by Jillian Hart
Cadence. Since there was no easy way he was ever going to get her out of his mind, he gave up the battle. She was Westin’s teacher. That’s all there was to it.
What troubled him the most was that if the past was buried, what was this ache lodged like a fist behind his sternum? He’d never been good at emotions, but he was afraid to take these out into the light and look at them. He figured it was best to leave them in the dark, where he could pretend he didn’t feel them. If he didn’t examine his feelings, then he could fool himself into thinking they weren’t something like affection at all, but something curable…like acid reflux.
Right, he scoffed at himself, and followed Westin out the door. And as if heaven was offering him a great big you-can’t-miss-this sign, light through the high window fell in a diagonal shaft of gold over a petite woman wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. With a small backpack hooked over one shoulder, a bottle of water in one hand, she turned to say goodbye to Peggy at the front desk, her sleek black ponytail bouncing as she turned her head. Her steps were graceful and sure.
Ben swore the light followed her as if to say, “She’s the one.”
Time was suspended as she strolled through the milling crowd and out the door, the bright sunshine swallowing her as she disappeared from his sight. But not from his mind.
She’s not the one, he argued with himself firmly. Anything that made him think otherwise was simply a trick of light. A coincidence that had no bearing on his future. How could it be? The Lord had given him a path that made relationships practically impossible.
She’s not the one. He continued to argue with himself as he followed Westin outside into the baking heat of the noontime sun.
“Uncle Ben! Can I play on the slide? Can I? Can I? Please?”
He hadn’t noticed the playground equipment on the grassy knoll of the county land. There was everything from swing sets to monkey bars to slides of various heights. “What about a hamburger?”
“I’m not starved yet. I could slide down that big one a few times first,” Westin pleaded with wide, hopeful eyes.
“Okay. Turn off the Bambi eyes and go play. Give me your stuff.”
“Wow! Thanks.” Westin handed over his backpack lickety-split and took off, running with little-boy energy.
Right in the direction where Cadence sat on one of the many benches beneath the shade of a maple tree, a book in hand.
Maybe if he stayed back here she wouldn’t notice him. Maybe if he edged a little more into the shadow of the building, he’d remain unseen. And then there would be no more chances for heaven to send him signals he had to ignore.
Chapter Eight
Cadence felt his presence, as warm and soothing as the dappled mix of shade and sunlight on her shoulders. She spotted him moving in the shadows near the building. Ben had frozen, crutches poised for his next step, and their gazes locked.
He’s not the one, Cadence. She had to remind herself, because the wish rising within her was simply out of place. She’d learned to be practical the hard way.
Now, when she dreamed, it was for what could reasonably be found. A hot cup of sweetened chamomile tea on a lonely night. A good book to read over the weekend. A job that mattered. Friends to care about. Those were the dreams she carefully cultivated these days.
She kept those dreams firmly in place as he pasted a resigned look on his handsome face and smoothly crossed the roll of lush green grass on his crutches. A kid’s duffel swung from his shoulder as he went, competent despite the bag he carried.
Before she could wonder if his nephew was playing somewhere on the playground, a call rang out. “Look at me, Uncle Ben! I’m on the biggest one!”
“I see, buddy.” Ben stopped to acknowledge the cute little boy atop the tallest slide. He stood at attention while Westin swooshed down the metal ramp. The old equipment groaned at the seams, but Westin seemed to enjoy his ride all the same.
“Awesome! I’m gonna do that again!” He was on his feet, running to the short line at the ladder.
Ben chuckled, and there was no mistaking the fact that he loved his nephew. When he turned to her, that rare emotion lighting him up faded into shadow. “I don’t want to interrupt your lunch hour.”
“It’s okay.” She slipped a bookmark between the pages and closed the cover. “You didn’t come to lap swim this morning. I thought after your let-the-past-lie speech that I might see you.”
