Page 87 of Never Date A Player
Lewis approaches my side. “The guys and I decided to pair off. You’re with me.”
My gaze shoots to him. “What?” He’s staring straight ahead. “Lewis, what are you talking about?”
“Get ready. They’re about to start.”
I glance around and note our teammates dividing into twos. “You could have asked me. We’re not a good fit,” I tell him, frustrated.
Lewis heightens every frenzied atom inside me, putting my entire existence into a state of overstimulation. He’s not the calming presence I need right now. Definitely the worst partner I could have asked for.
His jaw tightens, his gaze flickering to me. “You were wrong, Genevieve. Wrong about how much you mean to me.”
“If I’m wrong, then why did you leave when I explained I needed more?”
“What you said about Mira was right. I haven’t put enough effort into getting her some help. I had things to work out and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
What’s he saying…? God, I can’t think about this right now. It will consume me, and I need all my faculties for the race.
I focus on the barren hill. “That’s not why I think you should pair with someone else. You should have chosen a teammate who can keep up with you.”
“I did,” he says, and takes off.
A heartbeat later, I realize the gun has gone off, and people are bursting past me.
Crap! I sprint to catch up, forcing my panicked breaths into a steady rhythm, relaxing my hands that had tightened at Lewis’s words.
The first two miles are uphill, and once I get my breathing in check, I’m able to catch up to Lewis with energy to spare. This isn’t the time to overanalyze what he said and what it means for us. If I don’t concentrate on the race, I won’t get through it.
The crowd is one large mass, and I can’t tell where our heat begins and another ends, but we’re passing people left and right. I focus on staying relaxed and conserving energy for speed and tracking the ground, which is riddled with rocks and divots capable of spraining ankles and knocking a person out of the competition.
The first obstacle we approach is the one that looks like a playground monkey bar set, except it goes uphill. Swinging bars immediately follow. Both obstacles are slicked with mud and oil.
I leap for the first rung and almost slip and fall in a muddy gully. That little shake-up has my head entirely in the game and not on the man a few feet in front of me, skipping bars two at a time like Tarzan. I can’t skip bars, but I trained for the greased apparatuses. A technique that involves speed and grip adjustment gets me across the initial set. Lewis is nearly to the next obstacle, a wall a quarter of a mile away, by the time I exit the second.
My first test of upper body strength is made of flat, vertical boards smeared in mud from competitors who didn’t make it through the monkey bars without a bath. My heart sputters in a panic. The wall is twice Lewis’s height.
A sudden image of him above me at the cascades runs through my mind, along with the split second when I nearly fell to my death.
Lewis waves with frantic, full-bodied arm movements for me to hurry, and I shove aside my fears, pump my legs at full speed, and leap onto the wall. He boosts my foot, propelling me up until I loop a leg over the top.
This is why I didn’t want to partner with him. I’m slowing him down.
A random stranger boosts Lewis and he reciprocates by giving the guy an arm lift to the ledge. Okay, maybe we all need help in this competition.
“Go!” Lewis shouts in my ear, and shoves me over the other side.
Son of a bitch! He had climbed to the top of the wall and helped the guy in the time it took me to wiggle around without falling, and that’s what I do anyway.
Bales of hay cushion my fall, but I land hard, jolting my spine. Lewis rolls off beside me and beelines it for the next obstacle.
I stumble after him, passing people along the way. Even at this stage, competitors look haggard.
A bottleneck up ahead blocks my view of the next hurdle, and it’s not until I’m nearly upon it that I get a good look. The ice bath.
A girl in front of me enters the water and screams.
No sweat. Lewis prepared me for this with the Cave Rock torture. Of course, what I remember about that day isn’t the cold water, but the way he warmed me afterward.
Focus!
