The World is a Stage

by Tamara Morgan

  He gestured with one of his arms, continuing to push up off the ground with the one he had left. She had no idea human beings were capable of that outside the movies.

  A blur of pink moved past her peripheral vision. It was the kind of pink fluffiness that could only belong to one of two children. The sound of her sister’s voice calling the pink fluff into order confirmed it.

  There was a very large part of her that contemplated sprinting away—and she probably could have gotten away with it. No one was going to bother following. She went so far as to turn on her heel and gauge the distance to the street, but the piercing cry of a whistle filled the air, and she was trapped by it, ensconced in a bubble of sound and defeat.

  “Twenty minutes late means a twenty-lap warm-up. Go.”

  Michael’s voice shattered any illusions she might have had that she was getting out of there alive. It was his dominant voice, his commanding voice, but it was a lot more than that too. There was no playfulness to it, no joy, and she doubted anything she said or did would wipe the look of cold, hard hatred from his face.

  “Twenty-one laps,” Michael warned. “The longer you stand, the higher it goes.”

  It was a ridiculous command, almost six miles that would leave her no time to train with the rest of the team. She’d be here, among them, but ostracized and punished like an old-time harlot in the stocks.

  Like an old-time harlot who deserved every minute of her punishment, every egg thrown at her face. She had no idea what the men were doing, why Eric wasn’t in her face screaming at her to leave. She’d read too many of Shakespeare’s plays not to know what happened to those who betrayed the people they loved.

  She blew out a long breath. Maybe it meant they’d never loved her. Maybe it meant the worst was yet to come.

  Screw it. If doing laps meant she could at least be in the same place as Michael for a few blissful minutes, it was worth it.

  With a deep breath and a resolve not to let her eyes stray from the movements of her feet, Rachel ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Not for Such Contempt

  “No!” Michael shouted. He grabbed the rope and hooked his good leg around the bottom, lifting himself off the ground as he anchored it in place. “You have to stabilize it first, or you’ll swing too much to get any upward movement. All your strength will be lost in the momentum.”

  He detached himself and threw the rope at Rachel. “Try again.”

  After three hours of practice, Michael could see she was barely holding on by a thread, let alone a rope. Her loose gray T-shirt, layered over a black tank top 1980s-style, was drenched with sweat, forming a long and drooping vee down her front and the back. She’d discarded a pair of warm-up pants for some tiny shorts, and even then, he could see the moisture slick along her legs.

  Finally. He was getting his hot and sweat-soaked vision. Too bad the only interest he had in those legs now was how much further he could push them. How far he could push her.

  She hooked her leg the way he’d shown her and grunted as she used her arms to try to move her body upward. She got a few feet up the rope, exactly to the point where her ass was at eye level, Michael so close he could lean in and bite it.

  No, dammit. He would not cave in to the Lycra temptation.

  “All right. Get down.”

  Everyone else sprawled out on the grass behind him. Well, everyone except Peterson, who sat up, watching Molly and the girls climb the bleachers over and over again. He refused to acknowledge Rachel was working out with them, wouldn’t even look at her unless absolutely forced to.

  “It’s not going to do any good to start a fight with your kids and Molly watching,” Michael said when Rachel first started doing laps. It was strange, seeing her show up without a word of apology or explanation, but she was there and she was running. That had to mean something.

  Peterson wasn’t happy about it, continually muttering, “She’s got some nerve, showing up here like this.”

  Michael couldn’t agree more. Balls of steel, that one. It was a trait he never knew he’d admire quite so much in a woman.

  If only admiration were enough.

  None of them were exactly sure what her plan was—if she was seeing her commitment to Team Win through to the end or even if she was trying to find a way to sabotage things even more. Peterson voted for the latter, vehemently and with purpose.

  “I want her gone, Mikey,” Peterson warned. “I know I should have stepped up to the police a long time ago with the truth, but that doesn’t mean what she did was okay. You don’t rat out the people you love—I don’t care how much you like her. She’s cold.”

  Michael laid a heavy hand on Peterson’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. “I know, Peterson.”

  “But?”

  Michael shrugged. He didn’t have the answer to that question. Half of him was so angry that just looking at her made his body tense and his vision blur. Her betrayal had gone above and beyond the ordinary, worse than Cleopatra because Rachel wasn’t playing with politics—her attack was personal.

  But then he’d catch sight of her face when she thought no one was looking, and all of those sensations went away, leaving him with nothing but hurt. His hurt—and hers. There didn’t seem to be any way to tell where one started and the other stopped.

  “You know I would do anything for you, Peterson. I’ve always stepped up when you asked, and I’d do it all again in a hot second.” Michael dropped his voice. “But it’s my turn to ask the favor.”

  Peterson’s breath was sharp, the line of his mouth firm. “That’s asking a lot, Mikey. I’m not sure I can do it. Even for you.”

