Dominate (University of Gatica #5) (7 page)

TWO WEEKS LATER

The two weeks since Aileen and Tyler had broken up passed in a daze for Aileen. The time either dragging on through long, lonely nights of crying herself into an exhausted sleep, or skipping forward with an unsettling speed that found her unable to concentrate in class. She spent too much time staring blankly at the work she was supposed to be doing, and afterwards not remembering a word she had written. The only time she found any sort of peace of mind was when she trained, throwing herself into the physical exertion with a single-minded determination that left her drained enough to forget her unhappiness for a few brief hours. But it always crept back again when she least expected it.

Aileen sometimes thought she felt Tyler’s loss more than she had his presence. That his absence was almost more tangible than the reality of him had been. She tried to put it from her mind and focus on one day at a time, but it would hit her at random moments, leaving her reeling and lonely and sad. She was strong, and she was determined, she reminded herself again and again. But she felt like half of her former self, and the missing half was Tyler, always Tyler. It shouldn’t have been like that. They had hardly been a couple for long. Most of their interaction had been casual, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who lost everything every time she had a break-up. But this time, she couldn’t just put it aside.

Aileen slept badly, and she woke to the early morning sun slanting in through the small gap she hadn’t meant to leave when she pulled her curtains closed. She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor and running her fingers through her hair, pushing the sleep-tousled curls back from her face, and then rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. A yawn caught her by surprise and she dropped one of her hands to cover it, standing up and walking over to the window, standing up on her toes to stretch, her spine bending as she arched her body backwards and let her arms follow, pressing them out to either side, the tee she had slept in rising up with the motion and exposing a strip of flat and well-muscled stomach.

It was, Aileen discovered as she opened the curtains and even more sunlight poured into the room, a beautiful day. The light picked out motes of dust that made her wonder, with a sudden guilty start, when she had last given her room more than a cursory tidying. Well, she could fix that problem soon, she decided, but first she padded off to the bathroom to deal with her own appearance. For the first time in two weeks she felt, well, not exactly happy, but not weighed down with misery, either.

Twenty minutes later she was back, pulling on the clothes she would wear for practice, her hair falling in damp, towel-dried curls around her face. She lined her eyes with a soft grey liner, pulling her hair back and up into a high ponytail that accentuated her cheekbones, and she tried on a smile as she examined her reflection. The face that smiled back at her was a little gaunter than she remembered, with faint shadows beneath her eyes. Faint enough that they wouldn’t be seen from a distance, she told herself firmly. But for a moment she was reminded of Tyler’s eyes, those green-amber-grey eyes that had always been so hard to decide the color of. Her smile softened, and her heart beat faster behind her ribs, and then, with a sudden clarity, the rest came back, too, and she turned away from the mirror a little too quickly.

She was not going to let it spoil her day. Not with practice calling to her and the sun shining bright and warm in a clear blue sky. Aileen slipped quietly out of the house and stopped outside the door, leaning one leg and then the other against the wall as she stretched the muscles out, and then heading towards the campus and Wavertree Fieldhouse at a gentle jog.              

Inside, the temperature was the same as always, but the sun shone brightly through the stained glass of the windows, and Aileen’s mood lifted further as she ran a slow circuit of the track to warm up, glancing up occasionally to admire the backlit colors. She was on her second lap when her glance caught on a figure so familiar that she would have known him anywhere. She would always know him, she thought. Even if they hadn’t seen each other for years, she would look up one day in a crowd and he would be standing there, and she would know.

Aileen’s even steps faltered and she thought she might stumble, but she forced her eyes ahead again and completed the lap. She told herself to concentrate, but she couldn’t shake off the excitement that coursed through her, and even though she didn’t let herself look up to where she had first caught sight of him, she felt her skin prickling each time she passed. Imagining that she could feel his gaze, that those impossibly beautiful eyes moved over her body, drawing goosebumps where they had touched.

She blocked everything out except the training session. The pink-red track blurring each time she sprinted, refusing to look up. Trying, and failing, not to be distracted by his presence. The next time she looked he had gone. The bus, she reminded herself. He must be here for Conference, so he’ll be on the bus. Somehow she made it to the end of practice, throwing herself into the final sprint with a last effort, and then walking over the grey tile to pass the sign. “Success is a state of mind”, it told her. “Start thinking of yourself as a success.” She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She smiled to herself and kept walking. She had a bus to catch.

Tyler wasn’t on the bus. Aileen had paused at the top of the aisle, looking down the length of it. Jani was there, and Chrissy, other members of the track team. Sean waved from the back. Tyler wasn’t there.

Disappointed, Aileen claimed an empty seat and sank down into it, stuffing her ear buds into her ears so that no one would bother trying to talk to her. She wasn’t really in the mood for conversation.

She was the one who had broken up with him, she reminded herself, although if she’d known she was going to be so miserable, she might not have done it. She thought it would be harder being his girlfriend, knowing that there were always women throwing themselves at him while she couldn’t be there. And they would both be traveling. He’d be on the NFL circuit, and with any luck she’d be on her way to the Olympics. That was the dream. The ultimate goal. Once she’d done that, she thought she might find something else to do for a living, make use of the degree that she was collecting.

Tyler hadn’t been at the meets. He had already qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships, so that wasn’t that shocking. But she’d thought that he would be at Conference. He had to be at Conference to officially be able to compete at NCAAs. Once again she looked around the bus, almost like she might find him somewhere that she hadn’t looked before. But he wasn’t there, and she resigned herself to not seeing him for the weekend.

