by Sarina Bowen
“Bastard!” Callie yelped.
“I wasn’t expecting much—I told you that before. But it was truly awful. And now I’m embarrassed. Because I liked this guy—I really did…” her voice broke.
“Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”
“I thought I was a good judge of character,” she cried. “I think I had this silly idea…” she couldn’t even finish the sentence. But it was true. A tiny little part of Willow’s heart had hoped that he would come around. She’d had no reason to think that he would—only the peculiar notion that he’d been as affected by her as she had by him.
It was ridiculous. And he’d turned out to be rotten.
Callie began to sound teary, too. “Honesty is supposed to be the best policy. But sometimes honesty bites us in the ass.”
“He made it very clear that he expects me to get an abortion.”
“Oh, my God. He expects you to? Isn’t that your decision?”
“Of course it’s my decision. But hearing him…ouch. It’s harder to make my own decision now that I know how he really feels. I wish I could un-know it. I wish I could un-hear him say those words to me. He was scary, Callie. I’ve never seen anyone get so angry and cold.”
“Wait—scary how? Did he threaten you?”
Willow wiped her face with her sleeve. “No. Not at all. It’s hard to explain, now that I think about it.” She shivered, picturing the change on his face—eyes going from lit and intelligent to cold-blooded rage. The place he’d gone inside his head…it was somewhere primal.
“You know what bothers me about that?” Callie asked. “Travis. Remember how he said the family was nuts? People say that all the time. But you think he meant it literally?”
“That sounds too Victorian, Callie. Like a chapter from Wuthering Heights. Mental illness isn’t like hair color—jumping neatly from one kid to the next.”
“You’re the shrink.”
“I’m the shrink who doesn’t know what to think. I’m a bad Dr. Seuss rhyme.”
“Willow, you have to hang in there, okay? This is the low point. You’re going to take some very deep breaths. And when you’re good and ready, you’ll make your decision.”
“The hardest part?” Willow swallowed. “One of the things he said feels true.”
Callie sighed. “I’ll bet it isn’t.”
“He said, ‘You really are a fuckup.’ And it’s hard to argue the point.”
“No, it isn’t,” Callie argued. “Deep breaths, Willow. I mean it.”
“Callie, a lot of things have gone wrong for me this year. But every one of them could be at least partially explained away by bad luck. But this one is all on me.”
“Semantics. There were two people in that…Jeep.”
“Bed, actually. Round two was when he said ‘we don’t have another condom’ and I said ‘it doesn’t matter.’” Willow blew out a breath. Saying it out loud was bracing. “Only it did matter.” She began crying again.
“Oh, Willow,” Callie said again.
* * *
Dane had a splitting headache during the course inspection.
“And now we discover the pitfalls of training at low altitudes,” Coach said, handing Dane another bottle of Evian water.
“Don’t,” Dane said, taking a swig. “I don’t need you piling on me, too.”
“Who’s piling on you?” Coach asked. “I’m on your side, here. Let’s get a better look at the fourth pitch,” Coach suggested, sidestepping downhill. “I like the left side of the big jump.” He put his thumbs together, palms out, as if framing a photograph. “That sets you up on the fall line into the carousel turn.”
“Right.” Dane rolled his head to the left and shook out his neck. He had to get his head in the game. Dane watched the competitors around him, leaning forward on their ski poles, moving their arms in a hypnotic way, like jellyfish tentacles, as they visualized hightailing it down the course. This was a Super-G course, meaning that the gates were few and far between, and speed rather than agility would win the day.
The usual race day mayhem surrounded them. Dane was never thrown off by the hundreds of people lined up just beyond the orange safety netting. He was never thrown off by competitors determined to beat him. And he was never thrown off by fear.
But today he was just plain thrown.
“Dane, are you going to be okay?” Coach asked for the hundredth time.
“Stop fucking asking me,” he growled.
The truth was he was far from okay. Willow’s announcement had rattled him to the core. Dane absolutely could not have a child. If he did, that meant that some poor kid would grow up just like him—waiting in dread for the symptoms to show up and tear his body apart. And Willow would have to watch it all happen. She’d outlive her child by a good twenty years at least.
It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. When Dane died, the family illness would stop killing people. He meant to be its very last victim.
He didn’t sleep last night—he couldn’t stop thinking about Willow. Her announcement had put him in the perverse position of hoping that she really had been sleeping around. It would be better for everyone if she was pregnant by someone else and only hoping to pin it on him. He tried to imagine that it was possible—that she’d done the math—figuring he’d made millions in endorsement money after the last Olympics.
Christ. She wasn’t the type. She would never be the type.
Her unluckiest day was the day she’d met him.
Dane’s headache had only partly receded by the time he made it into the start house. He was starting tenth, and the first seven were already down. There had been only one crash so far—an unlucky Norwegian who’d caught an edge on the second pitch, flying ass first into the safety netting. Dane bounced up and down in his ski boots to keep his feet warm.
“Danger.”
He turned around to find one of his so-called teammates, a guy named J.P., calling to him. J.P. had scored a twelfth place start, better than he usually got.
“Yeah?” Why would the guy want to chitchat when he was three minutes from launch?