  “Please, Peterson. I can’t tell her to leave. I’m not saying I expect you to forgive her—or even that I do. I just want to keep an eye on her for a while. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  Physically, she was—at least for the time being. She dropped to the grass in front of him, rubbing her hands along her legs to ease the rope burns. She had to hurt. She had to be reaching the end of her endurance. Using the edge of her shirt to wipe the sweat dripping from her face, Rachel stood tall and looked him straight in the eye.

  “Are we done now?”

  His heart clenched. He had the distinct impression she wasn’t talking about the workout.

  “We have two weeks until the Top Warrior Race,” he managed to say. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but it wasn’t not one either. “If we want to stand a chance, you’re going to have to work hard. You’re our weak link. You’re not trying hard enough.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I’m not weak. And I’m doing my best.”

  It was the first time Michael thought her best might not be enough.

  The day of Nick’s hearing in Idaho was the first time they took a break from their exercise regimen, which had become pretty much the sole focus of Michael’s days and nights.

  Peterson hadn’t asked him to come, but Laura Bremerton recommended that Michael familiarize himself with the court system and the local lawyers, judges and officials who worked with these kinds of cases. This seemed as good a place as any to start.

  “Nothing is going to happen today,” Peterson warned Michael. Like Michael, he looked stiff and uncomfortable in formal wear. Peterson had even gone so far as to cover up his neck tats with a collared shirt and tie. “It’s just a bunch of red-tape bullshit they’ve got to get through before we can finally get his sentence settled.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be entertained,” Michael said, sitting near the back of the courtroom. It was small and efficient, a lot more like a regular office than the grand, wood-paneled rooms they always showed on television. “I just want Nick to know I’ve got his back.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with that ranch stuff you’ve been talking about, does it?”

  Michael shifted on the hard bench. “It’s not just stuff, Peterson. We’re really going to do it, Jennings and I.”

  “Is this just because of Nick? I know I’v
e been pretty hard on you about the whole Rachel thing, but you aren’t responsible for what she did. You don’t have to clean up this mess. I don’t like the way things turned out, but Nick has to face the consequences of his actions some time.”

  Michael raised a hand to still his friend. “It doesn’t have anything to with Nick. Well, it does a little. But it’s more about me. My life. My knee is shot, Peterson.”

  “I know, Mikey, but you’ll get—”

  “No, Peterson.” He shook his head. “I mean it’s shot for good.”

  It was the first time he’d said those words out loud. It was strangely freeing.

  “Holy shit. You mean no more Games?”

  “I mean no more anything.”

  Peterson’s face clouded, and Michael thought for a moment that he was taking the news about his leg pretty hard. But then he hissed, “What is she doing here?”

  Michael’s pulse picked up as he turned, fully aware of what to expect. But he wasn’t prepared for it. Rachel was there, of course, standing at the doorway of the small courtroom, looking small. It was strange for a woman of her height to be so dwarfed by her surroundings, so unsure of herself or her purpose in being there.

  Another woman gave her a strong push from behind, propelling her inside.

  “Where have I seen that woman before?” Peterson asked, his arms crossed.

  Michael found himself echoing the motions. She was vaguely familiar. Older than Rachel by a few decades and even more severe in the way she dressed, they might have been related. But that didn’t seem right. Rachel never mentioned any other relatives living in the area.

  “The woman from the bar,” Michael said, finally placing her. “Remember that woman I told you about? The one I said I thought was hitting on me? It’s her. She was the one who kept watching us.”

  “Watching us?” Peterson faced him. “As in, taking notes and shit? You don’t think…?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think Rachel showed up here with her private investigator, do you?”

  Michael felt an unnatural calm wash over him. It was a misleading feeling, one he didn’t have much experience with lately, but that had been fairly common back when he was a kid. Calmness like this, when the world went white and fuzzy, was the scariest feeling in the world.

  It was anger. It was rage. Michael didn’t explode like other men, didn’t lash out or yell or thump with his fists. This kind of emotion completely shut him down.

  She’d had days of facing them, days of sweating over the field with them, ample time to form the words that normal people associated with regret. And always, her reactions were to look away, run faster, continue pretending that it was perfectly acceptable for human beings to coexist with so much animosity lingering in the air.

  She wouldn’t fucking give.

  And now was the time she decided to change her mind?

  “Not even she has that kind of nerve,” Michael muttered.

  He pushed Peterson aside as he got out of his seat and approached the pair of women. “You.”

  “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. O’Leary. I see you failed to take my advice from before.”

  He’d been speaking to Rachel, but the other woman intervened, proffering her hand. He didn’t take it. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  The woman nudged Rachel again. Rachel’s entire body flushed with color, and she shifted from leg to leg, unable to land her gaze anywhere near Michael’s general vicinity. “I wanted to apologize.”

  “Here? Now?” Michael looked around them. A few other people had entered the room, but he didn’t care. “And you brought your snitch with you?”

  The woman, the snitch, snorted. “That’s cute. You’re cute.”

  “Can you give us a minute?”

  She shrugged and gestured toward the hallway. There was something commanding about her, because both Michael and Rachel moved that direction.