“I’m swimming in the evenings.” He turned away, as if to watch his nephew take his turn on the slide. But his jaw tensed, and a muscle twitched along his neck.
He didn’t seem to see Westin, who did a “yeah!” with an air punch when he landed on his feet in the sand. “My let-the-past-lie speech?”
“Yep. The past is already over, Ben. I agree with you, by the way. We ought to at least be friendly. I always wished you well.”
He swallowed hard. “That’s what I always wanted for you. Your happiness. For things to go your way.”
“Well, they didn’t do that, but everything turned out for the best.”
“You mean the sole bronze you took in the Atlanta Olympics?” He glanced at her sideways, as if he were half afraid of her reaction, for it had been a disgraceful performance, according to so very many people.
She hadn’t been at her best at that time, it was true. She couldn’t deny the fact. “You saw that, huh?”
“I tried to keep track of you. You look surprised that I would.”
“I know diving isn’t your thing. You’re more of a hockey kind of guy.”
“I wanted to see you compete. Just because I thought that we shouldn’t be together didn’t mean I didn’t care.” He cleared his throat, as if to hide the emotion in his voice.
Emotion she heard. She’d thought all this time that he hadn’t cared. It helped somehow, when she looked back on those tough years before and after Atlanta, to know there was some affection that had been genuine.
She almost forgot to distrust him. “I hear you became quite a soldier, and you did great things. That’s how you were hurt?”
“Shrapnel, bullet—nothing heroic, believe me. My team was rescuing a downed chopper pilot who’d fallen into enemy hands. We don’t take too kindly to our men being captured.” He shot her a cocky grin, dimpled and confident, but the darkness in his eyes said otherwise. It said that he’d been behind enemy lines and it had not been easy or without cost.
Respect filled her so that it was hard to breathe. Ben had found the best in himself. Trying to hide the rush of pride for him, she slipped her book into her bag and scooted over to make plenty of room on the bench. “Would you care to join me?”
“As long as you plan on sharing your lunch, too.”
“I have a baggie of cookies I’ll let you pilfer.”
“Then we have a deal.” He eased over to the bench and lowered his crutches to the ground. The boards creaked as he settled beside her. “What kind of cookies?”
“Chocolate chip. What else?” She bent to search through her lunch sack and produced the promised baggie. “Toll House. I made them last night.”
“This is what an Olympic gold medalist does with her Sunday nights?”
“Surprisingly.”
It seemed like a lifetime since he’d sunk his teeth into one of Cadence’s homemade cookies, but it had been worth the wait. Moist and soft, doughy and laden with melted milk-chocolate chunks. Not even Rachel’s cookies were this good. “This doesn’t seem fair.”
“Why not?”
“I get these great cookies, but all you get is my sorry company.” His comment did what it was meant to do—make her smile.
“We all have our crosses to bear.” With a casual shrug she popped a pint container of milk from her lunch sack and broke it open. “It must be a change for you to be home. I hear military life is very regimented.”
“True, but my squad and I manage to keep things pretty real when our deployments end. So what about you? Being back home in Montana has to be a change to w
hat you’ve gotten used to. Gold medals and fame.”
She tipped her head back to drink from the carton. And he had to wonder if she deliberately took her time, swallowing and dabbing the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin. She delayed answering for so long, Westin had the chance to make two revolutions from the top of the slide to the bottom. Ben figured she simply wouldn’t answer at all.
Maybe she didn’t want to admit her life hadn’t been everything she’d hoped it would be. Broadcasting or something equally high profile and lucrative. Coaching and teaching, he figured, paid well at the top training facilities in the country. Maybe she’d gotten burned-out on a big-city lifestyle and world-class importance. Maybe she figured a guy like him wouldn’t understand.
“Coming back here was a necessity, not necessarily a choice. More like an embarrassment,” she added, surprising him, her voice dipping with unmistakable pain. She paused and leaned forward, setting the milk carton in the grass as if it took all her concentration.
