Return to You (Letters to Nowhere Part 3)
Page 6
“Do you even realize how creepy this is?”
“Just give in,” he taunts. “One dismount and you’re free.”
Angry tears spring to my eyes. “Fine!”
TJ reaches for my hand and yanks me out of the pit. “Good answer.”
He keeps a tight grip on my arms as he guides back over to the bars. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring me here in handcuffs.”
“You’re putting me on the wrong side. I don’t do handcuffs, I wear them.” He shoves my grip bag at me, and stands guard at the side of the bars.
I’m so pissed off my hands are shaking while I tie my hair back into a ponytail and put my grips on. “This is not how normal people coach.”
“First off, I’m not normal. Second, who said I was coaching?”
I release a frustrated breath and shake my head. “Whatever.”
And yes, there is some part of me that wants to do this dismount right here, right now. To not have this obstacle in front of me. Which is why, when I jump up to the high bar and swing into the second half of my bar routine only to drop back onto the mats, it’s not just TJ that I’m pissed at.
“Dammit.” I jerk my grips back into place and head for the chalk bowl. “I hate this.”
“Just do it and stop whining,” TJ snaps.
I glare at him and turn my focus back to the bars, tugging down my tank top in the process. It’s weird not having a leotard on. I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath.
Just let go. Just let go. Just let go.
But the second I get to the swings before my dismount, it’s like my hands are glued to the bar. Like I can’t possibly see myself performing this skill anymore. It’s gone from my mind, gone from my muscle memory.
I sink to my knees on the mat staring at the low bar. “I’m not going to do it,” I whisper. “I know you don’t understand this kind of fear, but I know my head and it’s not happening tonight.”
“We’re not done yet, Campbell.” TJ walks away, grabs a spotting block and drags it over beneath the high bar. “What’s the skill called that’s right before your dismount?”
“The blind change?”
TJ hops up onto the block, reaching out for the high bar and rubbing his hands over it. “Is that the thingy where you spin and turn your hands backwards and swing the other direction?”
“Uh-huh.” I pick myself up off the mat, feeling five different kinds of defeat.
“So do that move and then keep going around.”
I level him with a look. “You mean a front giant?”
“Yep, front giant.”
I’m shaking my head, having no clue how this will possibly help, but obviously TJ is too hardheaded to accept answers without evidence. As I’m jumping from low bar to high bar, I hear TJ say, “Do two of those front giant things in row.”
Front giant things? Seriously. Why am I listening to someone who doesn’t even know basic uneven bar terminology? Probably because I’m desperate. And maybe a little bit stupid.
When I do the blind change, heading into the forward giant swings, I’m momentarily startled by TJ’s hand gripping my wrist. Is he trying to spot me? This is not the kind of dismount you can spot someone on and besides, he said just to do the swings, not the dismount.
I swing under the bar for the second front giant and then suddenly my hand is ripped from the bar, my momentum heading up and back forcing my other hand off the bar, too. I’m panicking inside, but years of gymnastics have trained my body to tuck and roll when flying out of control. I end up flipping forward about one and half times, landing on my butt and then rolling over backward to regain control. I spring up to my feet, staring at TJ, my mouth hanging open. My heart had literally jumped up to my throat and is now climbing back down.
“You… you…” I sputter. “Why did you do that? You could have killed me!”
He shrugs and hops down from the spotting block. “Got you to let go. That’s something, right?”
“Jesus Christ!” I swipe the water bottle from the side of the chalk bowl and pelt it at him with all my force.
My hands are shaking, my heart still halfway between my throat and chest. I grip the sides of the chalk bowl and lean over, catching my breath, trying to calm down. TJ’s face twists with anger. He grabs the other side and leans in close to me.
“Look at me!” He’s so intense right now, I can’t help but follow orders despite what that plan has done to me thus far. “You’re right, Campbell, I don’t get why you’re afraid. I think it’s fucking stupid to be scared of something you’ve done hundreds of times. But what we do have in common is that I keep seeing your head hit that high bar and I need you to do it right so that I don’t have to see that image every time I look at these bars. The difference is, I’m willing to do something about it and you’re fine with throwing away your chances at winning Nationals, at qualifying for Worlds…”
And now I know why TJ is so invested in this project. Not that I agree with his approach. Oh no, I’m completely livid about all of it. And I’m still chalking up my hands, though I have no idea why.
“What happens if you don’t have a bar dismount?” he presses. “What the hell are you going to do at Nationals? What are you going to do with your life if gymnastics is over for you? You’re finished with school, right? Ready for college? Ready for the real world? Somehow I doubt that. You’re still a scared little girl who misses her dead parents.”
“Stop,” I warn him. I swallow a lump in my throat and use my knuckles to wipe away a few angry tears that escaped from my eyes.
“I’ll stop when you get up there again and do what you just did, except make the one and a half flip into a double. With a half twist out.”
I squeeze the side of the chalk bowl. “I can’t do this with you! We’re not a team, TJ. We can’t be when I can’t trust you and you’re pissing me off so much. The only time I’ve felt this mad is…”
“Is when, Campbell?” He lets go of the chalk bowl and takes a step back. “With Jordan earlier? You looked pretty ticked off then and it seemed to do nothing but good for your routines.”
“I’m frustrated with Jordan, not angry,” I admit. “There’s a difference.”
Some of the anger drops from his face. “Has this happened to you before? Getting scared to do a skill that you’ve performed in competition tons of times?”
