Page 10 of Racing Hearts

“I know,” Sofi says. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t get through it.”

“I would have never done something like this to him. He was never supposed to do something like this to me. That was the whole point, Sof. He supported my goals instead of questioning them. He understood who I am and never tried to change me—only tried to make me better. Those were the reasons I took a chance on this ridiculous relationship in the first place. And it still backfired.”

Sofi sighs, but doesn’t respond.

I ball up a fist and push myself away from my boat, then root through my duffel bag until I find my phone. Any moment now, it will fire to life, carrying more bad news. “I’m not going to Worlds. I definitely lost my last two sponsors.”

She lays a hand across the screen. “Don’t worry about that right now.”

“But it’s going to happen. And then what? I have no marketable skills. What employer wants me to work a few hours a day for eight months a year?”

“I think you need to stop trying to leap fifteen paces forward and instead focus on what’s next. Tomorrow, we’ll fly back to California and we’ll be back in the training center. You’ll get to sleep in your perfectly made bed, and eat your perfectly ratioed meals, and row on our perfectly flat lake with Carla shouting at you from her launch.”

My lips crack into the slightest smile. I do love it when our coach shouts at us.

Sofi squeezes her hand against my clammy skin. “And maybe you’ll have to get a part-time job. That’s okay. I know you can handle it. You can handle pretty much anything, Kath. Including getting over Maxwell.” She grabs me into another firm hug. “But you’ll cross all of those bridges when you get there.”

I let myself melt into the strength of her embrace. She’s right, as always. I just need to get home, get back to normal. This isn’t a death sentence for my Olympic dreams. I can’t let it be.

My phone buzzes.

I pull away and wipe my cheek with the back of my hand as I peer down at the name on an incoming message. COACH.

Come to my tent. We need to talk.

Hovering by my shoulder, Sofi grimaces. The phone buzzes again.

Now.

Four

Inside her white vinyl tent, Carla is perched in a director’s chair, her windbreaker’s declaration of TEAM USA facing me. She lets out a snort of laughter directed toward the laptop balanced on her knees. Which is playing…a TikTok video?

It’s the last thing I’d ever have expected to find my coach watching. Actually, no, the last thing is one of those sappy rom-coms with an ensemble cast of famous people. But TikTok would have been a very close second. And yet, here she is, watching a screen with a profile video of young kids in unisuits doing some coordinated dance.

I clear my throat awkwardly. “Coach? You wanted to see me?”

Carla slides her laptop onto the stack of papers and clipboards adorning her makeshift desk—a card table—and tosses her reading glasses on top. She bolts upright to face me, fists on her hips like a superhero. Even from this angle, I have to crane my neck to look her in the eye. I don’t dare look down. Carla’s athletes hold their chins high on and off the water.

Her eyes roam my face, and my breath stills.

“Kath.”

“Coach?”

She rubs the back of her head where her hair is buzzed close to her scalp. “Tough break on that race. What happened?”

I shake my head, trying to sort through the tangle of memories from the last hour. “I was fast off the line and settled into pace, but when I hit the thousand—”

She folds her hands, steeples her index fingers, then tilts her head. My shoulders stiffen. This is Carla’s X-ray vision pose—the one she assumes when she’s examining my soul. Or whatever is even more core to my being than that. My to-do lists, maybe.

“No,” she says. “What happened?”

I’m not sure how much I should share. I hate that she’s looking at me like she’s wondering how much disappointment I deserve. Then again, Carla has very little patience for excuses and interpersonal drama, so oversharing might backfire.

I keep it vague. “I—I had some bad personal news. Right before the race.”

She fixes me with a purse-lipped stare. “I’m sorry to hear that. But we both know this has been going on much longer than just today.”