I took my place among the starters and started fiddling with the settings on my iPod, searching for a good, fast song to run to. “What?”
“You’re all set. You sure you’re good to run two legs? Really? Because I could do it if you’re not up to it. It’s not a big deal. I just won’t be as fast.”
Allison and I exchanged a meaningful glance. “I’m good,” I assured her. Or maybe I was trying to assure me. Hopefully one of us believed me, at any rate.
“Okay. Well, you have the option of doing the legs back-to-back or resting in between. Your choice. Just let me know, so I can tell the guys recording the times.”
“I’ll do them in succession. I’m afraid if I rest, I won’t be able to make myself start running again.”
“All right,” Meaghan said, clapping me on the back. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna need it,” I mumbled to myself as she strode away.
Chapter Five
Okay, it was official. This had been, hands down, without a doubt, the worst idea in the history of ideas. And I wasn’t just talking about my ideas, either, but all bad ideas that’d ever gone on record since the beginning of time. I don’t know what the hell I’d been thinking when I’d agreed to this insanity, but I was now resolved that, in the future, I was no longer permitted to make decisions on my own behalf without consulting a quorum or convening a conclave. Maybe then I’d be able to avoid finding myself smack-dab in the middle of situations like this with no foreseeable escape. Maybe.
My entire body was buzzing, but unfortunately, it wasn’t with adrenaline or the excitement of a race to be won. No, over the past mile or so, I’d become convinced it was humming as a warning, a precursor alarm of sorts to let me know it was preparing to revolt. Like how a microphone emits a piercing squeal of feedback when it gets too close to the speaker. Or the way a rattlesnake shakes its tail as a sign of danger.
My legs felt rubbery and heavy, and at the same time, my entire frame—including all of my extremities—was shot through with dizziness and nausea. Except for my lungs. They were just burning as they strained to take in and then release each ragged, shallow breath. Oh, and I tasted blood in the back of my throat, which I didn’t think could ever be taken as a good omen.
I glanced toward Allison to see how she was faring, both pleased and annoyed to see she was stunningly flawless, as usual. She ran next to me with an easy grace I don’t think I could ever have hoped to emulate. If this run was stressful or difficult for her, she wasn’t showing it. Her olive skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat, and the play of muscles working together in tandem under smooth flesh mesmerized me. Or it would’ve if I weren’t concentrating so hard on remaining conscious.
My breath was coming in wheezing gasps, and I turned my head to the other side so I could spit. Even swallowing was too difficult for me. I was afraid to interrupt the painstakingly crafted puff-puff-pant-pant rhythm I’d adopted at some point near the start of my second 5K, lest I run out of air in the space between labored breaths and fail to reestablish the cadence.
I flailed one arm clumsily in Allison’s direction in a desperate attempt to get her attention. I ended up smacking her hand hard, and though I tried to apologize for my awkwardness, no words came out. I settled, instead, for shooting her a rueful smile.
“You okay?” she asked.
I shook my head. No. I definitely was not okay. I was very far from okay. I’d dedicated what little energy I had left that wasn’t devoted to propelling my unwilling body forward to refraining from throwing up. The world around me seemed fuzzier and much farther away than I remembered it being, and something about that realization made my stomach heavy with dread.
I tapped the top of my left wrist with the first two fingers of my right hand, asking a silent question. I hoped she could read my unspoken clues, because if she couldn’t, I had a problem. Talking and running had become mutually exclusive propositions.
Allison appeared concerned, but she refrained from engaging in any more stupid inquiries. Instead, she consulted the fancy GPS watch she wore for running for what felt like an eternity before she finally answered. “We’re running at about an eight-minute pace, give or take.”
Fuck. That was a lot slower than I’d wanted. I ducked my head, thinking hard. I was undecided whether I should simply accept the fact that I likely wouldn’t win this stupid bet and take the rest of this race nice and easy or whether I should strive to make up lost time and push harder. After a moment, I determined that there were still too many unknown variables for me to make an informed decision on the subject.