“No, it wasn’t a gymnastics related event that set me off.” I rub the file into my leather grip, sawing as hard as I can. “My parents were drinking the night of their accident. They had elevated blood alcohol levels. And my grandma and Jordan’s dad thought it was to my benefit to keep that information a secret.”
“But you found out.” He doesn’t say sorry like most people would, he doesn’t even have an ounce of sympathy on his face.
“I was looking for details on their accident and I got hold of a police report and… and yeah, I found out. But only a handful of people know. “ I exhale and watch a few tears fall from cheeks into the white powdered chalk. “I was so mad. I wanted to kill them all over again. It seemed stupid, so trivial. Not this big force beyond our control like I’d imagined. They could have kept it from happening. And I wouldn’t be here on my own.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve been through all this already and it doesn’t change the fact that I both love and hate them.”
TJ wraps his arm around one of the metal poles holding up the uneven bars and his gaze drifts up to the high bar. “I can’t help you with the being alone in life thing, but I can help you with this dismount. But you have to trust me.”
I snort back a laugh. “My coaches have never done anything like what you did to me a few minutes ago and I still don’t trust them a hundred percent when it comes to spotting. I rely on myself and my own ability.”
“Did you fall after you hit your head on the high bar?” he snaps, turning back into mean TJ. “Did you feel any kind of impact hitting the mats? No. Why is that, Campbell? You should have had a broken wrist, a dislocated s
houlder…”
I grind my teeth together. He dove to my rescue. I know that, but I don’t know how difficult it was. Okay, maybe that’s not completely true because I’ve heard snippets of conversations around camp with people referring to TJ as superhuman.
He steps closer and grips both my shoulders. “I’m not a very good person, Campbell. On several occasions, I’ve been a very bad person, but I’m faster than all of your coaches. My reflexes are quicker. This is what I’m good at and I’ll do anything to keep from screwing this up. I’m not going let you fall or hit your head. It’s just as much my skills as it is yours.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s a great speech, but—”
“Just shut the hell up and do it. Don’t think. Don’t even try very hard. It doesn’t have to be good.” He spins me in front of the low bar. “Just let go of your control and hand it over to me. That’s all you have to do.”
I suck in a shaky breath, wipe away a few more tears, and finally give a tiny nod. I’m doing this. No matter what. Success or death. Or anything in between.
The whole swing onto the low bar and jump up to the high bar, I force almost every thought out of my head. TJ’s skill, not mine. I’m just here for the ride.
The second I turn into my blind change, prepping for the dismount, TJ grabs my wrist again and shouts, “Let go!”
So I do.
My body kicks into robot mode. All the doubts I’d had earlier about not knowing my way through this skill anymore vanish and suddenly, I’m on my feet on the landing mat having just attempted and stuck my first dismount in two weeks.
There’s an immediate feeling of weight lifting off my shoulders, my chest, my legs. I’m so relieved tears are tumbling at double the rate they fell earlier. TJ hops down from the spotting block and sinks back onto it, his shoulders sagging with relief.
Slowly, I turn toward him, sifting through a dozen different emotions. Before I can process or stop myself, I’m lifting a hand, balling up my fist, pulling back wind-up style, and then planting my knuckles hard into TJ’s jaw.
My hand throbs as I take off running for the doors before he can stop me again.
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About the author
Julie Cross is the International Bestselling author of the Tempest series, a young adult science fiction trilogy which includes Tempest, Vortex, and the final installment, Timestorm (St. Martin’s Press). She’s also the author of Letters to Nowhere (8/13), a mature young adult romance set in the world of elite gymnastics, as well as several forthcoming young adult and new adult novels with publishers like Entangled, Sourcebooks, HarperCollins, and St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books.
Julie lives in Central Illinois with her husband and three children. She’s a former gymnast, longtime gymnastics fan, coach, and former Gymnastics Program Director with the YMCA.
Description
From the International Bestselling Author of the Tempest series
How many dreams can you chase at once?
Even with bad boy, TJ, disrupting their morning workouts, Karen and Stevie’s daily battles with each other are sure to bring both of them closer to a national title at next month’s championships. It’s the kind of feud that creates winning results.
Until a fall from the uneven bars shakes Karen’s rock-solid confidence. Not only does she balk every time she so much as attempts a routine, she’s also facing all this without much support from Jordan. After receiving some bad news, Jordan’s reluctance to listen to reason causes Karen so much frustration she begins to avoid him, needing space to deal with her own issues. He needs someone to force him to make the right choice, he needs his dad to intervene and Karen knows this, but is torn between her loyalty to Jordan and her concern for her coach’s son. Even though both paths lead to the same person—Jordan—it feels like she’s choosing between two different people.
And then there’s the growing tension between TJ and Stevie. They’re obviously on the verge of either ripping each other’s heads off or ripping each other’s clothes off. It’s hard for either Jordan or Karen to tell where those two are headed. Tension is building from every possible outlet and there’s bound to be an explosion of some kind in the very near future.
EDITORIAL REVIEWS FOR LETTERS TO NOWHERE
“Poignant and emotionally-charged, Letters to Nowhere is about the befores and afters that color our daily lives.”–Sophia Bleu, author of Catching Liam
“Letters to Nowhere is a beautiful story filled to the brim with hope, growth, and the magic of teenage relationships that will blow readers away.”–The Book Cellar
“That perfect mix of sweet and emotional, Letters to Nowhere had me hooked. I love Karen and Jordan so much!”–A Good Addiction
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Spread the Word
Description
About the Author