Page 31 of Resilience

“Mom, come on. I lose everything if I’m in love with her. She’s not in love with me, and it fucks everything up between us if our feelings don’t mesh. I can’t lose her. I can’t.”

The stresses of the weekend threatened to crack him into pieces. On top of everything, he felt like an asshole for whining about his shitty weekend when Athena had been raped. But he couldn’t talk about that, and his worry for her and fury for what had happened to her had frothed all his feelings up so big and high he was choking on them.

Yes, he was in love with his best friend. Jesus Christ, he loved her so fucking much. And he felt utterly helpless and useless now, when she needed somebody strong and capable.

Mom led him to the picnic table and set the basket down. Then she pushed him to sit, and she sat beside him and picked up his hand.

Inside the house, Tank barked and whined. They had to get in there, or let him out here, soon, or he’d start tearing the door up.

But Mom didn’t seem to notice the ruckus. “You will never lose Athena,” she said. “You’re family. If nothing else, you will always be family, and you will work through any trouble that might rise up between you. If you want her to be more than your best friend, the only way that can happen is if you take a chance and tell her how you feel. Personally, speaking as someone who’s been close to you both as long as you’ve been alive, someone who’s watched you together all that time, I think you won’t be sorry to tell her once you see how she responds. But even if I’m wrong, I’m sure the worst thing that will happen is a little bit of awkward time and then things will settle back into place.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“A bond like the one between you two is too strong and deep to break so easily. Whether it’s friendship or something else, you two will always be in each other’s life. Always. But Sam—if you are in love with her, and you don’t tell her, if you try to pretend everything is the way it was, that ...” She shook her head. “It’s not sustainable. You’ll pine and grow to resent her dating other people. She won’t know to be careful of your feelings. That could do real damage in time. Don’t suffer in silence. Honor your friendship with honesty.”

“I’m scared,” he said. His voice failed him and it came out as a whisper.

“Oh, baby. You are in love with her.”

Sam nodded—and then the lump of love, pain, fear, worry, and rage that had been pulsing in his chest for the entire day broke apart, and he barked out a sob before he got himself under control.

Mom pulled him close, and he rested his tired head on her shoulder.

“You won’t lose her. I promise. Be brave, be honest, and all will be well.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Athena’s mother came in hard with a complex combination of jabs and punches. Athena blocked them all, but she couldn’t get a turn in, and Mom drove her across the mat. If she got driven off the mat, Mom would win the spar. There was nothing riding on who won or lost their spars, except that the past few days, Athena felt like everything was riding on everything.

Why was she still training, anyway? It was pointless and stupid. She’d been doing Krav Maga since she was eight, and for what? So she could pretend she was tougher than she was? She wasn’t even five feet tall and nowhere near a hundred pounds. Uncle Gunner called her ‘fun size,’ which was kind of creepy and not nearly as funny as she let him think it was, but he wasn’t wrong. She was freakishly little. There was literally no martial arts move she could do that could protect her from a full-size asshole—and now she knew that for an absolute fact.

Angry at herself and the entire world, Athena lost her cool when she felt her heel teeter over empty space. With nothing to lose, she stopped blocking, stopped looking for an opening to start a combination drive of her own. Instead, she spun and delivered a back kick straight into her mother’s gut—and she put all the force she could muster into it, as if she were in a match rather than a spar.

They were in full pads, but still Mom doubled over. Athena should have pulled up right then, but instead she drove forward, repeating the same combination of punches her mother had used, driving Mom back and back the other way. When she finished with a side hammerfist, Mom blocked it and then, her face tight with anger, she grabbed Athena and locked her into a rear standing choke.

With gloves on, they could only communicate with body language. Mom held on, the hold more like an angry hug than a choke, and gave Athena a few hard shakes. She was telling her to calm down.

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