“I just heard the Germans radio up that the second jump is chewed on the left,” J.P. said.
Dane stared him down. “Are you sure that’s what they said?”
“Ja. Absolut. My mother is German.” J.P. winked.
Dane flexed his knees, trying to think. He turned back to J.P. “Why isn’t Harvey calling it up?”
J.P. shrugged. “No clue. But I’m taking the right side. Makes a nastier radius into the carousel, but if it keeps me on my feet….”
Fuck. Was this guy pulling his chain? Dane had already plotted his course. This asshole was probably just trying to rattle him. J.P. had never beat Dane in a race. But this year, the younger man was performing better than ever. Perhaps feeding a few doubts to Dane was part of his big strategy.
Dane heard his name called by the judge in the start house. He stepped forward, and his long boards were slammed onto the snow in front of him. Dane clipped in, staring down the course, clenching his jaw.
Coach hustled over, checking Dane’s bindings. “What’s the matter?” he asked quickly.
“Nothing. Fuck it,” Dane said, snapping his goggles down. He shook out his quads, gripped the starting gate and stared on to the course. He focused his gaze right between the blue lines, while the start counter began to beep its warning pitch.
Behind him, his competitors began to call out. “Kill it, Dane! Like a boss!”
When the start counter chimed, he launched himself forward, poling madly to accelerate. Then gravity kicked in, the icy pitch slanting away beneath him until he felt the familiar roller-coaster drop. Dane tucked his poles under and bore down into an aerodynamic bullet position. The first turn was to the left. He rolled his skis onto their edges, his legs and boards hugging the slope, his muscles stepping up to handle the g-force of the sudden curve.
His headache forgotten, years of training and muscle memory kicked in. The next two turns
came in quick succession, and he held his line. He was entering the fastest part of the course now. A lesser skier would lose his nerve, dialing back to keep things in check. But Dane watched the first jump rush up at him. He leaned his shoulders forward and welcomed the air. Over the years, dozens of journalists had used the phrase “death wish” to describe his aggressive style. In Dane’s world, there were only two certainties—death and gravity. Every other human being on the planet lived with the same constraints, of course. It was just that Dane was more keenly aware of them than most other people ever were.
Dying in a high-speed crash would be no worse than wasting away in a nursing home. Any risk was justifiable when no one depended on you. Who would it even hurt?
Willow.
Even as he reached seventy-five miles an hour, the image of her shot through his guilty brain. And even that infinitesimally brief flicker of her was enough to alter his consciousness. As he landed the first jump, his skis hit the snow at almost the same nanosecond. Almost, but not quite. There was a bobble in his right ski. He squared his shoulders and corrected his position, preparing for a hard turn to the right.
Unfortunately, he overcorrected. And now, even bearing down like a tank at the next turn, he swung it wide. That’s how things always unraveled—one misaligned turn led to an even bigger one. Each mistake raised the stakes for the next one, leading to even bigger corrections.
Just like real life.
He was about four feet further to skiers’ left than he’d planned to be when the second jump came into view. And just like J.P. had said, it was chewed all to hell. But it was far too late to change course. All he could do was watch the lip come for him, the ice yanking his skis apart as he launched.
Flung clumsily into the air, his weight too far back on his hips, Dane windmilled his arms to try for a better position. But the universe wasn’t having it. He landed one ski perfectly. And the other one caught a sickening edge as it came down off-kilter, snapping the ski from the binding at the first pressure he put on it.
And then came the inevitable terror of flying down the hill in little more than a body stocking, nothing but goggles and a helmet to protect himself. He edged his remaining ski as best he could, dumping maybe twenty miles per hour before it, too, gave out under pressure. His body flew on past, flinging Dane chest first into the netting.
It might have been okay, if he’d landed facing the sky. But the full two hundred pounds of him landed on his right knee. There was no telltale pop of ligaments separating. Only a sudden pain, and then a strange snowy numbness in his leg.
The first person to reach him was a gate judge. “Va tutto bene?” the man asked. Are you all right?
Hell no. He was not.
* * *
He must have blacked out, because the next thing he noticed was a man shining a light in his eyes while yammering away in Italian. He was strapped down to something. The sled? He raised his head. He was on a stretcher at the bottom of the hill. There seemed to be a hundred people standing around.
Must be bad. “Coach?”
“Kid,” it was Coach’s voice. “You got your bell rung.”
Dane stared up at Coach, but unfortunately there were two of him. “That all?”
“Not sure,” Coach hedged. “You told them the pain in your right leg was a nine.”
Christ.
“Danger, dude. I’m so sorry.” It was a new voice.
Dane looked up to find a blurry version of J.P. standing over him. “The fuck you are,” Dane muttered. “This works in your favor.”
“Jesus, dude. That’s harsh.” Both J.P.s were shaking their heads. “Hang in there.”
There was another burst of Italian chatter and Dane felt himself lifted. His body was jostled in the air. A shot of fire ripped down his leg. Dane gasped and closed his eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
Willow’s phone buzzed while she was at work. Callie’s text read: Did you read the sports page today?
Willow, who never read the sports page, replied: Why?
