by Ali Dean
Later, after the kids clear the table, and Gran and the older ones are helping the younger ones get ready for bed, Jace cages me behind the sink. His softs lips brush along my neck. “Hey, Pep.” His voice vibrates along my skin and my body instantly reacts. I shut off the water and turn around in his arms.
“Hi.” We sneak moments when we can, and Jace is always looking for openings to touch me without kids around. His lips brush mine. “I miss you,” I tell him. We live together, see each other every day, sleep together every night, but with four kids, I rarely have my husband’s full attention all to myself. Who am I kidding? I can never get enough of this man. Even before kids it was the same way.
“Mmm-hmm,” Jace agrees as his hands slide under my shirt.
My hands run down his back, landing on one of my favorite spots. His butt. I grasp the firm muscles, and he thrusts forward, letting me know he’s hard as a rock. I lean back, and his kisses trail down my neck, while one of his hands lifts my leg up.
“Daddy? Mommy?” Zane’s voice asks from the other side of the kitchen. I’m thankful the kitchen island is at least blocking part of his view. Jace slowly lowers my leg and takes a step back. My body aches for that firmness again, and I try to shake the lust from my head. Zane continues, “Josie can’t find her race car pajama bottoms. Do you know where they are?”
“They’re in the wash, sweetie,” I tell him.
“I’ll help her find another pair,” Jace offers after discreetly adjusting himself. We all know how ugly it can get when it comes to Josie’s pajama choices. Jace is usually the one who can calm her down when a meltdown starts.
He puts a hand on Zane’s shoulder as they walk up the stairs side by side. “I don’t get why she won’t wear her princess nightgown. The ribbons on the arms are cool.”
“I don’t know, bud. We all like what we like.”
Jace glances over his shoulder and finds me leaning on the bannister, smiling dreamily at his ass.
“Love you, Pep,” he calls down.
“Love you too, Jace Wilder.”
About the Author
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Also by Ali Dean
Stark Springs Academy Series
Black Diamond
Double Black
Black Ice
Spark Sisters Series
The Line Below
Kick
Standalones
Elusive
Doubles Love
Pepper Jones Series
Pepped Up (Pepper Jones #1)
All Pepped Up (Pepper Jones #2)
Pepped Up & Ready (Pepper Jones #3)
Pep Talks (Pepper Jones #4)
Pepped Up Forever (Pepper Jones #5)
Sneak Peek
Before you go, continue reading for a sneak peek of The Line Below, a standalone new adult sports romance.
Every time I race, words from a really bad poem play on repeat in my head:
Shay
When I see you bolt
From the starting block
My love for you soars
Fierce and calm
You slice the water
Like it’s your weapon
And your Hope
Maybe you are mine.
My twin sister wrote the poem about me for a high school English class assignment. Lydia has a lot of talents and writing poetry isn’t one of them. Still, I’ve got that poem taped to the corner of my mirror in my bedroom at home – definitely didn’t bring it to college with me. Too embarrassing. At first, putting it up there on display was a joke. Or I pretended it was. But how many people can say someone wrote a poem about them? And secretly, despite how awful it is, I like it.
Lydia – called Kick for her tendency to accidentally kick people when she’s swimming – always treats it the same way. The words are silly and cliché, but strangely, have some sort of grit that resonates with us.
The poem sounds in my head like a rap song each time I get in race mode, and I have to force myself not to smile, otherwise I’d look like a nut. I’m supposed to be all serious when I step up onto a starting block, not smiling to myself and in my head. That’s Kick’s job. She’s the one who lacks concentration.
As I shake out my legs and take in the crowded stands overlooking the Olympic-sized pool, the words fierce and calm bounce around inside me. The announcer has done his introductions and we’ve shed our warm-up clothes. I’m wearing my Cali Sharks racing suit, representing the club team I swim for in the summer that’s associated with my college team. It’s the same suit I’ve raced in countless times, but this isn’t like any other race. The unrealness of it tingles.