That’s when he noticed her hand was trembling, betraying her. She wasn’t kidding, and this wasn’t the answer he was expecting. Suddenly the older sedan she drove and the discount-store flip-flops on her feet had new meaning.
He’d been wrong. So very wrong.
“Why a necessity?” he asked, although it was the other thing she’d said—she’d come back home in embarrassment—that he really wanted answered. But the look on her face—maybe not exactly of agony or defeat…regret?—drew him.
The dappled sunlight caressed the creamy fine curve of her face, as if in comfort. And his heart, not good at feeling much of anything, tore wide open as if he’d taken a direct hit to the chest from a sixty-caliber weapon.
Pain. Shame. Defeat. That’s what was on her face as she turned away, pretending to watch kids on the swing set rocking in high swoops in the bright, clean air.
“I was bankrupt.” There. She’d said it. The first confession of a long series of painful secrets, which probably weren’t so secret to anyone who bothered to dig up her past. But here in Montana, she didn’t speak of what had happened to her in the rugged urban landscapes of Boston and Chicago. “I didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I had to ask my mom for money so I could come home to stay. That surprises you, doesn’t it?”
“A little.” He tried to hide his reaction, for her benefit, but she could see it. He didn’t want to admit how shocked he was, and he hid it well. Only the brief flare of his nostrils as he inhaled gave him away.
He alone had been privy to her very extensive plans for the future—financial security being third only to winning a gold medal and getting out of rural Montana forever.
“Things didn’t work out like I planned.”
It was hard to admit, but it was the details she didn’t want to talk about. She’d locked away those painful details in a dark corner of her soul. Sometimes it was the best way to go on living. To never look at the defeats and mistakes and go on as if they hadn’t happened. Or at least to go on the best that she was able. A good psychologist might not think this the wisest plan, but it had kept her together when despair had seemed to sap all the light from her world. Especially when she’d had to buy back her Olympic medals from the bank.
“But how did you…?” He raked his fingers through his hair. Then he spoke again. “No, it’s not my business. I’m sorry that happened.”
“Thanks. Me, too. But a lot of good came out of it. I’m happy here. Happier than I thought I would be. I love my life, so what is it that they say? All things happen for a reason.”
“You got hurt.”
She shook her head, moving to the far edge of the bench. “I was naive and I needed to learn a lesson.”
“But you were hurt.” He came to her, warm as the summer breeze, as soothing as the shade. He was a friend when he was the last man she wanted as a friend. His hand curled around her nape, touching her the way he always used to when she was hurting or upset, her head down. And his fingers now were thicker, stronger, surer as he kneaded at the tension coiled tight.
I don’t want to care about you again. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed with all her heart not to feel. Not to let him affect her. But then he stopped kneading and smoothed the escaped strands of hair away from the side of her face and leaned closer.
Her heart seemed to cease. Her lungs stalled. Everything within her stilled. He leaned closer still until his kiss shivered along the curve of her cheek. His lips were warm rough velvet, his caring like a gentle touch in the darkness. The tenderness lanced through her as if she’d taken a blow.
Why, after all this time, could Ben stir the very essence of her soul?
She used to think they were made for one another. A match made by God Himself. Two lonely people, a little lost, both having buried parents, without much of a home life to speak of. So why now, when they were more like strangers, did she feel his spirit somehow against hers, like melody and harmony? She could not stop the beauty of it flowing through her. The brief, eternal moment of connection between two hearts.
“It’s not my business,” he said quietly, but as firmly as the earth beneath her feet. “But I gotta know. What happened? You went to college. You competed. You won medals. I saw you do it.”
“I thought it was the winning that was important. It was, and it enabled me to be able to continue training.”
“Endorsements?”
She nodded. “I didn’t get the kind of money the gymnasts and the more commercial sports saw, but it was enough. I could train. I earned my degree in physical ed, just like I wanted, and also in journalism.”
“Just like you planned.”
