The Summer Games: Out of Bounds (27 page)

“Let go,” he demanded, curling his fingers inside me and rubbing my clit with his thumb until I shuddered against him

“Erik,” I whispered, gripping his t-shirt in my fingers as my body started to quake.

Even before I’d finished my orgasm, he was unzipping his jeans. He ripped a condom out of his wallet, tearing open the package and reaching down to hold himself steady so I could roll it on. I was in such a rush, about to explode with need, but then I had him in my hand and I heard the guttural growl that slipped past his lips. The tables were turned. I was ready to roll the condom onto him, but I waited, stroking his length and building the heat between my legs even more. I was so turned on, I knew I’d come again quickly, just from his thumb swirling across me.

“I didn’t make you wait.”

I smirked.

“Maybe you need to learn a little patience,” I quipped, slowly gliding my palm down him, resisting the urge to push forward and brush the tip of him against me. I knew he’d feel like heaven. The second he sank into me it’d be game over. He’d own me for good.

“
Brie…
”

He gripped my ponytail in his hands and tilted my head back. His mouth hit mine hard as his hips start thrusting. He was fucking my hand and I was going to lose my mind.

Two strokes.

Three.

Then he ripped out of my hold and positioned himself before me, breaking our kiss to watch me as he slowly slipped in the first inch.

“Focus on this,” he moaned against my lips.

I squeezed my legs tight, trying to protect myself, but it was no use. One of his hands was guiding him inside me and the other was pushing my legs apart, forcing me to feel every single inch of him.

I gripped his neck, pulling him back down for a kiss as he filled me completely. He stilled there, letting me get used to him, but I still wasn’t ready when he started moving. His hips were strong and he was still standing; he had the advantage. When I asked him to slow down, to take it easy, he took my bottom lip into his mouth and pumped his hips harder.

“
Erik…
”

“You need this, Brie. You
begged
for this.”

I was sweating, could feel the beads rolling down my body. He ripped my hand from his neck and told me to hold open my leotard for him. It was too late to strip it off; we’d have to make do. I hooked my finger inside it and cried out as his thumb hit my clit.

“Hold on,” he said, squeezing my hand on his neck.

He was lifting me, pulling me off the beam and dropping me back onto the mat with my legs spread.

His hands hit my bent knees, using them as leverage so he could roll his hips against me.

My mouth dropped open, but there was no sound.

There was nothing.

The new angle was too much; his rhythm was too much. He was fucking me, curling his hips, and grinding my ass into the mat with hard strokes.

When his hand slipped between our bodies, brushing against me, there was nothing but blackness.

I was gone.

In the stars
.

“Every time I see you walk into the gym I dream of doing this. I dream about what you look like beneath this leotard.”

His grip on my thighs was relentless. I could feel my muscles starting to cramp, but I breathed through it, loving the sting of pain.

“Do you dream about spreading those legs for me?”

He bent low so his next words were whispered against my ear.

“
For your coach?
”

My back arched off the mat, bringing him another inch deeper.

“
Erik
.”

He knew I got off on the fantasy, the taboo. His provocative words and the relentless roll of his hips made the fall inevitable. He kissed every inch of me, dragging his mouth across my nipples and teasing me as I started to shake beneath him. I knew he liked the feeling of being inside me, but it couldn’t compare to how I felt, how deeply he stroked me, how insane it felt to clench around him and lose control as he pumped into me.

He groaned with pleasure and I opened my eyes, watching him find his own release. His brows clenched. His jaw tightened and his mouth fell open just a few millimeters so I could hear the dark groans slip out of him. It was the single sexiest thing in the world and I didn’t blink once, trying to hold on to the moment for as long as possible.

Erik made love to me on that gym floor. Though we’d never spoken the words aloud, I felt it in his movements, in the way his hips rolled into me, in the way his hands squeezed my thighs, in the way my name slipped out of his lips. There was no denying how I felt for him in that moment. In my dirtiest moment I felt as if I’d been washed clean. I was laid bare for Erik and he didn’t shy away; he drew me closer and held me tight. I was so thankful he couldn’t see my face as the tears started to spill down my cheeks.

I was in love with the enemy.

Chapter Thirty-One

Erik

There was a
small bathroom in the back corner of the training facility; Brie had disappeared into it a few minutes earlier and I stood staring at the closed door, wondering what she was thinking. I’d disposed of the condom and cleaned myself up, but Brie had been quiet after I pulled out of her, mumbling about needing to clean up before locking herself behind the flimsy door. I wanted to knock and make sure she was okay, but the light flickered off and the door creaked open before I could.

She met my eye as she walked out and then glanced away, back to the row of beams behind us.

“So I think if I do a few more routines, I should be okay.”

Her voice was distant and small, nothing like the girl who’d just come apart underneath me.

“Routines?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

It was late. She should have already been back at the village.

She nodded and moved past me toward the bars.

