"Yeah," Elise said. "I do."
"Good," Lou said, and resumed her laps.
They swam and stretched and the conversation drifted to the weekend's upcoming game and Lou's complaints about the new protein bars the nutritionist had introduced and Camille's plan to take Max to the beach. Normal things. Team things. Conversation Elise had felt locked out of for two months, and now she was in the middle of it again, and the belonging was a physical sensation, warm in her chest and solid under her feet.
She thought, as she climbed out of the pool and wrapped herself in a towel, that this was what happiness looked like. Not the explosive, breathless kind that came with first kisses and orgasms, but the quieter, steadier kind that came from being known. From having a team that cheered when you told them you were in love. From having a woman in another city who sent you sunrise photos and told you she missed you.
It was almost too good. The thought arrived uninvited and lodged itself beneath her ribs like a splinter. She'd had the same thought at nineteen, the night before her scholarship was confirmed, lying awake in her childhood bedroom with Sophie asleep across the hall and her mother's shoes by the front door and the certainty that happiness this complete couldn't possibly hold. And it had held. That time. She pushed the thought away, shoved it down where she kept all the superstitious, anxious thoughts that athletes accumulated over years of competition. Don't think about the good thing or you'll jinx it. Don't say it's going well or the universe will correct. Stupid, irrational, and she knew it was stupid and irrational, and she pushed the thought down and walked to the showers.
The locker room was warm and steamy and smelled of chlorine and mint shower gel, Frankie's brand, which hadpermeated the space over months of use. Elise stood under the hot water and let it run over her shoulders and down her back and through her hair. She was thinking about tonight. Sienna would be back late tomorrow evening. Elise was planning to have flowers at Sienna's apartment. Not because Sienna expected grand gestures, but because Sienna had spent forty-one years not receiving them and Elise intended to correct that imbalance.
She turned off the water and reached for her towel and was halfway through drying her hair when the locker room door banged open.
Mara was standing in the doorway and her face was wrong. The colour was gone. Her blue eyes were wide and her jaw was tight and her hand was gripping the door frame as if she needed it to stay upright. Elise had seen Mara angry, frustrated, jubilant, tipsy. She had never seen Mara look like this.
"Elise." Mara's voice was controlled but the control was thin, a membrane stretched over panic. "I need you to come with me. Right now."
"What's happened?"
"Sienna's been in an accident. A car accident. On the road to the airport this morning." Mara took a breath. It was visible, the forced expansion of her chest, the effort of keeping her voice even. "It's serious, Elise. They've taken her to Phoenix Ridge Hospital."
The words entered Elise's body in sequence and each one was a blow. Sienna. Accident. Car. Serious. Hospital. She heard them and understood them and then felt them, not in her mind but in her chest, her stomach, her legs, the floor tilting under her.
Her knees buckled.
She didn't fall because the bench was behind her and she sat down hard on the wet wood and the towel slipped from her hands and her vision went narrow and dark at the edges. Thelocker room contracted to a tunnel with Mara at the far end, Mara's mouth moving, saying more words that Elise couldn't process because the roaring in her ears had swallowed all sound.
"Elise." Mara was in front of her, crouching, her hands on Elise's knees. "Elise, look at me. Breathe."
She couldn't breathe. Her chest was locked. Her lungs wouldn't expand. She opened her mouth and no air came in and her hands were shaking so violently that they bounced against the bench, uncontrollable, mechanical, and she couldn't stop them.
"What happened?" The words came out in a whisper that didn't sound like her voice. "Is she alive?"
"She's alive. She's in critical condition. A truck ran a red light at the intersection on Harbour Road. Hit the driver's side. The paramedics got her out and she's at Phoenix Ridge Hospital now."
Elise gripped the edge of the bench. Her knuckles went white. "I need to go. I need to go right now."
"I'm driving you. Get dressed. I'll be right outside."
Mara stood and left and the door swung shut and Elise was alone in the locker room with the steam and the chlorine and the sound of her own breathing, which was coming in short, gasping bursts that weren't getting enough oxygen to her brain.
She couldn't move.
Her brain was issuing instructions. Stand up. Put on clothes. Go to the car park. Go to the hospital. Simple, sequential, each step clear and obvious, and her body refused every one of them. Her muscles had disconnected from her will. She sat on the bench in her towel with her wet hair dripping down her back and her hands shaking in her lap and she couldn't move. The image of Sienna was in her head, Sienna in her car this morning, driving to the airport in the early dawn, tired from last night, thinking about the conference, maybe thinking about Elise,maybe smiling at the phone on the passenger seat, and then metal and glass and impact. And then nothing.
The door opened again. Frankie and Camille. They were in their towels, wet from the pool, and they came straight to her. Frankie sat on one side and Camille on the other and neither of them said anything. Frankie put her arm around Elise's shoulders, solid and heavy and warm. Camille took her shaking hand and held it between both of hers.
"Help me get dressed," Elise said. Her voice was broken.
They helped her. Frankie pulled clothes from Elise's bag while Camille held her steady. Elise's hands wouldn't cooperate. She couldn't work the zip on her jeans. She pulled her shirt on inside out and Camille gently turned it the right way. She couldn't tie her shoes and Frankie knelt and did it for her, the tough, battered defender tying Elise's laces with the same careful attention she brought to protecting her goalkeeper.
By the time they reached the corridor, most of the team was there. Lou. Dani. Rowan. Lex, who must have come from Mara's office, her dark hair still damp from her own morning session. They formed a quiet, solid wall around Elise as Mara led her to the car park.
Mara drove. Elise was in the passenger seat. The other players followed in their own cars. Elise stared through the windshield at the road and the buildings and the ocean sliding past and none of it registered. Her body was present but her mind was at an intersection on Harbour Road where a truck had hit Sienna's car and Sienna was broken and alone and maybe dying and Elise hadn't been there.
The last thing she'd said to Sienna wasI love you.At the door of her apartment, with Sienna's lipstick fading and her eyes bright and her hand lingering on Elise's face.I love you.And Sienna had said it back and walked down the stairs and driven away and that was the last time. What if that was the last time.
Her stomach heaved. She pressed her hand against her mouth and breathed through her nose and the nausea receded to a low, persistent burn.