Lightning cracks the sky open, rain beginning to fall in fat droplets that mean business. But for the first time in weeks, I feel something other than loss.
I feel like fighting.
Chapter 36
Mia
The starting block feels different under my feet today. Harder. Colder. More final.
I adjust my goggles for the third time in thirty seconds, a nervous habit Suzi's been trying to break me from for years. The Olympic qualifying heat for the 200-meter breaststroke stretches before me like destiny—blue, chlorinated, and unforgiving.
“Focus, Bonney. This is just water. Your element,” I whisper to myself, trying to calm the thundering in my chest that has nothing to do with pre-race adrenaline and everything to do with the text I received from Mason three nights ago.
Mason:He's okay. Arm’s in a cast. Keeps asking about your training without actually asking about you. Stubborn ass.
I hadn't replied. What could I say?Tell him I think about him every time I close my eyes? That I taste his kiss in the London rain? That I've made a terrible mistake?
“Swimmers, you have sixty seconds.” the official announces, his British accent clipped and formal.
I roll my shoulders, feeling the perfect tension I've honed through Mikhailov's brutal regimen. Physically, I'm the strongest I've ever been. Mentally, I'm a fucking disaster.
“You've got this,” Suzi murmurs from behind me, her hand briefly touching my shoulder as she moves to the coaches section. “Remember your river training. Use what it gave you.”
The mention of “river training” sends my mind catapulting back to Texas, to that perfect swimming course Grant carved out of wilderness for me. To mornings watching the sun rise over water that had once been his greatest fear, water he faced because of me.
I shake my head, clearing it. Not now. Not when everything I've worked for hangs in the balance.
In the periphery of my vision, something catches my eye—the unmistakable shape of a cowboy hat in the crowd. My heart stutters, focus slipping, but there’s no time to dwell.
Impossible. You're hallucinating now.
“Take your marks.” My heart pounds frantically in my chest.
I bend into position, fingers curling around the edge of the block.
The starter's signal blares and I launch, body arcing through air then slicing into water with practiced precision. The moment of submersion brings blessed silence—no thoughts, no regrets, no phantom cowboy hats. Just me and the element that has always been my true home.
The first fifty meters pass in a blur of technique and rhythm. My body knows what to do even when my mind is in chaos. Pull. Kick. Breathe. Repeat. The discipline of countless hours in the water—pools in ten countries, the Pacific Ocean, and yes, that goddamn river in Portree—carries me when emotional turbulence threatens to pull me under.
I hit the turn in second position, catching a glimpse of the Irish swimmer half a body length ahead. Not ideal, but not disaster. The river taught me something the other swimmers don't know—how to find advantage in adversity.
“Water's never the same twice,” Grant had said, watching me train one morning. “That's why you're stronger in it than they are. You don't just swim through it—you dance with it.”
The memory hits with such clarity that I nearly miss a stroke. But then something shifts inside me—a quiet settling, like sediment finding its place after current disruption. Grant was right. I don't fight the water like these other swimmers, trained in pristine pools with controlled environments. I've learned to feel its moods, to anticipate its resistance.
The third fifty meters is where most swimmers falter, where lactic acid floods muscles and doubt creeps in. But I've trained in a river that changed daily, that challenged me differently each morning. My body knows how to adapt, how to find efficiency where others find only exhaustion.
The crowd chants my name every time I lift my ear out of the water to take a breath, spurring me on.
I pull ahead of the Irish swimmer, finding a rhythm that feels like flying. The final turn comes and goes, and now it's just a straight shot home.
Twenty-five meters. Twenty. Ten.
My lungs burn, my shoulders scream, but there's a wild joy building in me that drowns out the pain. This is what I was made for.
My hand slams the wall and I surface, gasping. The crowd's roar hits me like a physical force, but I can't process it yet. My eyes find the scoreboard, and the numbers swim into focus.
