Page 88 of The Challenger

The man who ends our FaceTime by kissing his phone screen and wishing it was me.

I am the luckiest woman in the world.

After we hang up, the fatigue of the long day catches up to me. The night air has cooled, and I head inside for bed. A strange peace settles over me as I lie in the dark, thinking of Ava. To feel grateful after all these years is like wishing for something you never think will come true, and then it does. I used to believe my life would have been better had we known each other. In reality, I dodged a major bullet. To rot away in a ghost town with an alcoholic mom and a slowly dementing father figure is a story best told as fiction.

Only you can make yourself happy is Flynn Dryden's Truth # 9. Ava might have been heartless for giving me up, but she knew enough about herself to make the right decision. I can’t fault her for her wisdom. Yes, it hurts, and it will always hurt that she never loved me—never gave herself a chance—but it is the truth, and I am no longer a prisoner of it.

ChapterThirty-Four

CHAVEZ

Welcome to Paris in May.

Infinitely fucking better than Paris in February.

Instead of my career looking as bleak as the winter skies, I’m in the semi-finals at Roland Garros with Flynn back at my side. March and April flew by in a hurry, and my brain spins at what changed in those eight weeks. It only took the rug being pulled out from underneath my life and hers to make me realize how much of a self-centered and toxic shit I’ve been. The valuable stuff becomes pretty damn clear when you take away everything a man has.

Moving forward, all Flynn and I want to do is make up for the lost time.

With the Linkley loser snapped up and nothing dirty on my end, the ITIA had no choice but to admit they were wrong and reinstate me. It was too late to get a wildcard for Indian Wells, but I snuck into the Miami tournament and made it to the quarters. Not bad for my first pro tour match in almost a year, considering I had to readjust to a stark reality. Python bit the bullet and unretired for a few weeks while Flynn hung tight in California. The better move for her was to stick close to home so she could bond with her parents and let the stalker shitstorm pass without traveling around and adding more stress.

With a restraining order in place, we both breathed easier.

Then she gave me a heart attack, sneaking up to Madras.

Of course, she ran into Jerry; that destiny felt pre-ordained. She never believed the stories Cori and Edgar had told her about Ava, but to hear the truth come from the mouth of a stranger who knew her mother the best, well, let’s just say it was dark times for my baby in the days that followed.

The early weeks back on tour were disorienting for me, as well. Python did his best and helped smooth my rough edges with his usual sarcastic charm, and I am forever grateful he helped me during the transition, but Flynn is my special sauce and I missed her. (Papa stepped up to the plate and offered to help, but that ship has sailed. He has sacrificed enough for me.)

My main goal in returning to the pro tour was to put in a decent showing during the clay court season, and I have aced that, homies. I won the Monaco Masters in April, and my man Morgan never admitted anything, nor did I ask why the tournament offered me a wild card when it’s typically the French players who get them. I suppose being tight with Prince Albert is handy since he rules over everything in that place, including the tennis tournament. The Monaco win boosted my ranking points enough that I could play Madrid and Rome without wildcards. And those two events brought me closer to my secondary goal—to kick Arlo Märklin’s ass on clay.

He and I have snarled at each other for the past six weeks, both in the locker room and from the other side of the draw. We have not crossed paths yet and it’s my fault because I lost in the semis in Rome, and he was waiting for me in the final and went on to win it. We are the hottest players coming into Roland Garros, and today, we both play our semi-final matches. I am one tantalizing step closer to my dream of a Grand Slam. If God looks down on me and decides now is my time, I will suffer through cramps and match-ending blisters to give me a shot at beating that douche.

I am not surprised he and Vanya are back together. They are two peas in a skanky pod. Flynn saw them in the hallway outside of the locker room last week, and I could tell Vanya circling bugged the hell out of her.

The Velvet Vagina is a stain we would both like to wash out of our lives.

If I could subtract from my tally of conquests, Vanya would be the first one vanquished. Who knows what was going through my mind last year? First of all, I have never been a club guy. But it was a Saturday night and a bunch of the players were going out, and I tagged along. Bored senseless after twenty minutes and not wanting to let my peeps down with an early exit, I showed off my moves on the dance floor. Soon enough, Vanya was grinding behind me, half-dressed and half-cut. I should have ignored her, but I was lonely and feeling a little lost, and a pair of giant boobs in my face could make the time fly faster.

The sad thing is, she set me up. Arlo had fucked around on her, and she was a vindictive bitch. Her friends were slinking around and filming us kissing, but she denied it when I brought it up and said to stop being so paranoid. The club doors slammed shut at three a.m., and by then, her friends had disappeared—gone to upload all the footage to piss Arlo off. She invited me back to her hotel, and I had nothing to do besides walking in the rain back to my room for a night of bad European TV, so I caved, plain and simple. Sex isn't the worst way to end a night.

And then the horror show began.

She already proved to be a shitty kisser and could not give a blow job to save her life. My options were to have my dick scraped raw by her evil veneers or dive for cover into the velvet vagina and make it out quick for the walk of shame.

Long story short, Vanya was my number eighty-three and I needed to bounce off that number hard. And now I have to beat Arlo to not only prove to myself I can do it, but I am not going to have Vanya smug and looking down her plastic nose at Flynn from her perch beside a guy who has just beaten me.

Hells to the no.

My girl deserves a win, and I have plans to accommodate that in more ways than one. Every man should be so lucky to have an angel like Flynn drop into their life. I have had a lifetime's worth of disposable sex crammed into a decade, and when God looks down on your pathetic ass and graces you with the real deal, you lock that shit up. This is one of the reasons why I am so out of it today.

The other reason is, well, I am in my first Grand Slam semi.

And here comes Flynn now, pretty as the day I first met her. She likes to kiss me in the locker room before a match, and most of the players have finally stopped harassing me about it.

“What do you think?” she asks, eyeing me with those fierce green pupils that never let me get away with anything.

We spent most of last night watching YouTube videos of my opponent Alex Turner. A seasoned American player without much to show for it, he’s had a dream run in Paris. He played two qualifiers in the early rounds, and his opponent retired during their quarterfinal. Neither he nor I have ever made it this far though, and we are guaranteed to be a bucket of nerves on either end of the court.

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