Page 58 of Clean Point

As I headed back to the villa, four of them had rushed towards me, coming out of their various hiding places amongst the flower beds. But when one large grey monster got under my foot, causing me to misstep, lose my balance, I fell squarely on my newly recovered knee.

I’d limped the rest of the way back, swearing under my breath every time I had to put weight on that leg. Sliding through the kitchen doors, I aimed right for the freezer, digging out one of the trusty ice packs that Elena had left for me there, and attempted to rest up for the remainder of the evening, my anxiety swelling as the pain refused to dissipate.

We were days away from London. If my knee could still hurt this badly from an incident with a pack of rabid cats, was I even strong enough to get through Wimbledon? I had weeks of competition ahead of me, hours of matches to play.

This was my shot. My chance. But was I really ready for it?

It wasn’t until I limped downstairs for dinner that I noticed Scottie was missing. I asked around, trying to find out if anyone had seen her. When the answer was no and a quick trip to her bedroom upstairs also showed that she wasn’t hiding from me there, I reluctantly started the journey over to the beach. It wasn’t far from the villa, but it was far enough that I shouldn’t have risked it on my injured knee. I made my way through the gardens, avoiding any more of the damned cats, when I spotted the floodlights of the tennis courts still on. I pondered for a moment, thinking of the last place I had seen her. She couldn’t still be there, could she?

Yet, there she was. Standing at the baseline, the crack of the ball meeting her racket echoing through the cooled evening air as the ball machine fired at her. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, falling out from under the cap I’d given her earlier. Seeing her wearing the baseball cap, my name stitched into the back, gave me a low hum of comfort, a continuous murmur in the background of my heart. I remembered the last time I found her here alone. The night she had come clean about everything.

‘What are you still doing here?’ I asked over the noise of the machine. Scottie jumped, snapping out of her zone. A ball pounded into the side of her, and she yelped.

‘Jesus, you scared me,’ she complained, stepping out of the line of fire.

‘It’s been hours, Scottie. Have you rested at all?’ I questioned as she pulled the remote out of the pocket of her pleated skirt, and the machine powered down.

‘I wanted to get it right.’

‘That’s what this is about?’ My brows raised in surprise. Had she come back to work some more on that? ‘That move is simple, easy to correct next time in training. You must’ve been done hours ago.’

‘But then … then I started running drills, and I started to get slow, so I started again and … and I wanted to practise,’ she explained with a slight grimace, her shoulder slumped and out of their usual strong pose.

I shook my head, still unsure of what to make of this. Why hadn’t she come inside? We needed to rest as much as we needed to practise, especially this close to the competition. The last thing we needed was her burning out. I’d seen it before, even experienced it myself, and it made an already gruelling few weeks feel impossible.

‘Come inside. You need to eat dinner.’

‘I’ll get something soon. I need to practise this backhand swing.’

‘Your backhand is fine,’ I stressed.

‘It could be better.’

‘Then we can focus on it tomorrow.’

‘Five more minutes,’ she pressed again, her fingers adjusting oddly around the handle of her racket. The movement caught my attention, her grip all wrong for something so fundamental. Then I noticed the skin looked a little red. Closing the gap between us, I was fully able to read the exhaustion that was written all over her face. Her usually dull gaze with her blue eyes almost washed out.

‘Show me your palm, Scottie.’ I reached out for her left arm, my hand open to her.

Her brows pressed together. ‘Show me your knee. I saw you limping. Is it sore again?’

For a moment, I considered lying, shrugging it off and telling her it was nothing. But if I wanted her to open up, maybe I should do it too. ‘One of those damn cats got in my way. I’ll get an ice pack soon.’

Scottie looked up at me, her face flushed pink, trying unsuccessfully to contain the stress across her face. Slowly, she relented, swapping her racket to her right and lifting her hand to me. I gripped her wrist and softly rotated it, her fingers clenched into a painful fist, but I could already see that her palm was a bright painful shade of red.

‘Can I see … please?’ My hand slipped from her wrist and instead went to her palm, softly rubbing at the outside in a comforting motion. Slowly, her fingers unfolded, and I finally saw the state of her injury.

The palm was red raw, the skin broken and swollen slightly, with small blisters forming on the heel of her thumb, and along her fingers. I could make out the strain in the creases of her palm, the line deep and more pronounced from the constraint flexing and stretching of her fingers.

My heart didn’t break – it shattered. Regret overwhelmed me. I should’ve never left her. I should’ve made sure she came inside and rested. As much as I hated that she’d done this to herself, I hated the fact that I had let her even more.

But the question still scratched at me: why? Why was she still out here? Why had she let herself get hurt like this and then carry on, anyway?

I smothered down my anger, letting it burn away instead. I couldn’t look at her injury without wincing myself, the thought of how much pain she must be in too much.

‘Can I take you inside? Get this cleaned up?’ I still held onto her hand, almost unable to let it go. ‘We’ll need to make sure it doesn’t get infected.’

‘It’s not that bad.’ She pulled her arm out of my grasp, her fingers curling back into a fist, wincing as she did. Her pain was clear for a moment before her mask fell back into place.

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