***

Conference was big. Not as big as the World Juniors in Poland had been, but that had been a different experience. Aileen had been alone there, pushing everything that she had into making that race. Here, there was a chance for something else. Or there would have been, if she hadn’t still been hung up on Tyler.

She couldn't stop thinking about him. It’d been almost a month since the break-up and some days it felt like just yesterday. The day had started so promisingly, and then that glimpse of him in Wavertree Fieldhouse had brought it all crashing back. She could have gotten through it if he’d been on the bus, she was sure. Knowing that he was going to be at Conference, where she could admire him from afar, would have helped.

Now she couldn't enjoy walking across Cornell's campus arm in arm with Jani and Chrissy in the time they had after they arrived and before check-ins for the event started. She should have been able to, and it frustrated her that she couldn't. Why couldn't she just put Tyler out of her head for long enough to at least have a little fun before she buckled down to the competition?

She knew why. She hadn't been able to get Tyler out of her head from the moment she saw him. And she hadn't even known him in person then. Hadn't heard his voice. Hadn't seen those startling eyes up close. Hadn't felt his hands moving over her body.

Aileen shied away from the memories. They were just going to make things worse.

Jani was looking at her again. Aileen knew that her housemate was worried. She knew that Chrissy was worried, too. Both of them had tried to talk to her about it since she'd broken up with Tyler… if you could call what had happened a break-up. She didn't know what to tell them, though. That he had refused to be seen with her in front of the media and she felt like he was ashamed of her? That she had turned him down because she couldn't deal with having a long-distance relationship? They would both think she was being ridiculous, and the last thing she needed was her friends telling her that she had made the wrong decision. Or asking her how crazy she had been to give up the man every woman in the world would want. The guy every girl on campus swooned over. She'd had him, and she'd not only given him up. She'd chased him away.

Which she wasn't supposed to be thinking about.

Aileen turned her thoughts to the upcoming races. There would be the preliminary heat first. She wasn't worried about that one. Unless she was really off her game she was going to take it, no sweat. Then she had—

Suddenly Tyler was there, when she looked up, standing with a small group of people and listening to some pretty redhead in New York State colors. She was obviously into whatever she was talking about, gesturing with her hands as she spoke, and heads were nodding around the group.

Next to Tyler Aileen spotted Ryan, Chrissy's hockey player. She turned to say something to her friend, only to smile when she realized the other girl had already spotted her boyfriend and was running across the grass to him.

“Looks like it's just you and me,” Aileen said, turning to look at Jani.

The taller girl gave her a lopsided smile. “Just like old times,” she said. “Although I wouldn't mind if Carter suddenly appeared, so if that happens you might find yourself temporarily abandoned.”

That was the part where Aileen should have laughed, but she didn't really feel like it. She wondered where Sean had gone off to. Maybe if she got them together, between him and Jani they could clear her up.

Jani was leading her toward the group with the redhead, where Chrissy was still with Ryan, her arm wrapped around his and her head resting on his shoulder. It made Aileen's heart ache to look at them. She had wanted to have something like that with Tyler, but apparently it wasn't meant to be.

“Are you sure we have to go this way?” Aileen asked Jani as they got closer. “I'm sure there are other options.”

“Of course we have to go this way,” Jani said. “Chrissy's this way.”

Aileen sighed and let herself be dragged over to where Chrissy was standing with Ryan. And with Tyler.

“Hey,” Tyler said, not looking at her or at Jani when they caught up to them.

That was all he said, just that generic ‘hey’. Nothing to indicate that he'd seen her. That he missed her as much as she was missing him, and Aileen felt her heart wrench. She'd been right to do what she'd done, then. He obviously he didn't care.

“Hey,” Jani said, a little grudgingly, like she wasn't sure how to just ignore him but she didn't want to betray Aileen by being too friendly with her ex. Aileen kind of loved her for that.

Groups were making their way toward the indoor track, and the one that Jani and Aileen were with seemed to have decided that it was their time to head that direction. They started slowly meandering, and after a glance at each other, Janie and Aileen followed.

Cornell's indoor track was big, and obviously expensive, but it didn’t have the character of Gatica’s, and Aileen's favorite would always be Wavertree Fieldhouse. Still, the smell of rubber almost made her smile.

There were a lot of people milling around already, their voices echoing off the high ceiling.

Slowly, the chaos became order, teams taking their places and the seats filling with spectators. The first heats were starting soon, and the little group that Aileen was with claimed a spot in the infield to warm up and watch the other races.

Her preliminary race was first, before Tyler’s.

Aileen, who had been throwing herself into running with a vengeance in her attempt to get over Tyler, wasn't worried about the preliminary heat. She took her place at the blocks forty minutes later, glancing from side to side to take in the girls she was running against.

The gunshot rang out, and the race started.

It wasn't any harder than she had thought it would be. She bounded over the hurdles easily, running the end of the race with long, distance-eating strides. She was half a body's length ahead of the closest person behind her.

The crowd cheered, but it wasn't the frantic adulation that came with the races where the outcome really mattered, and she felt somehow dissatisfied as she walked away from it, despite the fact that she would be moving on to the quarterfinals. But then, she hadn't expected anything else.

She should have felt good about it. She'd won, and that was all that was really required of her at the moment, but there was a restlessness under her skin that the easy races hadn't shaken.

Watching Tyler's heats was a kind of torture all its own. She watched his body move down the track, every muscle pulling perfectly against the next to maneuver him out through his opponents and into the lead for an easy race. Watching, she remembered the way that he had felt under her hands the first time that she traced the shapes of muscles under the skin.