Page 90 of Swim To Me

“Grey?” Delilah squeezes my hand. There’s a dot of chocolate on her upper lip. “Are you okay? I don’t mean to pry, and maybe I’m reading too much into everything… but you’ve been a bit distance tonight. Is everything okay? Is it Hudson? Is it—”

“Can we go sit on the sofa?” I ask, already standing, knocking the table slightly so my still full wine glass threatens to overspill. “I need to show you something.”

Delilah follows me without a single hesitation, sitting down beside me until we’re thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder.

I swipe my thumb over the chocolate dot on her lip, wiping it away and then sucking the taste of the sweet dessert from my finger.

“You had some chocolate—” I say as way of explanation, groaning when Delilah’s lips descend on mine, her tongue tracing the seam of my lips to be granted access.

I want more than anything to give into her.

To pull her up onto my lap, peel down the cups of her built in bra and bury my face in her chest. Feel her rock against my groin, the heat from her warm pussy sending my heart into overdrive, blood thrumming, running red hot.

Instead, my blood thrums for another reason entirely.

“Wait here, okay, gorgeous? I just need to get something. I won’t be a minute.”

Leaving Delilah sitting on the sofa, I grab one of my medals and a photo still of me in action, purposefully ignoring the newspaper articles in my possession, the ones in which I’m featured.

Retaking my seat, I turn to face Delilah, holding out the medal and photo in front of me.

“I need to tell you something.”

Delilah’s eyes flick down to the items in my lap, watching the way my finger and thumb rub against the thick material of the medal that I once hung around my neck proudly.

“Is that you?” She points to the photo. It shows a much younger me, seventeen or eighteen at best, kitted out in my tight swim trunks, goggles and cap, jumping from a balance board, the still water poised beneath me, waiting to catch me.

“Yes.”

“You used to be a swimmer?” Delilah guesses correctly, as I knew she would. My girl’s as smart as a whip, I don’t think much passes her by.

“Yes. Does my name mean anything to you, Delilah?”

It’s a strange question to ask, I can tell Delilah thinks so too, her face betraying her confusion at my segue.

“Grey Millen?”

“Yep.”

“You’re… Grey Millen.”

“I’m Grey Millen,” I repeat. “Three-time world champion young competitive swimmer… and almost an Olympic athlete.”

Delilah’s glossy lips pop open. “You’re…”

“I wasn’t sure if my name meant anything to you… now I know it doesn’t. You would have been a young teenager when I began competing, so you probably won’t have noticed me on the TV… or in the tabloids. You would have been sixteen, when I was twenty-one and I was badly hurt in an accident involving a faulty ski lift. I’m guessing you didn’t see my failure blasted all over the front of the main newspapers… I was supposed to represent Great Britain in the Olympics that year.”

“You’re…you’re…” Delilah stares at me like she’s never seen me before and it fucking breaks my heart in two. “You’re a famous swimmer.”

“Was,” I say, like that will soften the blow.

I know it won’t.

The damage is being done. I can see it written all over Delilah’s glass face.

Then she begins to physically crumple.

I reach out to hold her, but she pulls away from my touch, forcing herself to be as small as possible in the corner of my L shaped sofa. Her breathing whooshes out of her, stuttered and erratic.

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