  “You’re mad,” Rachel said, her eyes lowered. She stared at her hands, which she was wringing together so hard it looked like she was trying to peel off the skin. “I know I shouldn’t have just showed up like this, but I need you to know—I need Eric to know—that I’m sorry. I want to help fix this.”

  “What exactly do you intend to do about it, Rachel? Any minute now, Nick is going to walk in that door and hear what he can expect from the next year or two of his life—most likely prison time. You think he wants you looking at him while he does?”

  “No. I… I know.” She finally looked up, her eyes clouded. “I’ll leave. But I need you to know that I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. I thought I was protecting Molly. I made a mistake.”

  “And that’s what you’re sorry for,” he said flatly.

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean—” She grabbed one of his hands. There was a desperation to her grip that might have swayed him if they were anywhere but at Nick’s hearing.

  “Ask me anything,” Michael said suddenly.

  “What?”

  He gestured around the hallway, empty but for a few people far too involved in their own lives to pay attention to the pair of them. “Let’s pretend for one minute that you didn’t go behind my back and hire a private investigator to learn everything there is to know about me. What is it you wanted to know so bad?”

  “It wasn’t like that—”

  “Is it my money? Did you want to know how I managed to pay all those bills by myself?”

  “No.” She shook her head, the movements rapid. “I know I kind of threw that at you, but I don’t care about your stupid money.”

  “Then what? My parents? My family? Where I went to school?”

  “Of course not.”

  Explosions of color, red and deep, went off in Michael’s peripheral vision. “Then what is so important that you couldn’t talk to me about it, Rachel? Why is it so hard for you to look me in the eye and just ask?”

  He crossed his arms and waited. There was no time limit on these kinds of things, but he felt his fuse growing short after a few seconds. Even now, she wouldn’t say anything. She’d show up, fighting and kicking, every day to practice. But actually talk to him?

  Her hands shook as she reached into an oversized purse. It took a full twenty seconds for her to work the clasp, but Michael didn’t budge to try to help her—no matter how much every nerve ending was straining to do just that.

  She pulled out a thin envelope and extended it. “Here.”

  He didn’t move. “What is it?”

  Her eyes finally met his. They contained all of the answers and questions he’d been looking for, opened her up to all the vulnerability he kept poking at but couldn’t quite seem to grasp.

  But it wasn’t enough. He needed her to say it.

  “This is my file,” she whispered, moving it closer to him. “When I hired Nora to be my PI, she made one on me. I know it’s not going to make up for what I did to you and Eric, but I want you to have it.”

  The doors to the courtroom began to close then, and Michael could hear the bailiff’s voice asking people to rise. He was going to miss it.

  The older woman slipped out between the doors and noticed the two of them standing there, as still as statues, neither one budging. “You’d better get in. They’re starting.”

  At the sound of the gavel coming down, he swore. Before he could change his mind, he grabbed the folder and slipped through the doors. He took a seat next to Peterson and shook his head. There wasn’t anything to say.

  Though it was funny how once those damn papers transferred hands, his started shaking too.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Course of True Love

  He should have read it by now.

  Rachel sat in her unmoving car, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and trying not to count how many times that exact thought had already popped into her head. Depending on how fast Michael read and how willing he was to open the file, it could take him anywhere from fifteen minutes to a few hours.

  It had
been six hours.

  She checked her phone again, completely devoid of any and all messages from the outside world, and sighed. The truth contained in her file was so awful he never wanted to talk to her again. He would never forgive her for what she’d done. She’d made her grand gesture but it wasn’t enough.

  They were finished.

  There was only one thing left to do—get out of the car and walk up the driveway to her house. Alone. It was the same sorry tale, made all the worse through repetition. Her bags were still packed. All she had to do was find the strength to lift them up, and she could be on her way.

  She was halfway to the front door when she heard the rattle-rattle-clunk of a car pulling up behind her. Her purse fell to the cement, plopping heavily, and she left it there. She knew that sound—it was Michael’s car. It was the only time in her entire life she’d been so happy to hear that many carbon emissions shooting out into the air.

  She tried to play it cool, but her entire body thrummed with the anticipation of him drawing near. Had she been Molly or any other petite and feminine woman, she would have run at him like one of those beach reunion scenes in slow motion. As it was, she was having a hard time remembering how to move all her limbs in one direction.

  “You dropped something,” Michael said by way of greeting, his walk slow and stilted. It was hard to tell if he was happy to see her or not, but he had taken the time to change out of the button-up shirt he’d had on at the hearing and put on his favorite Metallica T-shirt and jeans on the point of disintegration.

  Rachel was glad. Buttoned-up Michael was a little bit scary, cold and distant and formal. She didn’t want those things—not from him. He was the opposite of all that. He was the opposite of her.

  And she meant that in the best way possible.

  “It’s only my purse,” Rachel muttered, reaching down to grab the wayward bag.

  “No. I meant this.” He reached around to his back pocket and withdrew her folder, creased from having been folded and shoved into his pants. It was such a typical thing for him to do, it almost made her able to reach out and touch the loathsome thing. Almost.