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She shakes her head. “No, not really. I know you’ve always done it, at least as long as my dad’s been the coach, but I have no idea why other than it being a good cause.”
I nod, letting out a slow breath to calm my racing heart.
“Do you want the long answer or the short?”
She peers up at me, those stormy blue eyes swirling beneath thick lashes. “I want as much as you’re willing to share.”
I nod. “My brother, Carlos, is a year older than me. Our plan was always to apply for the same schools, and wherever we got in, we both would go.”
I let that new information hang in the silence between us as I work through my thoughts, stringing sentences together that I hope make sense.
“He took a year off after graduating high school and worked with our dad. He’s a car mechanic.” She nods, urging me to continue. “We both got in here, to your university, actually. We each had a full football scholarship.”
She tilts her head, her brows pinching as she works through this. She says nothing despite the questions piling up in her head. Through all the chaos and her unrelenting sass,I see her.I see Elise Auclair for who she truly is, and buried beneath the rubble of a difficult past and emotionally taxing mental illness is someone just fighting to get to the next thing each day.She’s resilient.And through seeingher, I’m able to see myself reflected a little more clearly too. That’s what drives me to open up to her.
She doesn’t rush me or push me further, and I appreciate that because I’m about to recount the worst day of my life, a day I haven’t spoken about in years, and I can’t be sure how it’ll impact either of us.
“I wasn’t a great kid, honestly. I made a lot of mistakes, but Carlos made sure to help me clean each one of them up. I was sort of a daredevil, always looking for the next adrenaline rush. So naturally, the night before we were supposed to fly here to make our dreams a reality, I convinced Carlos to do something reckless,” I tell her, my stomach twisting in knots as bile rises in my throat.
She wiggles her hands out from under the blanket and brings them up, resting them on my cheeks, rubbing the pads of her thumbs over my cheekbones.
“Carlos begged me not to do it. Hehatedall of the dumb shit I’d do for a rush. But it was our last hurrah, and I promised him it would be the very last dumb thing I did if he went with me. Sohe did. He wanted to get it over with, so when he jumped—” My words get stuck as I involuntarily grit my teeth, my jaw aching.
Elise lowers her hands to my chest, waiting patiently for me to finish.
“His bungee cord snapped,” I finish, and I’m hit with another wave of nausea as overwhelming guilt sears through me and wraps around my throat like a noose, my words the bucket being kicked out from under me.
Her eyes well with tears, but she blinks them away, pulling herself closer to me, resting her forehead against mine. I allow her warmth to seep into me, filling in the cracks of my long-forgotten soul.
She doesn’t try to tell me it wasn’t my fault. She doesn’t look at me with pity. She just lets us lie here like this, cloaked in a heavy silence as we both work to comprehend what’d happened.
I clear my throat. “He’s mostly paralyzed from the waist down and lives next door to our parents in case he needs help late at night. And the only reason I’m here instead of rotting away somewhere is because of him. He wouldn’t let me sit around feeling sorry for myself. He didn’t want me to stay home when I could be here, living the dream we both had planned. He’s good like that,” I tell her, pride swelling in my chest as I think about the incredible man my brother’s become despite every challenge he’s faced. The man is the CEO of a major tech company, choosing to live a humble life because it’s what he prefers and not what he’s been forced into.
She speaks for the first time in what feels like hours. “How’d you wind up playing rugby then?”
A smile turns the edges of my lips as I think about that day. The day that changed everything for me.The day that saved my life.
“I was miserable playing football. The sport I’d loved my whole life had become a constant reminder of everything I’d lostand all the pain I’d caused my family. So in the beginning of that first semester, I was on a run by the public fields and a group of blokes had asked me to join their rugby scrimmage for the morning. They said they needed an extra player because their friend was too hungover to show up. They taught me the basics, and it was a shock to everyone that I was actuallygood.”
I shake my head at the memory of the guys, most of them off playing professionally, spread out across the UK and Europe. “They introduced me to their coach, and he worked out a way for me to play for them and maintain my scholarship.”
“Does it hurt you to coach our team? Does it dredge up bad memories?” she asks, her voice small, brows knitted.
I shake my head. “No, Elise. It doesn’t. I’d worried it would when your dad first demanded I coach your team. It took some effort, but after I quit acting like a ballbag, most of the sadness fled. It’s because of you ladies that I’m relearning how to love the sport I grew up playing.”
A small smile lights her face, and it sends a thrill through my whole being.
“It isn’t your fault, you know,” she says. “It took me a long time to learn that after what happened toMamanand my sister, but eventually I did.”
I know her mum passed away from cancer, but I don’t know any details beyond that. “What would you have to feel guilty about?” I ask, shifting our weight so we can both lie on our sides, facing one another.
“My dad supported us both. He loved us endlessly, but because Rachelle had no desire to play sports, or watch them, for that matter,” she adds, a sad smile crossing her full lips, “Dad was always with me. The weekend our lives went to hell was during an away game.Maman’sbreast cancer had spread.” Her chin quivers, throat bobbing. “It metastasized to her bones, lungs, liver, lymph nodes, and toward the end, her brain.” Elisetakes a moment, chewing on her bottom lip before continuing, and my heart aches for her. “Treatments weren’t working, and they’d gotten to a point they weren’t even slowing things down anymore. She decided that the chemo wasn’t worth it anymore if it wasn’t going to improve her quality of life or prolong the time she got to spend with us. She was feeling better, not because shewasbetter, but because she wasn’t pouring toxins into her body to kill something that had already decided to killher.”
She takes another pause, her eyes welling with tears that threaten to break me.
“She convinced my dad and I that she’d be fine while we went away for the night. It was justonenight. She swore she felt better.” Her lips pinch, her gaze shifting toward the sky as she tries desperately to hold herself together. “But when we got home, we found her in bed, cold, and with no life left in her.” Her chin wobbles, and I want her to stop talking. I want her to stop feeling the pain I can see rushing through her like a tidal wave, the same as when it first happened. “And then we found Rachelle,” she whispers, her voice cracking as tears spill down her cheeks. I swipe them away, but they keep coming. “She overdosed. She was alone and terrified, and we weren’t there to help her through it,” she says, sobs wracking her body.
I tug her to my chest, and she buries her face in my shirt. I stroke my hand over her head, allowing her to get it out, and wishing like hell I could take it all away.