I knew the last hour had gotten through to her, but instead of continuing to confide in me, she’d gone into the bathroom and tucked her emotions away again. She’d fixed her hair and twisted it up onto the top of her head, but she couldn’t erase the flush covering her neck and chest. There was still a red handprint on her thigh from where I’d been holding her as I came.
Jesus
. She couldn’t just pull away like that.

“Brie, I think we should—”

She held up her hand to stop me. “Please don’t. Not right now. I appreciate everything you said, I just…I need to work through these routines. That’s it.”

Small, fragile Brie was carrying the world on her shoulders and breaking my heart in the process.

“I don’t regret what just happened,” I said, trying to reassure her.

She nodded, once, and then turned away, indifferent. “I know. I need to get back to work.”

If I hadn’t just been buried inside her, hearing her moan and beg for me to touch her, I would have thought she despised me. This was her: hot and cold, distant when I wanted her close, impossible to resist when she wanted to be.

I didn’t try to push her to go home; she was struggling, and if she wanted to finish a few more routines, I’d let her.

She adjusted her grips and took the bars, practicing a few release moves while I stood beneath her, ready to catch her if she fell. I watched her move across the bars, tight and in control. She looked better than she had in weeks, relaxed and confident. I could have watched her up there for hours.

On her fourth routine, she gained momentum, spun faster and faster around the bar, and then released up into the air in a tight ball, completing two full turns before her feet hit the ground. No step. Perfect landing.

“Good,” I said, stepping off the mat. “You look ready.”

She brushed the chalk off her grips and nodded, no hint of a smile on her full lips.

After we gathered our things in silence, I caught a cab and guided her in first. She shoved her gym bag at her feet and pulled her jacket tighter around her, crossing her arms over her chest to keep it in place. Her gaze was focused out on the world and the deep lines marring her forehead proved how far she was from focusing on the competition the next day.

I stared down at my phone, trying to scroll through emails and give her the privacy she so desperately desired, but then her small voice filled the silent cab.

“Gold medals come with a $25,000 check. Did you know that?”

I glanced up, surprised by her voice. “Yes.”

She kept her gaze out the window. “I have six chances to place first. That’s $150,000 up for grabs—not to mention if I come in first that many times, companies will be knocking down my door and…well, I would finally be in a position to help my mom.”

She sounded determined.

“But if I come in last, if I fall or stutter in the next few days, I go home a nobody…and my mom will have sacrificed her life for nothing.”

“Brie—”

She shook her head, defiant. “I don’t expect you to understand. You hate your family,
your father
.”

I reared back, shocked that she would bring him up. “For good reason. He loved a son who could compete in the Olympics. When I was no longer capable of that, I wasn’t worth his time.”

She glanced back to me, her eyes so full of sadness I had to look away.

“Erik…”

The cab pulled up in front of the athlete complex. I paid the driver and hopped out after Brie, content to walk the rest of the way home.

She rounded the back of the car and tried to catch my eye.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Brie deserved to know the truth, or at the least the start of it.

“When I was seventeen, I injured my shoulder, and instead of giving me time to rest it before the Olympics, my father gave me opioids,” I said, turning to Brie. “For months, he filled illegal prescriptions for an injury he didn’t have so he could pass on the pills to me. At the height of my addiction, I was taking twice the max dose per day.” Her tiny gasp forced me to glance back at her. There was horror in her eyes, sheer sadness. “He thought he was doing what was best for me. When I told him I wanted to quit, he flew off the rails.”

I told her everything, not sugarcoating the gritty details.

The same day I tried to buy drugs at 12
th
and Chicon, I stumbled back into my childhood home and found my mother standing behind the kitchen island, chopping vegetables for dinner.

“I’m quitting gymnastics,” I said.

Her knife clattered to the counter, but she recovered quickly and shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Go freshen up. Dinner will be ready soon.”

She didn’t look up long enough to see the bruising on my body. She was always good at self-censoring the truth. She didn’t know about the pain pills; my father and I had kept it a secret from her.

“No. I’m done.”

She shook her head. “Erik, everyone has hard days in the gym. Just go fresh—”

“It’s not that. I’m done. I want a different life.”

“What are you talking about?”

She was so confused, so out of the loop. She didn’t know about my depression or my addiction. I stepped toward the counter and tried to tell her a condensed version: how my shoulder injury had led to a pill addiction, how meaningless my life had become, how little control I had over my present and how little care I had for my own future. I wanted to shake her, make her see past my strong exterior. To the world, I looked like a man on top of the world. Inside, I wanted to die.

She was shaking by the end of it—out of fear or sadness, I’ll never know. She stared down at the cutting board, assessing the vegetables in front of her like they would tell her how to proceed. Finally, she glanced up and leveled me with a calm stare. “When your father gets home, I…I’ll tell him. I think you should be out of the house.”

That gesture was the first genuine act of love from a parent I’d felt in years.

I grabbed a backpack and stuffed it full of clothes for a few days. My cell phone, and toothbrush were all I cared to add on top. She kissed me on the cheek on the way out and shoved money in my hand.

