In Deep: Chase & Emma (All In Book 1) (22 page)

“It’s hard, isn’t
it,” he tormented me, stroking and fucking me until I shuddered and
panted, barely able to stand up I could feel my orgasm coming on so
strong. “You want to scream, don’t you, baby?”

I whimpered again,
struggling, about to come.

“I’ll cover your
mouth so you can scream my name.” With his hands firmly around my
wrists and clamped down over my mouth, I came so hard I nearly
blacked out, feeling so commanded, so dominated and yet so cared for
and satisfied I couldn’t even think straight. When I felt him come,
too, thrusting into me so strong and long and deep, another shudder
tremored up through my body, my pussy clenching around his cock.

“Ah, Emma.” He said
my name like I was a goddess and he was worshipping at my altar. I’d
never felt so possessed before, so swept away, so out of control. It
was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

§

The following day was
the opening ceremonies of the games. I watched it on a huge screen at
a bar with the whole swim team crew. Tori had invited me to go out
with some of the friends she made through her PR role, but I wanted
to be with the swim people. We’d grown close in the past three
weeks, on such an emotional roller coaster, and it was fun to be with
Megan and the others when Chase and his teammates came on the
jumbotron.

I couldn’t believe it
when I saw him up on the big screen. It felt crazy, like watching
someone you knew walking on the moon, doing something that looked
both so familiar and so unbelievable all at once. Chase looked happy,
waving and smiling. I couldn’t imagine what a rush he was feeling
and I wished I could be there with him, by his side. I saw him hold
up his phone and snap a photo of the crowd. Then my phone blipped
with a text.

There it was, his photo of the crowd
in the Olympic stadium. And his message.

Chase: Wish you were here with me.

He got back to the
hotel room late that night and he had to wake up early, what with the
Olympic Games and all. I was freaking out, not handling it at all
well. Honestly, I thought it might be better for him if he stayed
away from me. But he wanted to spend the night together before his
first events. I was so nervous I practically balled up like a cat at
the edge of the bed, perched and ready to spring. But Chase, the true
athlete, fell right to sleep, getting his required rest before his
first competitive events.

The next morning at the
swim arena, I worked on his shoulders and quads briefly while his
head coach talked to him non-stop. We managed a quick moment to
ourselves with a kiss and my wish for good luck, and then I was spat
out into the stands where thankfully Megan and Tori were waiting for
me. I purposely didn’t sit anywhere near his parents. The TV
cameras kept flashing over to them. Chase told me they were sitting
together, even though he wondered if they might need some kind of a
guard to keep them from doing harm to each other. Apparently the
divorce proceedings still rankled, 12 years later.

They looked terrifying
to me, like a Ralph Lauren ad. His mom wore a stiff navy blazer and a
patterned scarf. I bet she’d take one look at me, Florida girl in
my flip-flops and athletic tank and shorts, and turn her nose right
up.

Add it to the list of
reasons I was glad that the press hadn’t identified me as Chase’s
girlfriend. I already felt like I’d swallowed a bird. Not a small
one, either, like a large angry turkey flapping around in my stomach.
It wasn’t a good feeling. All I’d need to push me right over the
edge was a camera focused in on me.

Chase was swimming the
400 Individual Medley first, a killer event with all four strokes.
The moment he walked onto the pool deck, I lost my mind, starting to
stand up, then sitting down again, my hand halfway inside my mouth as
I chewed on it nervously, screaming his name along with the crowd
around me.

Out by the blocks, many
of the other swimmers wore earbuds to drown out the noise and keep
them focused. Not Chase. He didn’t need it. He created a world of
his own, impervious to his surroundings as he shook his limbs loose.

“Stretch your quads!”
I yelled from up in the stands, as if he could hear me. There was no
way he could, but as if we were telepathically connected—or maybe
he’d rehearsed his pre-swim routine a hundred thousand million
times—he stretched his quads.