“Sort of. I was living in Chicago, and I was on track for everything I wanted. But I guess I just got so wrapped up in everything. Or maybe it was that I never stopped being a Montana country girl at heart. I believed people were good.”
“Not everyone is.” His voice broke with certainty. “I have a job because there are men who do bad things in this world. And I’m paid to stop them.”
“You have a noble profession.”
“I carry an automatic weapon and I use it. It’s not noble. It’s necessary.” His hand covered hers. “What happened?”
“I didn’t win in ’96.” She opened her eyes. The world around her was so beautiful it hurt to look at it—the blazing sun, the velvety grass, the sky so blue it could all have been a dream.
But it was real, she was here and she was grateful. Those days so long ago in a cold and gray city had been bleak. “I trained, but I really wanted to ease into broadcasting, you know. I listened to the wrong people. People who seemed fine on the outside. My trainers, my coaches, my sponsors, everyone.”
“But they had their own agendas?”
He sounded so understanding, it brought tears to her eyes. “They were like family, a family I’d never had. I wasn’t alone after Barcelona, where I dove so perfectly. I had plans, they had plans, and I let myself get distracted from the fact that I simply loved to dive.”
“You always have.”
“Yes. And I still love everything about it. The training, the solitude. The moment of grace and grit of leaping high off the platform and flying. Of being weightless and free and the struggle to be perfect. Not in a rigid way, but in the chance to do one thing exactly right. It’s like pureness. A goodness. Like one moment of beauty. I don’t know. And then the wet kiss of the water and the slice of it. And the joy of knowing you get to do it all over again. I had lost that somehow. And I failed in Atlanta. I just…failed.”
“But you got a medal. I saw you do it.” He sounded sheepish, as if a tough guy like him had a hard time confessing to watching women’s diving.
“I got a bronze on the springboard. Of all my medals, it is my second favorite.”
“Second?”
“The first being the first medal I ever won, which was a gold. It was a dream I could touch. But the bronze in Atlanta—I had to work so hard for it. I’ve never had to work so hard for anyth
ing. I was failing, I was coming apart. My new family was coming apart, and they had their own motives I was only then beginning to see.”
Looking back, it seemed so simple. So easy. How she’d actually felt as if she’d found her niche, what she’d been made to do. Her days were spent doing everything she loved. Swimming and training and gym work and pool work. And, always, the diving.
Her spirit rose at the memories of hour after hour spent diving—stretching for the sky and then the water. Working so hard at what she loved, it didn’t seem like work at all. Peace had filled her, a peace she would never have imagined existed, except she was living it.
Everything seemed right, as if the Lord had brought her to her greatest happiness. The people surrounding her had behaved so wonderfully toward her. She hadn’t seen the end coming.
“And after I came in third, my life changed and I learned exactly what mattered in life. And it wasn’t a big sports endorsement or a contract with a network or being treated like someone important. Those people abandoned me, and my manager stole my money. I had nothing. Nothing, and a whole lot of bills to pay. I’m still paying off a part of the bankruptcy.”
She looked off into the distance, as if the view of the rugged mountains, so stunning and larger than life, could offer some solace. “My fiancé left me. I lost everything and came home in disgrace. Nobody really knows, not around here. I’m not hiding the truth—I just wanted to leave it behind.”
“I know how much your dreams meant to you.”
“I shouldn’t have told you.” She withdrew her hand, breaking the connection between them and making it clear she didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t need any act of comfort. “It seems like a long time ago in a world far, far away.”
He felt her sadness like his own. The loss of innocence. It must have been hard on her. “A lot of people who had lost everything might be bitter and broken. So, tell me how come you’re more lovely and enchanting than ever?”
“You don’t need to try to be charming to make me feel better.” Her eyes filled and she bolted forward, gathering up her duffel and lunch and milk carton in one graceful, rapid swoop. She was on her feet, swiping at the stray wisps of her hair as if they were the problem and not the tears threatening to fall. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I’ve got to go—”