Page 26 of Depths of Desire (The Saints of Westmont U #4)

NINETEEN

OLIVER

The alarm didn’t wake me because I hadn’t slept.

I rolled out of bed and stood there for a moment, bare feet on cold hardwood, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light filtering through the blinds. The apartment was too quiet. Too still. Like it was holding its breath.

I walked to the kitchen without turning on any lights.

His mug was still there.

Plain white ceramic, sitting on the counter next to the coffee maker where he’d left it three days ago. The inside was stained with the ghost of black coffee, a thin brown ring around the rim. I could still see the impression of his fingers on the handle if I looked too long.

His hoodie hung over the back of the chair by the window. Navy blue, soft cotton, with a small hole near the left shoulder seam.

I didn’t touch either of them.

I didn’t look too long.

I filled my own mug, black, no handle, regulation size, and drank the coffee standing up, staring out the window at the empty parking lot below. It was neither night nor morning. Dawn would come whether I was ready or not.

If I stop moving, I’ll drown.

I set the mug in the sink, grabbed my gear bag, and left.

The natatorium was a tomb at this hour.

No coaches. No teammates. No sound except the hum of the filtration system and the soft lap of water against the pool deck. I changed in silence, pulled on my cap and goggles, and slipped into lane four without ceremony.

The water was perfect. Seventy-eight degrees, pH balanced, chlorine sharp in my nostrils. It welcomed me like it always did, closing over my head as I pushed off the wall.

I swam like a machine.

Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Turn.

No wasted motion. No broken rhythm. My body carved through the water with surgical precision, each pull calculated, each kick deliberate. I counted laps in sets of fifty, then hundreds, then lost count entirely and just kept going.

This was what I was made of. Muscle memory and lung capacity and the ability to shut out everything that wasn’t forward motion. This was who I was before him. This was how I survived.

The first swimmers arrived around seven. I heard their voices echo off the high ceiling, muffled by the water in my ears. I didn’t look up. I didn’t slow down. I kept my head down and my stroke rate steady, cutting through their conversations like they were just another current to push through.

Coach Johnson showed up at seven thirty.

“Hayworth,” he called from the deck as I hit the wall. “You been here long?”

I pulled my goggles up and blinked water from my eyes. “Not long.”

He checked his watch, then the pace clock on the wall. “You’re running a 1:48 pace. On a warm-up set.”

I didn’t say anything.

He crouched down at the edge of the pool, elbows on his knees. “That’s race pace, son. What’s got you wound so tight this early?”

“Just feeling good,” I said.

He studied my face for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. You look sharp. Sharper than I’ve seen you in months.”

I nodded and pushed off the wall again.

Discipline.

Perfect strokes. Breath on every third. Flip turns like razors.

The rest of the team filtered in over the next hour. I heard them talking, laughing, complaining about the early start time. Marcus tried to get my attention as he passed my lane, waving his hand under the water until I had to surface.

“Jesus, Oliver, you trying to set a world record at practice?”

I shrugged and kept swimming.

He made a joke about me being possessed by the ghost of Mark Spitz. A few guys laughed. I didn’t react. I just put my head back down and resumed my stroke count.

They stopped trying to include me after that.

The days blurred together.

Early mornings before the sun touched the horizon. Empty locker rooms that smelled like disinfectant and old towels. Protein shakes I choked down without tasting. I ate meals standing up, staring at my phone, opening Lennox’s contact and closing it again without typing anything.

Me: Hey.

Delete.

Me: I miss you.

Delete.

Me: I’m sorry.

Delete.

I went to classes but didn’t speak unless called on. I sat in the back row of every lecture hall, took notes by hand, and left as soon as the professor dismissed us. I avoided the student center, the main quad, anywhere I might run into hockey players.

Lena called twice. I let it go to voicemail both times, then texted her back hours later with some excuse about training. She replied with a string of question marks and a GIF of a concerned-looking cat. I didn’t respond.

I couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t explain that I’d fallen for someone and messed it up.

The nightmares started on Thursday.

I dreamed of the cabin. Of snow falling outside the windows and firelight dancing on wood-paneled walls. Of his hands in my hair and his mouth against my throat. Of waking up next to him and feeling, for the first time in my life, like I belonged somewhere other than the swimming pool.

I woke up drenched in sweat, hard and aching and furious with myself for wanting something I couldn’t have. Something I didn’t need .

I got dressed in the dark and went for a run.

Three miles became five. Five became eight. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs shook and the cold air stripped the dream from my skin. I ran until the only thing I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other.

I can’t afford to break down. Not now.

Coach called me into his office on Friday afternoon.

“Nationals,” he said, sliding a manila folder across his desk. “Final logistics.”

I opened it. Plane tickets, hotel confirmations, practice schedules. My event lineup. The 100 and 200 freestyle. The relay anchor. Everything I’d been working toward for the past eight months.

“Departure is Wednesday morning,” he continued. “We’ll have two days to acclimate before the competition starts. Media obligations are Thursday afternoon. You good with that?”

I nodded and signed the forms without reading them.

“Oliver,” he said. “You’re doing good.”

I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or tell him that staying focused was the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.

Instead, I said, “Yes, sir.”

He studied me for a moment longer, then nodded. “Go get some rest. Big week ahead.”

I left his office and walked straight to the pool.

The final week passed in a haze of chlorine and controlled breathing.

I packed my duffel with the same methodical precision I brought to everything else. Suits, goggles, spare caps. Lucky warm-up shirt. The medal from last year’s Olympics, wrapped in tissue paper at the bottom of the bag like a talisman I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch.

I stretched alone on the pool deck after practice, going through the routine I’d perfected over the years of competition. Shoulders, back, hips. Each muscle group isolated and lengthened until my body felt like a tuned instrument.

I rewatched footage of my races from the past year, studying my stroke mechanics, my start position, the way I attacked each turn. I made notes in the margins of my training log, adjustments so small they probably didn’t matter but gave me something to control.

And late at night, when the apartment was too quiet and the walls felt like they were closing in, I replayed our last conversation.

The memory didn’t hurt less with repetition. It just hurt quieter, like a bruise you learned to live with.

I closed my eyes and reminded myself why I was here. Why I’d come back to school, why I trained until my body screamed, why I’d built my entire life around fifteen seconds of perfect execution in a chlorinated rectangle.

Not for him. Not for anyone.

For this. For the chance to prove that I was more than my mistakes, more than my failures, more than the boy who came in sixth when it mattered most.

Win first. Feel later.

The alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Time to go.