I couldn’t watch. I
had to watch. He dove in with a powerful, masterful swoosh and led
right out of the gate. Butterfly was his standout stroke, where he
looked like a wild, swooping animal closing in on its prey. I’d
seen him swim many times before, but it still stopped my heart, made
me clutch my hands together in prayer and scream until I had no voice
left. He swam with such power and fluid grace, defying all laws of
gravity as he seemed to literally fly out over the water.

In backstroke he still
held the lead, but then came breaststroke. There was a Brit next to
him, pulling up, then ahead. No! I wanted to leap down into the pool
and throw myself onto him, holding him back. But that probably
wouldn’t count as sportsmanlike behavior. Plus, they’d all just
probably have to swim the event again and my heart definitely
couldn’t take it.

So I watched, and
screamed, balancing on my tiptoes as they all flip-turned, Chase no
longer in the lead until the final lap of freestyle.

“Go for it!” I
screamed. Megan and Tori both clung to me, all of us losing our minds
as Chase started to even up, then pull ahead in the final stretch.
When he touched, we were half watching him, half watching the
scoreboard. He did it! He came in first! Gold!

Screaming, crying,
jumping up and down, someone draped an American flag around our
shoulders and we held it up, doing a dance. I felt elated,
overwhelmed, thrilled.

And he still had eight
more final events to go. Another one that afternoon. It was too much!
It wasn’t fair to make him swim two 400-meter events on the same
day! Were they trying to torture Chase? No human could do that. I
needed to lodge a complaint with the organizing committee. Or start
taking high quantities of Valium.

Chase might be the one
exerting himself full-throttle in the pool. But it looked like I
would be the one who might not survive the Olympics.

Chase

Yesterday I won gold in
the 400 IM and the 400 Free. Today I had the free relay, and I had to
rely on my teammates to bring it home. I knew they could do it, and
they did, pushing themselves to the limit and beyond, each of us
becoming better than we could on our own as we pushed together as a
team. We won gold. That made three.

My mother and father
were there to cheer me on, and as far as I could tell they were
managing to keep it together. I knew they hated each other with a
passion. I also knew I couldn’t change or fix things between them.
I’d learned that lesson long ago. All I could do was take notes for
my own life. Don’t hold on to grudges. Don’t stay angry. It never
did any good.

Monday I had the
freestyle finals and then Tuesday Liam would arrive for my remaining
five. I was looking forward to seeing him and introducing him to
Emma. I knew they’d get along.

What Emma didn’t know
was what was happening on Wednesday. I still had events all the way
through Saturday, and I was flying out some other people as my
special guests: her parents. Whereas my mom and dad were a source of
stress and tension, requiring management, wrangling and peacekeeping,
her parents seemed to really make her happy. And I loved making Emma
happy.

I knew she was close to
them, and she’d always watched the games with them in years past.
She’d mentioned what fans they were, how they’d always especially
loved swimming from her childhood days on a recreational swim team.
Sometime I’d have to see photos of that. Little Emma in her cap and
goggles, she must have been so freaking cute. I knew she’d love
seeing her parents and watching the games with them, and I couldn’t
wait to see her face when they arrived.

I’d been to the games
before, eight years ago, so I knew some of what to expect, but this
experience felt so different. It still had all the palpable
excitement in the air, the thrill of being among athletes of the
highest caliber from all over the world. But I felt it more this time
around. Back when I was 18, I really had been more like a robot,
switching myself on to race. This time around, I had Emma to look for
up in the stands. I couldn’t actually pick out her voice amidst the
roar, but I felt like I could, and I could see her standing there,
cheering for me, with me every second.

I knew coach had
worried about me getting distracted, and he was right, Emma was on my
mind a hell of a lot. But that wasn’t working against me. I’d
always thought blinders would make me faster, but it turned out
having someone I really cared about on the sidelines was the real
key. She fueled me, pumped new life into me, gave me a crazy new
burst of energy in my swimming. With her, I felt unstoppable.

But on Monday I won my
first silver. I know it sounded ridiculous, but it was a letdown. I
had that event, the 200 Freestyle. I could swim it in my sleep. But
for some reason I hadn’t brought it, or at least not as much as the
guy next to me who’d managed to touch the wall a full second and a
half before me.

