Waking Olivia (3 page)

T
he next morning
I'm ready to put Will Langstrom in his fucking place. His words from yesterday
are
still pissing me off almost 24 hours later.
Asshole
. I’ve had a full night’s sleep, so let’s see him try to complain about me now.

Everyone is chattering, the combination of nerves and dread making their noise a little more high-pitched and a lot more annoying—Erin in particular, whose breathless discourse is directed entirely toward me. Will eventually saunters up, and when he smiles that crooked smile they all titter like he's the lead singer of their favorite boy band. I guess if he weren’t such a dick I’d be swooning too. Everything about him is perfect—the ice blue of his eyes, the slight curl of his hair, the ever-present hint of scruff, his mouth and the way his lip quirks upward when he’s trying not to smile. I see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from his shirt sleeve and wish I could see the whole thing.

"You're running six at race pace," he announces. "I marked the route earlier. I'm going to drive along today to assess. Everybody stop at the turn-around point and we’ll reconvene there."

You’re going to have to assess my ass from a distance
. I plan to run nowhere near the rest of these losers.

When the time comes, I take off so fast and so hard that I don’t see the other girls. I don’t even hear them. I feel buoyant, as if I can fly, and there isn’t a soul in sight. This is my favorite way to run—the absolute freedom of not thinking or remembering or feeling anything at all

I notice nothing but the hash marks he's left on the road, only vaguely aware of the miles ticking by. I get to the turn-around point and I keep running. Yeah, I know he said to stop, but I’m in my zone, my best place.
Fuck him.
He’s not even a runner.

I don't even look over when I hear an engine purring beside me until I realize it’s Will shouting at me to stop. It’s possible, based on how pissed off he is, that he’s been shouting for a while. And now that he’s yanked me from my happy place, I'm pissed too.

He pulls the car over to the side of the road and marches toward me. "When I tell you to stop you need to listen," he growls.

"I was
running
. That's what you do when you're not 'trying to lose the baby weight,’" I snap.

“Get your ass back to the turn-around point and stop showing off,” he snarls, marching away.

I get back to the turn-around just as Betsy, the one who led yesterday, comes in. She is winded, the way she should be at the end, not the half. She leans down, hands on knees.

"You okay, Bets?" Will asks her.

"Yeah," she says, standing. Then she turns to me. "It's not a race, you know."

"He said
race pace
.” I laugh. “So yeah, it kind of was."

"Look," she snarls. "You're not D1 anymore. You weren't D1 material, so stop pretending you are."

Here's the unfortunate thing about a hard workout, about the adrenaline, when someone pisses you off: it's like you've got a Greek chorus behind you, egging you on. "Only one of us is breathing heavy," I say, stepping up so we are face-to-face, "so who's pretending?"

"That's enough," says Will. He places a hand on my shoulder and pushes me backward just enough so that he can move between us. "You two are on the same team. Try acting like it."

He blames me.

He didn’t say it, but he obviously blames me, when
she’s
the one who started it. I'm only two days into the season and I've already had it. I’ve had it with Betsy and her half-assed running, with the rest of them who are actually
slower
than Betsy, and with Will Langstrom, who is the single biggest asshole I've ever had to run for.

When he sends us back to campus, still scowling at me, I leave them both in the dust. I take all my anger and adrenaline and apply it to a single goal: leaving Betsy so far behind me that when this run is over she will hate herself a little. At this very moment, as she makes a futile attempt to keep up with me, she feels useless, weak. I know because I’ve felt it too. I know she will come in angry at me and angrier at herself, and that the anger will fester, linger, for days, because this is what happens to me when I lose.

I get back to the track long before any of them.
Not D1 material, my ass.

Will has parked and is stalking toward me. "You did that just to piss her off," he says.

"What do you care? You wanted fast. You got fast."

"No, what I want is a
team
. You can run to see yourself succeed, Olivia, but don't ever run to see someone else fail."

"I go by
Finn
," I hiss. He's just calling me Olivia to fuck with me at this point. "And she started it."

"And was it true? Are you here because you're not D1 material?"

"No," I snap.

"Then act like it," he says in disgust.

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole
. I just ran sub-fives for that prick and I get
nothing
but a fucking lecture? I watch Betsy coming in, gasping for air and glaring at me.

Sadly, she's no longer the person on the track I hate most.

I go to the cafeteria with Erin nipping at my heels like the world's most annoying dog. No matter what I do or how appallingly rude I am, this girl can't take a hint.

"That was crazy this morning," says Erin. "I mean you're fast, you know? Like super fast."