I grabbed inelegantly at Allison’s pistoning hand again and then slapped my right thigh with the palm of my right hand. I followed that up with a wild wave in the direction of the road in front of us. I licked my dry lips with what felt like an equally arid tongue and tried not to think about how thirsty I was. My eyes became unfocused until the road and the people stretched out in front of me lost all detail and became indistinct blurs.
“Hey, relax,” Allison was saying. It took me a second to realize she was talking to me and about five seconds to remember I’d asked her a wordless question. “Just breathe. You’re doing great.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one of us who felt like she was chasing death, practically begging for it to take her. Anything to bring this hell on earth to an end. I hadn’t realized just how quickly my running skills could deteriorate. I promised myself right then that I’d never give Rory shit about pushing me to run ever again. I also vowed to never land myself in this sort of situation, either.
I whacked my leg and pointed again, this time more insistently. When Allison frowned at me, obviously puzzled, I attempted to speak. “How…far?” I managed to croak out.
“Oh! Sorry. A little less than a mile. Keep it up, Ryan. We’re almost there.”
I shook my head as tears of frustration and fatigue sprang to my eyes. I sniffled once, swallowing hard, and lifted the hem of my tank top so I could swipe at the rivulets of sweat dripping down my face, lamenting for the second time that day my outfit’s lack of sleeves. That’s what I normally used to dry my face. Although there was something to be said for not having to turn my head into my bicep to dry off. With the state I was in, even that quick move would likely make me lose my balance, and I so didn’t need even one more thing to focus on.
I heard a curse and then a loud, drawn-out sort of scuffling sound accompanied by some shouts off to my left and a little behind me that suggested that someone had tripped, but I couldn’t afford even the split-second break in concentration that turning around to check would cost me. I probably would’ve followed suit. And if I went down, I was certain I wouldn’t get back up.
Allison did chance a glimpse, however, and she made sort of an unsophisticated snort. I spared her a passing glance but could divine nothing of her facial expression.
“You were right,” she said.
“’Bout…what?” Did tongues swell when they dried out? Mine had certainly seemed to. It felt like it was sticking to the inside of my mouth, which was starting to impede my breathing. Psychologically, of course.
“Jamie being a boob girl, apparently.”
I frowned at her and lifted my hands in what I hoped was a questioning gesture. I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
“When you raised your shirt to wipe off your face just now, she tripped.” Her tone held an interesting mixture of amusement and ire, and I was grateful for my perfectly legitimate excuse not to engage in this conversation.
“Sports bra.” I thumped my fist twice against the hollow of my chest over my heart to emphasize my ineloquently illustrated point. I didn’t know why anyone would’ve balked at my lifting my shirt. It wasn’t like they’d see anything. Several women were running in only sports bras. In fact, somewhere between miles three and four, I’d debated removing my own offensive tank top altogether and tucking it into the waistband of my shorts so I’d have a sweat rag handy, but
I was a still self-conscious about the small surgery scars on my back.
Allison shrugged. “Guess that was enough for her.”
“Good.” I huffed. “I might…still…win…then.” I sucked in a few huge, greedy gulps of air. “She…okay?”
“Yeah.” I thought she might’ve sounded a bit petulant, but it was difficult to tell through the ringing in my ears. I didn’t bother to reply.
We ran in silence for what felt like another few days before she spoke again. “You ready?”
“For…what?” I asked warily.
Allison pointed up the road a little ways and just off to her right. I followed the line of her hand to a small pack of men tooling along ahead of us at a pretty good clip.
I favored her with another curious glance. I doubted I would’ve known who she was pointing out to me even if I had been able to see straight. I squinted again in the direction she’d indicated, but it didn’t help.
“Byers is up there,” Allison said. “He switched to this heat on purpose so he could run against you.”
Ah. I narrowed my eyes and looked again. I could maybe make out the side of his head, but it was hard to say for sure through the press of unfamiliar bodies. I’d just have to take her word for it.
“Listen to me,” Allison went on, resting her hand on my forearm as we ran. “We have just over half a mile to go. You can do this. All you have to do is match me stride for stride. Got it?”
