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I loved the way her hand fit in mine. The way it felt like it belonged there. I loved the way she made me feel. The way my heart galloped its anarchic sprint whenever I knew her eyes were on me.

Nothing Carter had ever done had made me feel like this, and not for lack of trying. He was sweet, he was considerate, without a single domineering bone in his body. He’d never pressured me. He wasn’t clingy. I couldn’t have found a guy who was more laid-back, or ridiculously good-looking. I had no excuse not to be head-over-heels in love with him.

Yet never, in the eight years of our erratic dating history, had I ever once wanted to reach out and touch him so badly my fingers were shaking.

So what if Dillon hadn’t been in the script I originally envisioned?

There was always time for a last-minute rewrite.

I released an unsteady breath and, though I didn’t find the courage to kiss her, I did manage to shove aside the tilt-a-whirl of my uncertainties enough to catch her hand as she stepped in the direction of the ongoing party.

“Should we sort dinner?” she asked, and through the shadows I could feel her gaze on me again as I laced our fingers together, falling into step beside her.

Scene 10

Dillon’s older sister, Seren, had razzed her once—long before Kelsey—that she had a bad habit of fancying straight girls. A practice, Seren insisted, bound to set her up for failure. Dillon had been unconcerned.

“Every girl is straight until they’re not.”

“Touché.” Seren had been unable to argue. “Still, it’ll nip you in the arse one day.”

But over the years, it hadn’t proven to be much of an issue. Until Kelsey, Dillon had kept a very blasé approach to her love life—one she’d adopted again once her relationship with the footballer had ended.

Her theory: you won some, you lost some. And for the most part, she won.

Kelsey was a prime example. She’d been supposedly “straight” when they met, after all. And for a time, she’d been the best thing that ever happened to Dillon. For three years, she’d been unable to imagine her life with someone else. They’d been a perfect fit—driven to succeed—fierce competitors—in love. But then the Lionesses won the Euros, and their success had favored them to bring home the World Cup, and Kelsey’s already prominent career was suddenly shoved into famedom. Kelsey became England’s darling. The face of football. A national hero. Her fan base—already impressive—quadrupled overnight.She was on chat shows and television adverts, her face plastered across the United Kingdom. Where previously she’d only been recognizable to the devout football fans, suddenly, everywhere they went, people knew her name—who she was—and, by the laws of social media, who Dillon was, also.

The relative anonymity Dillon had enjoyed in her own career, and in turn, her personal life, was abruptly abolished. She unexpectedly found herself in the limelight, on the receiving end of fan mail, hate mail, love letters. She and Kelsey became an unhealthy fixation for obsessive football fans, along with acting as a beacon for homophobic hate. Men and women from across the globe spewed their disgust on every social media post, with some of the more devoted creeps even going so far as to track down Seren—sending her odd friend requests and follows on her own athletic profile.

None of it had been Kelsey’s fault. She’d been no different than Dillon—a rising star in her career. But football was an international pastime—the beautiful game—popular across the entire world. Triathlons were different. Triathletes were unknown.

Olympic medalist. World Champion. Dillon Who?

Exactly how Dillon liked it.Hadliked it.

Suddenly, the pressure of their relationship became too much. The night England won their home turf quarterfinal, advancing to the semis, Dillon called it quits.

She’d broken Kelsey’s heart.

It had been selfish. It had been unfair. It had drastically backfired on her quest for anonymity, drawing a tidal wave of hatred from Kelsey’s fans—and, at the time, what had felt like the entirety of England. She’d been forced to delete her socials to escape the wrath of the football fanatics, and spent a couple of years lying low. The whole ordeal left Dillon with few friends, and an albatross of guilt that almost killed her.

But that was neither here nor there.

Point being—Kelseyhadbeen straight. Until she wasn’t. And now, after Dillon, the English footballer had dated half the women in the WSL.

Thus… straight until you weren’t. That was Dillon’s theory and it had yet to let her down.

So it didn’t faze her that Kameryn had clearly never previously questioned her identity. Sometimes you met a person and just clicked. What was wrong with that? Maybe it worked out, maybe it didn’t. But for now, Kameryn appeared to be on the same wave length. Which was cool, because Dillon really liked her.

After leaving the aquarium, they spent a few minutes wandering through the crowd in Mallory Square, before deciding to forgo the food truck lines and head over to the Historic Seaport District. Dillon wasn’t a fan of tourism related nightlife, but Kameryn had never been to Key West, so a tiki bar on the white sand beach seemed an appropriate choice for dinner.

Seated at a wooden spool table, Dillon ignored her body’s dissatisfied opposition to the deviation of her routine. Usually, after a race, she spent the remainder of the day in recovery. Stretching. Icing. Rehydrating. Refueling. Always thinking ahead, preparing for the next victory. She’d rarely leave her hotel, and habitually forced herself to an early sleep, even when her adrenaline was still soaring.

Sometimes, however, certain circumstances made rules worthy of breaking.

Kameryn Kingsbury was proving to be a sterling example of exactly that type of situation.

As the tables around them filled, the patrons growing boisterous, Dillon enjoyed watching Kam take in their surroundings. She quickly forgot about her aversion to crowdsand distaste for loudmouthed frivolity, and instead found herself enchanted by the paradox Kam presented. Where she was shy and uncertain on one hand, Dillon found her bold and unreserved on the other, her charm built in a macédoine of certitude and fragility—an enigmatic puzzle she was determined to piece together.