler, with the careful edges and the shut doors. Lillian Richardson, the girl who used to cross the line first and scream her joy into the air.
That woman doesn’t disappear.
She doesn’t get erased.
And she doesn’t get left unprotected.
I set the phone down. Press both palms flat on the counter.
I don’t know what she’s running from yet.