I nodded. Or I tried to anyway. My entire body felt like it was beyond my control and all over the place at that point, so I wasn’t sure if she caught the gesture.
“Okay. You ready?”
I shook my head vigorously and held up a hand, wordlessly asking her to wait. Then I fast-forwarded through my iPod play list until I found a song I thought might motivate me enough to do as she’d asked. I gave her a thumbs-up as the first strains of the track filtered to my ears and waved my hand, indicating that she should go ahead.
Allison flashed me a feral grin and lengthened her stride a bit. Not a ton. Certainly not drastically. But as exhausted as I was, I still struggled with it. I let out a little huff of annoyance, and it took me a few seconds to catch up with her.
“Come on, Ryan,” Allison called encouragingly. “Keep up. You’ve got this. Let’s go.” She cranked it up another notch and started swinging her arms as she got into the new pace.
The taste of blood on the back of my tongue intensified, and I was positive my lungs were on the verge of bursting. With each desperate exhale that escaped my lips, I was half afraid I might vomit. I wasn’t certain what was going on with the rest of my internal organs—I’d have to remember to ask Rory later if she could explain it to me—but I did know that they were in cahoots with one another and organizing some kind of coup. Not that I blamed them. If they’d managed to successfully mutiny, I doubted I’d have put up much of a fight.
Left, right, left, right, left, right, I told myself, swinging my own arms as I struggled to match Allison’s pace, right down to which foot hit the ground at what time. The music blaring in my ears was mere background noise and wasn’t helping me much at all. I wasn’t paying any attention to it, at any rate.
Without warning, Allison increased her tempo once again. I let out a frustrated puff and hurried to keep up. I was staring daggers into the back of Byers’s head. He was bobbing in front of me like a beacon, and just beyond him—the way a target floats out of focus just ahead of the front sights of a gun—I could make out the finish line. I narrowed my eyes as a low growl escaped my throat, and a new swell of anger rose within me. Fuck him. No way in hell was I was just going to give up and let him have this.
Also, no way in hell was I was going to prolong this any more than I had to. I wanted this race to be over, and I wanted it to be over now. It was time to turn up the heat.
I didn’t even spare so much as a glance for Allison. I ducked my head for an instant as I struggled to increase my pace even more. My lungs screamed at me as my arms and legs pumped furiously. Closer. Closer. Every step I took brought me infinitesimally nearer to Byers. My heart had been running at a continuous roar for some time now, but the thought of actually beating him made it jump and then kick into overdrive.
I was locked into an all-out sprint. I closed my eyes for a second as I bolted, determined, desperate to reach that finish line before he did. I couldn’t hear anything. Even with my eyes opened, I could barely see. My entire body was one giant longing. For me to win. For this to end. Whichever came first. A part of me was halfway to not caring.
When I was about eight or ten steps behind Byers, I took my eyes off him so I could shift my focus to the finish line. Tons of people stood there, cheering and clapping and shouting encouragement at those of us unlucky enough to still be running, but I hardly noticed them outside of the fact that they were marking my goal.
I frowned, and my mouth stretched wide as I grimaced. I dug down deep, reaching as far as I could into the recesses of my soul, searching for any sorts of reserves I could dredge up that would help me win this thing. Not that it mattered. I mean, honestly, I didn’t think I even needed to win at this point. Not to save face anyway. Even if Byers managed to cross the finish line ahead of me, I would still have come close to beating him, and I’d run twice as far as he had. The implication that I’d have won if we’d run against one another in the first heat would be clear enough to embarrass him, our five-thousand-dollar wager notwithstanding.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the look on Allison’s face as Byers had forbidden her to run. I remembered the sound of her voice all the times we’d spoken on the phone in the weeks since he’d started being an asshole to her—how frustrated and angry and, at rare times, damn near broken she’d sounded. Something in my chest cracked at the recollection. It might’ve been a rib, but I doubted it. No, there it was. That was the fuel I’d been looking for.