“For a hotel,” she said, and I didn’t argue.

There was nowhere else to go. She knew I had no friends and the only family I had was my grandfather, but he was a million miles away in Sweden.

I checked into a Motel 6 a few miles away from the house and sat there on the bed, trying to piece my life together. I had a high school degree; I could go to college. I could study to become an aerospace engineer like my grandfather, or maybe something different. I’d always loved the stars. I could study astronomy and focus my attention on something bigger than this damn earth and the greedy people inhabiting it.

For two days, I stewed in that room, waiting for a call from my mom. I alternated between sweating in bed with brain-crushing nausea and vomiting incessantly from withdrawals. When the cold flashes would hit, I’d fill up the tiny tub with warm water and collapse onto the chipped enamel surface, using all my strength to stay above the surface of the water. I didn’t sleep for almost 60 hours, and when I finally closed my eyes on the third day, my shrill cellphone began to ring.

My mother was crying hysterically on the other line. I could only hear every other word, but I heard the tail end of her message loud and clear.

“Come home and gather your things.”

I was getting kicked out.

Summoning energy from the deepest parts of my being, I grabbed my keys from the nightstand and drove to my house. I knew my detox would never finish until I’d confronted the source of the suffering.

The sun had set a few hours earlier, but the porch light was on, illuminating the pile of clothes and crap sitting outside on the grass. Everything that had once been inside my room was now sitting outside, thanks to my father. My gymnastics trophies were stuffed into a box and medals were spilling out onto the sidewalk. Half my clothes had ended up in the ditch, soaked through. I was bent down rifling through them, trying to find anything of value when the front door opened.

My father stormed out of the house like a bat out of hell.

“You ungrateful piece of shit,” he shouted, running to me like he was ready to tackle me to the ground. He’d never put a hand on me, so I didn’t try to block his assault; I should have. When his head connected with my stomach, I went flying back hard enough that my head split open on the concrete. The acute sensory pain came as a relief after enduring days of widespread dull ache. He pushed himself up with fury in his eyes.

“You think you can quit now? You think you know sacrifice, pain?”

His fist connected with my jaw and I nearly blacked out.

“I’ve worked my ass off to train you and if you’ve wasted my time, then get the fuck out of my house.”

His boot hit the side of my back, right above my kidney, and I squeezed my eyes closed.

“You can’t even fight back. Can you?” he yelled, rearing back to land another punch.

I shoved my arm in front of my head, blocking his shots as he kept pounding his bloodied fists into me, over and over again.

Something inside me cracked that day. Maybe it was the loss of my father or the feeling of lying on that grass with blood running down my face, but after he wore himself out and turned his back to walk away, I felt stronger that I’d been even before taking the pills, even before the injury. I rose up looking like hell, but used the adrenaline coursing through my veins as the last well I could draw from.

Even in my weakness, I towered over him when I stood to my full height. He’d built me into this monster. I reached forward and gripped his neck, feeling the swollen veins in my forearm bulge and strain with the effort.

I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him. He was fighting me, trying to land a solid punch to my ribs so I’d back off, but I didn’t feel a thing. He’d made me numb long ago.

“I’m leaving this sport and I’m leaving you,” I spat. “And if I hear that you’re drugging other gymnasts, I will come back here and kill you,” I said, shaking him back and forth. “Do you hear me? This won’t be handled by the police. I’ll do what I should do right now.”

I could feel him starting to struggle to breathe, and it wasn’t until my mom ran out of the house, screaming for us to stop that I finally let him go and shoved him back into the grass.

“Erik!” she cried, hysterical. “Your head…”

I reached up and felt the blood seeping from my skull. My fingers came away dripping with redness, but I shook away the pain, gathered the shit I cared about, and left my father in the front yard cowering like the pussy he was.

The world never heard about my drug addiction or my father’s transgressions. I should have gone to the police and reported him, but I couldn’t do it. I just wanted to put it all behind me. I moved to Sweden to stay with my grandfather for a while, and I stayed up to date with news about my father’s gym. I never once heard about him mistreating other athletes, but I knew that didn’t mean a thing. I’d stayed silent; other gymnasts probably did too. I should have done the world a favor and killed him when I had the chance.
The odds that he was an angel from that day forward were slim.

By the time I finished spewing details I’d kept under lock and key for the last ten years, Brie’s features were coated in horror. Her face had drained of color and she was shaking her head, willing the story away. She didn’t want it to be true any more than I did.

“So you’re right, Brie—we’re completely different people with completely different lives, but you’re wrong to say I don’t understand what it’s like to try to compete for someone other than yourself. I don’t want you to have to learn the same lessons I did.”

“I’m sorry.” She was crying then. “Erik…I didn’t know.”

I rubbed my jaw and tried to keep my tone even. I hadn’t planned on revealing so much to her that night and I was definitely not looking for her pity. I just wanted her to understand that we weren’t so different.