Just as Mr. Everton had said, Rudy Eyser looked like death. He wore a sweat-tinged blue button-down and a pair of jeans that looked stained at the knee. I wondered if he had fallen on the way back to the academy. Did his wife know where he was? His kids?
I stood there alone with him. The man who’d left me, who had watched my mother die and then decided, fuck it. He was off, too.
“Rooney, I don’t know what to say.” He drew his hands across his eyes, but still seemed to look at me through the slits.
I shrugged and grabbed the silver medal. “I only got second. I thought… I thought I would win. I’d always really thought I would win.”
Rudy nodded. His hand dropped and he looked defeated. I think maybe he understood me better—that the only words I was able to say in front of him involved the only thing he understood in the world, gymnastics. I couldn’t linger on the other stuff. I couldn’t demand—why did you leave? Who was Zelda, really? Does your wife know you left an actual toddler alone in Denver, Colorado, to make a new life for yourself?
Goddammit. Poppy is being abused.
I didn’t know what to say. Rudy Eyser palmed the back of neck nervously and I saw something in his face, a strange tweak to his cheeks, that reminded me of when I looked in the mirror.
“You were really good, Rooney.”
“Not according to this,” I murmured and grabbed the silver medal, then let it smack back on my chest.
“No, you were great. I think there were a few factors at play that made you—maybe not perform as well as you could have. But Rooney, you were really fantastic.”
“Wonderful. Here it is. Finally. Some encouragement from my father,” I scoffed.
“Don’t be that way.”
We held one another’s gaze for a long time and I finally swallowed. I wanted to dart out of there, run as fast as I could out of the gym and back to the hotel. I wanted a hug from Chloe, a kiss from Zed—anything to get me out of this awful, awkward situation.
“Come train with me this summer,” Rudy Eyser said. A tiny spark returned to his eyes.
My lips parted in shock. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t have anywhere to go in the summer. Tommy Everton told me everything. You don’t have anywhere to go, so why don’t you just come to Seattle? You have a long road to go if you want to get to the Olympics and I can help you get there. I can get you there, much more than Jonathon can.”
There are moments in life—moments when everything shifts. Moments, when you recognize there’s a fork in the road and one direction, will take you on a path that you very much understand, a path you can chart out point-by-point. But the other path? It sneaks up on you, allures you with its strangeness and the curiosity kills you. And when my father asked me to come to Seattle in the middle of May, to go full-speed-ahead on my Olympic medal dreams…
My father, the Olympic champion.
My father, my Olympic trainer.
I had to do it. I had to try.
I looked at him with a longing I had never felt before—a longing to belong to a family. A family I never knew I had. Now my father stared at me with a look I didn’t quite understand. It looked like excitement and love. I finally let out the breath I had been holding and smiled. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
To be continued…
Book 3 in the Denver Athletics Academy series will be live May 14th
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The Accident Page 17
