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I want her to talk to me, to tell me where this is coming from. I want to see if I can offer her some kind of help, but her walls are tall this time, and I'm not going to be the one knocking them down.

"I need to get home." She hops up from the bleacher, heading toward the locker room before stopping to turn back. "Thank you, Coach. For taking a chance on me."

Now take a chance on yourself, I silently plead. Out loud, though, I reply, "I stand by what I said the day we met. I think you're worth taking the chance on."

Ducking her head, she turns away to continue down the deck. She passes Mia on the way, who smiles at her, and slows to a stop to chat. Emmie says something to her before scurrying away. Mia frowns before looking down the deck toward me. I stand to greet her as she picks up her pace.

"What is that all about?" Her eyes are searching my face the second she reaches me, probably able to see the disappointment clearly written out. "Ronan?"

I shrug, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my sweats. "I don't know. She wouldn't talk to me. Just told me she couldn't do it anymore and quit."

Mia's eyes widen, her jaw dropping open on a gasp. "What? No way. That can't be what she wants!"

"I don't think it is, but I'm not going to push her, Mia." I don't know if she gets the underlying message, that I don't want to do to another kid what my parents did to me, but I need her to believe me. "She wouldn't talk to me."

She glances over her shoulder to watch Emmie disappear into the locker rooms, then looks back up at me. "Do you think she'll talk to me? She loves swimming, Ronan. You were there when she lit up at your kitchen table. There's something else going on. There has to be."

She's right. The way Emmie looks whenever she's in the water or talking about swimming is pure passion. It's the same look I saw light up the eyes of my friends and competitors long after my parents dimmed it in my own. If there's even a slight chance that Mia could get her to open up, and I'm thinking there's a pretty good one, then we might be able to forget about this.

"Maybe," I tell her. "I do think it'd be good for you to try."

She doesn't waste a second, leaning to press a kiss to my cheek, and give my arm a squeeze before she's jogging down the deck toward the locker room.

A harsh whistle blows from somewhere behind me, followed by Carter yelling, "Walk!"

But Mia doesn't listen. She also doesn't flip him off this time, so it might be progress all around.

"Rude of her to not listen to me."

"Fuck," I exclaim, practically jumping out of my skin. Carter is standing next to me, looking a little smug. "Where the hell did you come from?"

He grins. "I wasn't quiet, man. Where is she going in such a hurry?"

"She's trying to talk Emmie out of quitting."

“Oh, shit,” Carter breathes.

"Yeah." I turn to look at him. "I'm hoping she can change that, though.”

“Ronan told me you quit.”

Emmie’s eyes narrow into a glare, but she doesn’t pay attention to me. Instead, she focuses intently on stuffing her towel in her bag.

I move to sit on the bench across from the lockers, careful to give her enough room. “Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t want to do this anymore, you shouldn’t have to. It just seems like it’s coming out of nowhere.”

She hesitates for the briefest second before she returns to packing her bag. My eyes track her movements, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. She refuses to look at me, though. “I don’t think this is what you want. I think you want to do this, want to see where this could take you. You’re a talented swimmer, Emmie. If you weren’t, your coach wouldn’t have fought so hard for you to be here.”

With a huff, she turns to face me with her hands on her hips—pure defiance. “What do you want me to say, Miss Sheridan?”

I ignore the formality, knowing she’ll never be anything but polite and respectful, especially at the club. “I want you to be honest. If not with your coaches or me, then at least with yourself. If you’re scared, that’s a valid feeling, and we can work on it, together.”

I hum under my breath, picking at a stray thread on my jeans. “Maybe you’re right. Did you know I had my first public anxiety attack when I was seventeen? It was over a bad grade on a test. I’d studied so hard—worked my ass off in that class—and still came up short.”

She glares at me in pure teenage rage. “This is nothing like a bad grade on a test.”

“Humor me for five minutes, please?” I motion to the bench across from me and wait for her to take a seat, huffing while crossing her arms over her chest. “Now, where was I? Oh, right. The test. It was the most important test of the semester, and I knew I needed a good grade in the class to get into all my top colleges. While I was a swimmer in high school, I wasn’t good enough to depend on a scholarship.

“So, I studied hard, dedicated myself to school and swimming, hoping for the best. The problem was, those two things became my entire identity. And my best was never good enough. When one slipped, the other wasn’t there to catch me, and it terrified me. I put so much pressure on myself to not disappoint anyone—my parents, my teachers, my coaches. I didn’t care if I disappointed myself as long as everyone else was happy.”