I shrug. Am I supposed to feign modesty here? I
am
fast. I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't. However, I already dislike this expectation. She’s seen me run fast
once
and she’s already got her hopes up. I could tell her right now that getting hopeful about me is a losing proposition, but I just open up my paper and ignore her instead.

She’s not the only one who noticed, though. At that afternoon’s practice, Erin stands beside me while we wait for Will, as does her friend Nicole. “That was impressive this morning,” says Nicole.

“We totally have a chance at placing this year with you,” agrees Erin.

I feel like I’m suffocating. I don’t want them counting on me. God knows I can’t even count on myself. “It was just one run,” I reply.

Will is walking toward us in a fitted grey V-neck and shorts. It irritates me that I find him so freaking attractive. Knowing what a jerk he is should throw cold water on my hormones but it seems to do the opposite.

Nicole and Erin start to giggle, that kind of secretive girlish giggle, a noise I’m proud to say I’ve never made. “We
love
the grey shirt,” explains Erin with a lascivious grin.

When I roll my eyes, Nicole looks at me as if I’ve just denied evolution. “You don’t think he’s hot?” she asks.

“Maybe I’m just having a hard time seeing under that thick layer of dickhead he wears,” I reply.

"He's not as bad as you think," Erin argues. "Off the track he's super nice. On the track too, actually."

"Not to me, he's not."

"He gives people what they need." She cocks her head, eyeing me somewhat warily. "No offense, Finn, but he seems to think you need discipline."

If it didn't piss me off so much, I'd probably agree.

H
e has us do speedwork
, and I immediately regret my showboating this morning. I no longer have that buzz of energy that kept me well ahead of Betsy. This afternoon we are neck-and-neck during every 800. We’re both destroyed during the recovery, and then we do it again. But
I'm
the one Will calls out, of course.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Running 800s, like you said."

"Really? Because it looks to me like you're racing Betsy."

"Or maybe
she's
racing me. Why am I the one getting bitched at here?"

“Because I expect more of you."

"You shouldn't."

He looks at me. It’s an assessing look, not cocky or angry but earnest as if he’s trying to decide something. “Yeah,” he finally says sourly, “you’re probably right."

The remainder of the week passes with a few more lectures from Will and not a single compliment. I give him what he wants. I'm fast but I'm not too fast, and I don't race Betsy even though I'd like to pound her into the dirt and stomp on her remains, yet he stands there praising everyone but me. I scowl at him as I pass, but he doesn't even seem to notice. Probably because he assumes I’m not going to be his problem for much longer.

I guess I assume it, too.

If he’s not happy with me right now, then he’s definitely not going to be happy when the real problems begin—when school starts in two weeks and our first meet looms. The stress will lead to nightmares, nightmares will lead to running, and running leads to meets where I perform about as well as a retiree trying out a treadmill for the first time.

I spend my time between our two practices mapping the town and combing the woods, which is where I almost always head during the dreams. I have no idea why I go there, and I don’t really want to know.

Erin continues to follow me to lunch, despite the fact that I've told her I want to eat alone. At this point, her attempts at friendship are flat-out stalking.

“Seriously?” I groan when she sits at my table. “I think I need a restraining order.”

“Restraining orders can only be issued if there's intent to harm,” she quips cheerfully.

"I'm not at all surprised that you are so informed about restraining orders," I gripe.

She just laughs.

As if I was joking.

I
can see
five different peaks I’ve climbed on the drive to my mother’s farm. I’m not sure if that’s necessarily ironic, but it’s definitely shitty. Fate’s way of laughing in my face. Rubbing salt in the wound.

I climbed those peaks when I was younger and every single time it was against my father’s wishes. Every single time it led to a fight. It took my desire to climb and transformed it, took something pure and made it angry and defiant. I look back on those climbs, how reckless they were, and realize they proved my dad right in a way. I did need to grow the fuck up. I just couldn’t do it until it was too late for him to see it happen.

The farm is my full-time job, left in my unwilling hands when my father died. It was already failing when I inherited it. Coaching is part-time, covering my younger brother’s tuition but not a lot else. Between two jobs and the debt my father left behind, there aren’t enough hours in the day and there probably never will be, so my climbing days are over. I sometimes wonder if my dad is looking down and getting a good laugh out of the situation.

"Was Jackson even here this morning?" I grouse when I walk into my mother’s house. We sold off some of the farm, but what’s left is still too much for us and the part-time guys we’ve hired. "The stables look like shit. Probably because they were full, literally, of shit."

She sighs. "Yes, he was here. You know how that goes, Will."