The Olympic Trials finals.
I made it to the semi-finals four years ago, and at sixteen years old, that was enough. For about five minutes. As soon as I touched the wall after that race, I was hungry for more. And now, here I am. Only eight swimmers make it to the finals, and I barely got in with a seventh-place finish in the semis this morning.
“Swimmers, step up.” The murmuring in the stands stops with the starter’s words. With silence echoing in the pool arena, I place my right foot on the step to the starting block and push up with my left to the top. The seven women to my right do the same. I’m on the end in lane one, not my usual position, but for this event, I’m just relieved to be here.
My gaze lands on the smooth water ahead of me and I let my shoulders roll back before slowly folding my torso forward and dropping my arms to hang in front of me. My right toes curl over the edge as my left foot takes position at the back of the block. Deep breaths from my chest keep me steady as I wait for the other women to take position and for the starter’s next words.
“Swimmers, take your mark.”
I hunch my shoulders forward, my fingertips brushing the edge of the block, body ready to spring forward. Fierce. Calm.
BEEP.
My muscles fire and I spring from the block, strong and quick as I efficiently slide into the water in a streamline position, tucking my arms tightly around my ears in an aerodynamic pose. Like a rocket, Kick always says.
From thousands, if not millions of laps of practice, my core instinctively works into a steady and fluid dolphin kick underwater, propelling me forward with the momentum from the starting block until I break the surface.
The 100 butterfly is a sprint. In a long course or Olympic-sized pool – fifty meters, rather than the standard twenty-five yards used in college competitions – the race is only two laps. Out and back. One turn at the wall instead of three. Turns are my forte, speed gained from a powerful kick off the wall and tight technique from years of focused and tedious training. It’s why I do better in ‘short course yard’ pools used for high school and college meets, rather than the ‘long-course meters’ pools used for international competitions, or, in this case, qualification for the Olympics. But I won’t let my preferences hold me back today.
No, today I’m embracing the sensation of floating over the water in a steady beat, lifting my head to breathe every other stroke as I’ve been trained to do. My visibility isn’t great in the end lane, but I sense I’m slightly ahead of lane two, Georgia Fraser, the National Collegiate or NCAA champion from Texas University. She graduated last month. Making the Olympic team means sponsorship deals and the ability to actually support herself as a professional swimmer. I’ve still got two more years of college swimming ahead of me. A safety net.
Wh
en I reach the wall, I time my stroke perfectly to hit my fingertips just enough to clock the time while pulling my legs up in a sharp motion and pushing off with an intensity that rockets me distinctly ahead of lane two into the second and last lap of the race.
My underwater dolphin kick remains strong, but when I take my first stroke, the fatigue in my arms sets a burn of panic in the pit of my stomach. This level of intense exhaustion isn’t supposed to hit until the end of the lap, not the beginning. It’s incredibly difficult to hold a smooth butterfly stroke when the fatigue sets in, and as I try to focus on my core and legs – my strongest muscles – the screaming from my arms and shoulders grows more ferocious.
I can no longer hold off breathing every other stroke, and as I come up for air at each pull, Georgia begins to move ahead of me. My face is hot with frustration and effort as I call on every muscle in my body to fire up. They don’t listen. They want to give up. But my head, it’s shouting full force. A battle rages between my mind and body as I struggle through the final meters to hit the wall. My mind refuses to surrender, but my body is spent and doesn’t respond the way it should. The way I want it to, need it to. Gasping for breath, I cling half submerged onto the edge of the pool, afraid to look at the clock. I know what it will say. But maybe… maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
My head turns left, acknowledges all the other swimmers on the wall, and my eyes slowly shift up to the huge scoreboard.
Lane 1. S. Spark. 6. 58.42.
Sixth place. Two make the team. I’m not even close.
