Page 3 of Coming Home

He was standing near the directory.

Tall. Dark blond hair that was a little too long, curling slightly at the collar of his shirt. He was dressed in solid black, a silhouette I would have known anywhere. His skin had that deep, golden-bronze tan you can only earn from spending thousands of hours under open sky, breathing in chlorine, living on a pool deck before the rest of the world has had its coffee.

He was wearing sunglasses indoors. It was overcast outside.

My feet stopped. Everything stopped.

I didn't need to see his eyes to know they were navy blue. I knew because I'd spent half my adolescence looking at them across my brother's kitchen table, at dusty backyard barbecues, at international meets where he'd wave at me from three lanes over like it was a private joke that we were representing the same country.

Ralph Brandt.

My fingers went slack. The keys I'd just fished out slipped back into the bag. I grabbed the strap with both hands, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs it made me dizzy.

Run. The panic fired through my whole body. Turn around. Hide behind the pillar. Pretend you dropped something. Take the stairs. Do anything except stand directly in his path to the exit.

But my legs refused.

He started walking toward the doors. Long, effortless strides, gear bag slung over one shoulder, still carrying himself like the deck was his. I used to move like that too, back when it was mine.

Ten feet. Five. I braced myself for the shock on his face, the double-take, the inevitable "Emma?" that would shatter my invisibility. I'd have to explain. The vanishing. The weight. The ruined girl standing in front of him where a champion used to be.

He stopped right in front of me.

He tilted his head. But his eyes weren't on me. They went right past my shoulder, toward the exit doors, like I was just an inconvenient obstacle in his path.

"Excuse me," he said. Polite, casual, indifferent. "Can I get past?"

I stepped aside. My body cleared the way automatically, like muscle memory from a life where I was always making room for someone else.

He walked right past me. I caught the scent of his sunscreen and fresh laundry. He didn't slow down. He didn't hesitate. He pushed through the heavy glass doors into the cool, gray afternoon, and just like that, he was gone.

I turned slowly, watching his broad shoulders recede down the sidewalk. The glass doors swung shut between us.

He hadn't recognized me.

The guy who used to chuck me into the deep end every Fourth of July, who had draped his own Olympic gold around my neck because he said mine was the one that mattered, had looked right through me.

I couldn't figure out which realization was worse.

That he didn't see me at all.

Or that I had spent the last three years getting exactly what I asked for.

CHAPTER 2

Ralph

"It's complete bullshit."

I didn't bother using the safe vocabulary. Camilla wrote it down anyway, her expensive pen scratching across the notepad without a single hitch. Apparently, when you're on the Olympic training roster, the federation pays for therapists who don't flinch at profanity.

This whole setup was a joke. A mandatory wellness initiative passed down from executive suits who needed a liability shield wearing a compassion costume. Show up, talk for fifty minutes, sign the attendance log, get back to the pool. That was supposed to be the deal.

Except Camilla didn't do surface-level. She just sat there in that suffocatingly warm room, heavy with the scent of old paper and stale coffee, outwaiting me like she had all afternoon and every intention of using it. And the worst part? It was working. Four sessions in, and she already had things I hadn't confessed to my own reflection. Things I wouldn't dare say to the specialists currently telling me to start preparing.

Preparing. Like there's a damn study guide for going blind.

"What feels unfair, Ralph?" Camilla asked.