Afterward, I just
wanted to get back to the house, eat a big meal and see Emma. She
wouldn’t care that I’d missed gold. She’d cheer me up.

But then one of the PR
handlers came into our team room, spoke briefly with one of our
assistant coaches and then approached me. “You should look at the
link I just sent you,” she said, sounding grave. “I’m sorry to
bother you with this kind of thing, but it’s better if you see it
straight away. Rip off the Band-Aid. We’re working on a response,
so you don’t have to worry about it.”

I opened my email,
clicked on the link she’d forwarded and just like that, my vision
went white with hot rage. Someone had run a smear story on me,
accusing me of having crippled my friend in a boating accident years
ago. Far from the wounded kid I’d been portrayed as in the press, I
was to blame. I’d abandoned my friend Ian right when he’d needed
me most. Because of me, he’d spend the rest of his life in a
wheelchair.

“Fuck!” I exploded,
hurling my phone to the floor. Thank you Lifeproof case and
carpeting, it did not break. But goddamn it I felt like something
inside of me had. I’d just read my deepest, darkest shame, the
secret guilt that still tormented me, plastered across the internet.

Emma walked in, finding
me a hot mess, my head in my hands as I swore and swore again.

“Silver’s amazing,
Chase.” She reached up, trying to calm me down.

“It’s not the
silver medal.” I didn’t want to talk about it. But I did have to,
with her. After all those years, it was finally time. Plus, she’d
see the blog eventually, probably later today. She needed to know the
whole story.

“Come on, let’s get
out of here.”

A car brought us back
to the house. She stayed close to me the whole time, rubbing my
shoulder or leaning her head against my chest, letting me know she
was there to make me feel better even though she didn’t know what
was upsetting me. My teammate Brian was standing in the kitchen,
fixing himself a smoothie.

“Have some.” He
handed me a glass. I downed it in seconds flat. He didn’t even
blink, then did the same thing with the remainder himself. Swimmers
and their smoothies.

“Before you say
anything.” He stopped me as I was about to start cursing, venting
my rage. “It’s a fucking blog. No one pays any attention to that
crap. It’s not like it’s the
New
York Times
. Everyone knows they’re just making up shit
to pull in readers.”

“Still feels like
crap.” I smacked my palm against the refrigerator.

Emma looked pale as a
ghost. “What happened?”

“Someone’s been
talking smack about your boy,” Brian informed her. “You just need
to tell him not to listen to that kind of stupid shit.”

Emma looked really
shaken, frightened almost. I reached out my hand. “Here. Let me
tell you about it.”

Her hand shook in mine
as we walked into my bedroom. Funny, I thought I was the one who
needed the comforting. Now that Emma seemed so scared, my need to
take care of her kicked in and I drew her against my chest, hugging
her close.

“Everything’s OK.
But are you ready for a story?” I asked her, not even fully
believing myself that I was about to tell her everything. I wasn’t
supposed to. I’d signed documents promising not to disclose any
details. But 12 years had passed without sharing my story with
anyone. I needed to get it off my chest. And I could trust Emma.

She nodded, eyes big
and wide, and we sat down together on the bed.

“It happened the
summer we were all 14.” I gave her a little background, how Liam
and I had been hanging around over the summers for years, how Ian and
then Jax were newer arrivals.

“Ian was always
pushing the envelope, testing limits. And one afternoon he really
went for it.” I explained how Liam and I had been out sitting on a
dock fishing, when Jax and Ian had shown up. In a 34 ft. long
catamaran.

“I knew it wasn’t
Ian’s family’s boat. And I knew it didn’t belong to Jax.”
They’d taken it for a joy ride, “borrowed it” as Ian would tell
me once we climbed on board.

“I’m not supposed
to talk about that, or any of what followed,” I admitted to Emma,
looking down at my hands. The owner of the boat had settled out of
court, for an undisclosed sum. Ian’s father had paid him off. He
didn’t want his boy’s future tarnished by a little thing like a
joy ride on a boat. He’d approached the problem with, “So what’s
it going to take?” As in, how much money will make this go away?