Page 75 of Coming Home

The woman deserved her own gold medal.

Emma had started swimming again, too. Mornings at our pool, just the two of us. She wasn't fast anymore. Her stroke was a little rusty, her turns were messy, and she got winded after a few hundred meters. But she didn't care. She was back in the water, and the water remembered her. Watching her glide through the lane was like watching someone speak a language they thought they'd forgotten. The words were coming back.

Right now, she was standing waist-deep in the crystal shallows, her dark hair wet and slicked back, her skin glowing under the sun. She looked up at me, a brilliant, challenging grin breaking across her face.

"Race me," she called out.

I laughed, wading in. "Race you?"

"You heard me, Brandt. One lap. From this rock to the yellow buoy and back."

I looked at the distance. Maybe a hundred meters total. I could do it in my sleep, and she knew it. The competition wasn't the point.

"What's the prize?" I asked, stopping a foot away from her. The Caribbean water was warm, clear enough to see the sand shifting under my toes.

She tilted her head, her blue eyes dancing. "If I win, this mermaid gives you a kiss."

"And if I win?"

"You won't."

"Em, I've won every single race I've ever swum against you since we were kids."

"Then your record is officially overdue for a correction."

I dropped into a ready stance beside her. She matched my posture, her body shifting into the practiced crouch of a trained swimmer.

"On three," she said.

"On three."

"One. Two. Three."

We dove.

The warm salt water claimed us. I pulled through the first stroke, the familiar weightless peace settling in my chest. I could feel the strength in my shoulders—diminished from the months of recovery, but still undeniably mine. The black lines and lane ropes were gone. There was just open ocean, columns of sunlight piercing the blue, and the woman swimming three meters to my left.

I lengthened my stroke, letting the water hold me a beat longer between movements. It was the slowest I'd ever swum, and I loved every damn second of it.

Because Emma was right there beside me. Her arms were pulling, her legs kicking, fighting for every single meter with a gritty, beautiful determination. Every time she turned her head to breathe, I could see that wide smile—the one I had spent my entire life trying to earn.

I thought about the boy from Bakersfield with the borrowed goggles. The kid who couldn't afford a swim cap. I thought about every medal, every record, every agonizing morning I'd launched myself off a block because the world told me my only worth lived at the finish line.

I'd spent my whole life sprinting toward a number on a scoreboard, chasing a legacy just to prove that the boy from the community pool mattered.

And the best thing I'd ever done was finally slow down enough to let someone catch up to me.

Emma touched the buoy half a body length ahead of me. She surfaced, gasping for air, triumphant, her laugh echoing across the open water.

"I won!" She was treading water, her face flushed, eyes bright. "I actually won! Did you see that?"

I reached her in a single stroke. I locked my arms around her waist, pulling her flush against my chest in the warm, salt-heavy water. Her hands anchored onto my shoulders, and we just floated together, held up by the ocean and each other.

"I saw it," I said, looking down at her, my chest aching with a warmth no medication could ever touch.

"I beat Ralph Brandt."

"You destroyed him."