I hear a squeal from lane two and see on the screen Georgia took second place. My crushed heart seizes on this distraction and I tread to the lane line separating us to congratulate her. Georgia beams as she embraces me. We aren’t close, but we’ve been competing against each other for years, and I know what this means to her. Everything.
I get out of the water and hot tears threaten to spill down my face when I see my coach waiting for me on the deck near the locker rooms. I can tell she’s as shocked as I am by my emotional response. I’m usually cool and calm, no matter the race results. And I’m steady enough in the midst of a threatening breakdown to recognize there are too many people and cameras to witness if I break into ugly crying. Shaking my head at Coach Mandy, I veer toward the locker room instead, intent on getting into some relative privacy before the sobs erupt.
Kick bursts through the opposite door to the locker room as I turn into an alcove of lockers. She must have run down from the stands to get here so quickly, and her chest heaves as she encloses me in her arms, ready to accept my meltdown.
Snot runs down my face as I gasp for breath, chest shuddering with the emotional outpour. I’ve never sobbed like this in my life. But somehow, Kick knew it was coming. I wasn’t even aware of how much I wanted to make the team until this moment. Until the sense of loss tore through me like an open wound of grief. Kick gets it. She rocks back and forth, stroking my head like I’m a little kid and she’s my mother. It’s a strange thing, but it feels right. I can’t imagine doing this with our real mom. Normally I’m the more maternal twin, but Kick’s slipped into the role for this moment, and I’m grateful.
When the tears stop, Kick sits us down on a bench, pulling me next to her. “You still almost PR’d again, Shay,” she says, trying to reassure me.
We use PR as a verb, even though it stands for personal record. The reminder threatens to set me off again, but I’m too wrung out to indulge in another crying session. “I had to PR in the semis just to squeeze into the finals. I didn’t have anything left. Maybe I shouldn’t have raced the 200 on Friday.” I’d made it to the semi-finals for the 200-meter butterfly two days earlier, and that event is seriously draining. Twice as long as my event tonight, and twice as exhausting. Most of the butterfliers tonight had raced the 200 as well, or other events. I didn’t think it was going to be an issue. But maybe I was wrong? Maybe I’m just not good enough?
“You did awesome, Shay. Seriously. Don’t second-guess yourself. You trained like a badass, raced well all season, and had a great race tonight too. You almost made the Olympic Team, Shay. That’s huge.” Kick’s eyes are wide, begging me to see it through a different lens.
We both know it’s not enough.
“It was probably my last chance.” I’m not usually one to mope, but I need this right now, and Kick is letting me get away with it… for the moment.
“Only if you want it to be,” she says, rubbing my back in small circles.
Her words are simple, and maybe even right, but they make me want to scream. Continuing to train at the level necessary to make the Olympic team after college isn’t an option. Not in our world, where success is narrowly defined, and risking failure unthinkable.
But I’m done whining. The pity party is over. I’ll just have to make the most of the next two years of college swimming. My heart will struggle to process the mindset shift, but it doesn’t have a choice.
I take a long breath and tilt my head back to stare at the ceiling, exhaling deeply. Memories of the race replay in my mind as I think about all of this—what was and what could have been. A little voice whispers that maybe, just maybe, there’s more inside of me. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll have what it takes to try again in four years. My heart wants to listen to it, coax it to speak louder. My brain wants to stomp it out.
Kick nudges me in the ribs with her elbow. “Come on, take a shower, and let’s go out to eat.”
Nodding, I follow her orders.
As I’m stripping out of my suit and waiting for the water to heat up, Kick pokes her head in.
“I feel like now would be a good time to recite that poem I wrote in high school.”
A lightness fills my chest. If only she knew I repeat it like a mantra on the starting blocks.
“Which part?” I ask with a small smile.
“The thing about hope. You can’t give up hope, you know? Because you are mine.”
She sounds dead serious, and we let it sit for a second before grinning at each other and bursting into hysterical laughter.
Want to keep reading? The Line Below is available HERE.