I opened my mouth and let out a roar born of equal parts fury and anguish. My arms and legs were swinging wildly as I dashed toward the end. I didn’t think I’d ever run so fast. I’d certainly never tried this hard. One hundred steps. Sixty. Closer. I was getting closer.
“Go, Ryan, go,” Allison screamed as she ran next to me.
Somehow, I managed to pick up the pace even more, although where this burst of speed was coming from, I couldn’t have said. Forty-five steps. Thirty. The burning sensation in my lungs faded to the back of my awareness until it barely registered at all. Twenty steps. Fifteen. My leaden legs suddenly felt light as they moved. Ten steps. Five. My upper body pitched forward dangerously as I overbalanced. My legs struggled to keep up, but it was much too late for that now.
“Move, move, move,” I shouted at the people milling around the finish line.
I flew past the marker and barreled through the crowd, intent on getting off to the side and out of the way, bouncing off a few spectators and tripping and falling headfirst onto the pavement. I felt a jolt of pain as flesh met blacktop, but it broke through my consciousness only dimly. I pushed it aside and crawled on my hands and knees the rest of the way to the grass lining the roadway, where I retched violently.
There’s no telling how long I knelt there on the side of the road just steps past the finish line, throwing up the entire contents of my stomach. If the ache in my abdomen when I was finally done was anything to go by, it had to have been at least a millennium, but someone probably would’ve tried to bring me in out of the snow when the seasons changed, so that couldn’t have been accurate.
I sensed someone settling down into the grass next to me and felt a gentle hand resting on my back. I allowed my head to hang as I waited to see whether I was actually done vomiting. The hand started making small circles, and I wanted to say thank you but was afraid to turn my head to make eye contact lest the heaving start again.
“That’s it, Ryan,” Allison murmured as she removed the baseball hat from my head. “Let it out.”
The cool air on my overheated head felt fantastic, and I let out a
contented sigh. I closed my eyes and sank down so that my weight rested mostly on my heels. I raised a shaky hand to run the back of it across my mouth and smacked my lips a couple of times, wrinkling my nose at the horrid taste coating my tongue.
Like some sort of angel, Allison produced a bottle of water. I accepted it with a muttered “Thanks” and set to rinsing my mouth out. After a few rounds of swish and spit, I felt sufficiently comfortable to take an actual drink. The cold water felt heavenly cascading down my throat, and, unable to help myself, I tipped my head back for a long, greedy gulp.
“Whoa.” Allison chided me, taking the bottle away.
“Hey.”
“Slow down. You’re going to make yourself sick. Again.”
I chuckled and sagged bodily against her. The heat radiating between our sweat-slicked bodies was surprisingly pleasant. I was happy to sit there as long as it took for the dizziness and nausea to abate.
Allison raised my ponytail, giving the cool air access to the back of my neck. It helped. I was still weak and unsteady, but I was slowly regaining my strength.
“You have vomit on your shirt,” Allison pointed out.
I wrinkled my nose and looked down, disgusted. “Ew.”
“Do you need help taking it off?” Her tone was innocent, but the expression on her face as I turned to look at her and the darkening of her eyes definitely was not.
“Maybe when we get inside the locker room. I’m not too keen on stripping down out here.” I held my hand out. “Help me up?”
Allison stood gracefully and pulled me to my feet. She had a huge smile on her face as she handed me back the hat she’d taken off my head. I accepted it and snagged the bottle of water from her while she was distracted, managing to force myself to take only a modest sip.
“You’re bleeding,” Allison said, her voice an interesting blend of concern and exasperation.
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
Allison frowned, presumably at my disheveled state, but who could really tell? She took my right hand in hers and turned it over to graze her fingertips over the road rash marring my palm. Then she took my other arm and lifted it so I could see the giant scrape decorating the underside of my forearm. I followed her eyes when she glanced down and noticed that my knees and shins were pretty banged up, too. But what surprised me the most was when she caressed the hollow of my left cheek with a feather-light touch, which sparked an unexpected stab of pain.
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