Callie’s answer was: Read it. And then call me.
The headline made Willow gasp. “Olympian Danger Hollister’s Season Ends Early With Broken Knee In Italy.”
She dialed Callie at home. “It’s going to sound vain, but I feel responsible,” she said.
“Willow, it can only be your fault if you flew to Italy and pushed him off the hill. Which would not have been a bad plan.”
“You always snap me out of it, Callie.” Still, his brother died, and now his leg was broken. And she’d told him she was pregnant, all in the same week.
“Well, guess who is flying in for surgery tonight? They’re putting two screws into his tibia. The way the entire ortho unit is running around, you’d think the queen was coming to dine.”
“No way! Do you think you’ll be assigned to him?” Callie worked as an inpatient hospitalist at a hospital across the river in New Hampshire.
“I hope not. In fact, no way. If Asshole Baby Daddy’s file falls in my hands I’ll swap him for another patient.”
Willow laughed. “That’s very loyal of you. But you don’t have to do that.”
“Seriously. It would be just too tempting to forget to order his pain meds.”
“You always make me smile.”
* * *
A day later Willow got one more text: Asshole assigned to my asshole ex.
To which she replied: How fitting.
Willow did her best not to think about Dane after that. What she really needed to do was distance herself from him and figure out her own life. Telling him had been a real error. She couldn’t stop hearing him say, you really are a fuckup. And feeling like one was not a good frame of mind, not for someone who needed to make a big decision.
So Willow went to yoga class, and in Child’s Pose tried to open her heart to the possibilities. She’d begun reading adoption websites in her spare time. There were many families standing ready to adopt. Willow knew this. But she had grown up knowing that her parents didn’t love her enough to keep her, and she had vowed many times over never to do that to a child.
And now here she was, considering that very thing.
Willow put her forehead on the yoga mat and tried to center her flailing soul. The decision would not be rushed.
* * *
But even breathing exercises could not prepare her for the shock of seeing a certain green Jeep climb her driveway two days later. At the kitchen window, she froze as the driver’s side door opened. Coach stepped out, and she heaved a sigh of relief. But of course it was Coach. Men with broken legs did not drive Jeeps.
Willow had begun writing out her shopping list when she heard raised voices.
“I can’t stay here.”
Willow’s neck prickled with recognition. She tiptoed to the kitchen window.
“Get out of the fucking Jeep, Dane!” Coach had opened the tailgate and was addressing someone in the back. “I’m not carrying you up your flight of stairs on Main Street just because you’re a stubborn son of a bitch.”
Whatever Dane said next, Willow didn’t hear it. But Coach leaned a set of crutches against the tailgate and then stormed off toward the apartment. And then absolutely nothing at all happened for a few minutes. When Dane’s coach reappeared, Willow made herself back away from the window. She stared, sightlessly, at her shopping list until low voices receded slowly past her door. Then she hopped back over to the window for one glimpse of Dane leaning heavily on his coach, hopping slowly along on one foot toward the apartment. His head was down, his shoulders bent.
He looked beaten.
Chapter Sixteen
Two more days passed before Willow saw either Dane or Coach. She worked extra hours at the insurance agency, and she met Callie for yoga. The pregnancy began to announce itself in a few subtle ways. She was suddenly exhausted all the time, falling into bed at nine o’clock and sleeping like the dead.
Then one morning, as Willow was just about to climb into her truck to g
o to work, Coach had come outside to speak to her.
“Morning,” she said, her keys in her hand.
“Good morning,” he echoed, an apologetic look on his face. “I was hoping I could ask you a little favor.”
“Sure,” she said, shifting from foot to foot. “I should have already asked if you two had everything you need.”
“I’ve got him on the pull-out sofa,” Coach said. “It’s fine. But today I’m supposed to drive up to the Burke Mountain School for a meeting. Would you mind just putting your head in this afternoon, asking him if he needs anything? I never did get around to getting a landline put in,” he said. “But I think I should.”
Willow swallowed. “Sure. I can do that.”
“He looks a little out of it this morning. I just worry that he’ll fall or something. Shit. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Um, okay,” Willow had agreed. “If you need me to.”
“I’d feel better if somebody checked on him. And I’m sure he’ll be happy to see a face that isn’t mine.”
Don’t bet on it, Willow thought. At least it settled one question she’d had on her mind—Coach clearly had no clue about her pregnancy and Dane’s harsh opinion of it. “It would be my pleasure,” she lied.
* * *
A couple of hours later, Willow found herself tapping lightly on the apartment’s door. When nobody answered, she knocked again.
She heard only silence from inside. Given their recent fiery conversation, she knew full well that he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. But what if he had fallen down?
Willow turned the knob and pushed the door open. She was startled to see Dane’s eyes trained on her from where he lay on the pull-out couch. His expression was unreadable. She stepped all the way in and closed the door behind her. “Hi,” she said with caution. The way he stared at her was unnerving. “Coach asked me to make sure you have everything you need.”
He closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them. Today they were the color of a stormy sea. “You’re not real,” he said, his voice hoarse.
The hair stood up on the back of Willow’s neck. “Sorry?”