Yeah, I know.
No one is going to kill himself for a job that is seasonal or part-time. This is just a stop-gap until he finds something better.

"How's work?" she asks.

I shrug. "Pretty good. This year’s team looks okay." Even if it didn’t, I wouldn't tell her. She's got enough guilt about the fact that I'm here as it is.

"How are the new ones?"

"Hard to say. There’s one with some promise." I didn't mean to add that. I don't know why but something about Finnegan makes me want to discuss her with someone, and at the same time makes me want to pretend she doesn’t exist.

“Well, you've got four years to make something of her."

"Only two. She’s a transfer."

She nods. "That’s right. Peter told me about her."

This surprises me. Peter's been a friend of the family all my life, but I didn't know he discussed work with my mom. It's a little weird. It makes me wonder if they discuss me too.

"She's fast, but she's unstable,” I sigh. “That girl's got more problems than an entire psychiatric team could fix."

"Will, she just got here," she says gently.

"Didn't Peter tell you what she did at UT?"

“Yes,” she says, raising a brow. “And I remember a time when you couldn’t set foot outside this house without winding up in the back of a police cruiser. So maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to judge."

Fine. But I never tried to
kill
someone.

She sets food on the table. “Eat,” she commands. “It’ll make you less grumpy.”

I’m sure she’s right, but even a full stomach won’t make me feel better about Olivia.

T
he next two
weeks are basically a repeat of the first: Me, working my ass off, and Will, being a total dick about it. The twice-a-day workouts are so exhausting that I don’t dream at all. I give him everything at practice, and while I don’t deserve an award for it, I do deserve one for not telling him to go fuck himself. Actually, I deserve something better than an award for that.
Maybe a new car or a trip to Disney.

Erin not only eats with me every day, but she gets my number off the team roster and starts
texting
me too. It’s unbelievably annoying. I respond to her initial texts with one of my own.

Me: Stop texting me.

Erin: Aren’t you cute? ;-) ;-)

I hate emojis.

I’m not sure why I haven’t just blocked her yet. And then she invites some of the other girls to eat with us and I know what hell truly is. Nicole, a mouthy redhead who’s the fastest girl on the team after me and Betsy, Meghan, whose dark curls are so big her head blocks half my view of the cafeteria, and Hannah, blonde and quieter than the others but not quiet enough.

Betsy and her small posse sit at a separate table. It feels as if we’re two rival gangs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Erin and these girls have befriended me solely because I'm faster than Betsy, and add some clout to their side. Clearly it’s not my winning personality attracting them.

I listen in surly silence as they chatter. 10% of the conversation is about running, and the rest is about boys.

"You'll see the guy’s track team at tomorrow's practice," Nicole tells me the week before school starts.

I couldn’t care less about meeting the guys. Runners are too gangly for me.
I prefer a build like Will's.

I want to take bleach to my brain the moment I hear that admission in my head.

"Mmmm, and Erin will get to see Brofton," someone teases.

"Dan Brofton is hands-down the hottest guy on the team,” Erin informs me. “Aside from Will, that is."

There’s a lot of sly giggling. "Will doesn't count. He's not on the team," Nicole objects.

"But if he were ..." Hannah sings, and there is more giggling. Coaches can't date students, and even if they could I can't imagine the appeal of an asshole like Will. Okay, that’s a lie. I can totally imagine the appeal. But I refuse to let myself.

"Did you see the way his shirt clung to him at yesterday’s practice?" asks Meghan.

“Wish his shorts had clung too,” cackles Nicole.

I roll my eyes. "This is like listening to a bunch of horny teenage boys."

"Welcome to the team.” Erin grins.

T
he guys’ team
is waiting when we wrap up the next morning. I know who Brofton is immediately because he's the kind of good-looking that is universally appealing to everyone. Dark hair, knowing eyes, a little smirk on his face like he’s imagining you naked. You might have a particular type, but Dan Brofton is cute enough to be everyone's type.
And yet…

I begrudgingly admit that he's
still
not as hot as Will.

He saunters over to me. The cocky ones always saunter. "You must be the D1 girl."

"Wow,” I deadpan. “Your psychic powers are top-notch."

“Fine.” He grins, irritatingly unfazed by my bitchiness. “So we’ve actually heard all about you."

"And what exactly did you hear?"

"That you put Mark Bell in the hospital."

"I hope that means you're all scared of me now."

"You don't look so scary.” He smiles. "And I've met Mark a few times. He ran in my division in high school, and I know for a fact that he's a world-class prick, so I'm gonna guess he had it coming.”

He definitely had it coming.