“Oh no?” Cat whispered.
“I hadn?t finished growing yet. I was tall, but still pretty skinny.” She clenched her hands tighter, watching as the skin turned white from the pressure. “I fought like hell, but together, they were a lot stronger than I was, and it wasn?t long before they?d beaten me down to the sidewalk. If I let myself remember, I can still feel their hands on me, ripping at my clothes as I tried to fight them off. Even after they?d blackened my eyes and broken my jaw to shut me up, I didn?t stop fighting.”
If Dylan would have looked up at that moment, she would have seen large tears rolling silently down Cat?s cheeks. She didn?t, however, as she continued to stare down into her hands, clenched to tight fists now. “I couldn?t?.” She shook her head. “Anyway, before they got much further, I suddenly felt their weight lifted off of me. When I looked up, I saw these?kids?not any older than me. They were wearing gang colors and had guns, every single one of them. And they were beating the crap out of my intended rapists.”
“Jesus!” Cat swore.
“Yeah. I thought, for a moment there, that I was just trading one set of attackers for another, but then a couple of the guys helped me up and held me steady as I puked my guts up all over the sidewalk. Another one gave me his shirt, if you can believe that. Mine was ripped to shreds. They even offered to drive me home, but I?I needed to be alone right then.”
Dylan sighed, winding down like a toy soldier on Christmas morning. She seemed deflated somehow, as if she was still that girl she?d stopped being so many years ago.
Then, into her field of vision came a hand, small and almost delicate. It laid itself atop her fists like a blanket, or a balm. It soothed something in her soul she wasn?t aware was still so raw, and for the first time in years, she felt tears well up.
“I?m so sorry that happened to you,” Cat whispered.
Dylan gave a twisted smile, but didn?t raise her eyes. “Yeah, well? . I told myself I could deal with it. No big deal, right?” She laughed again. Bitterly. “So I buried it deep down inside and covered it with a layer of cement and built walls around it so that it would never see the light of day. When my coach asked me what had happened, I lied and told her that I?d fallen down a set of stairs in the dorm. I don?t think she ever bought that excuse.”
She took in a deep breath. “Then I started drinking. Not much at first. Just enough to stop the nightmares. But then the nightmares started happening during the day, so I started drinking then, too. I had periods of rage so intense that I?d lash out at anyone and anything. At first, I?d use those periods to my advantage during the games. No one could beat me there. No one. But then I started taking my anger out on my teammates and my coaches.” The twisted smile came again. “It got so bad that I got benched. My coach told me that she didn?t care if we lost every single game the rest of the season. If I didn?t get the stick out of my ass, that ass was going to be riding the bench until I was old and gray.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought about quitting, of course. After all, I was Dylan Lambert, the Goddess! Who was she to tell me I couldn?t play!”
“But you didn?t.”
“No. I didn?t. I realized that I needed some help. Needed someone to turn to who would understand what I had been through, what I was still going through. It turned out to be one of the assistant coaches, who?d been through something similar. And when I finally let out all the anger and the hatred and the fear that had been eating me up for months, god?I felt like the world had been lifted off my guts and I could breath again. I felt?free. Clean. I reclaimed my strength. My true strength, not a strength born of rage. And I never looked back.”
A silence as deep as the bottom of a grave slipped between them, and after a long moment, Dylan chanced to look up. What she saw made her chest tighten again.
Large, silent tears rolled one after the other down Cat?s cheeks. Her expression was that of a lost child desperately looking for a way home.
Quite without her conscious permission, Dylan found herself moving forward and grasping the smaller woman in a gentle embrace. An embrace which Cat accepted willingly, clutching Dylan?s shirt in an iron grip.
“It?s alright,” Dylan soothed, rubbing Cat?s back. “Let it out. I?m here. It?s okay. I won?t let go.”
Several days later, after practice, Cat stood wiping her face with a towel when she felt a presence next to her. Drawing the towel away, she looked up, smiling, into the face of her coach. “What?s up?” she asked, relaxed and happy for the first time in weeks. The impromptu meeting with Dylan had done her more good than even she was willing, or able, to admit.
Dylan returned the smile, blue eyes sparkling in the harsh lighting of the arena.
God you?re beautiful.
It wasn?t the first time that particular thought ran through Cat?s head. In fact, it was becoming more repetitive as the days and weeks passed.
I think this is going beyond the ?I have a crush on my coach? stage, Cat. Better rein it in, girl. You are so not ready for that.
So deep in her own thoughts was she that she almost missed the next words out of Dylan?s mouth.
“If you?re not doing anything after practice, would you like to go for a drive with me? I have something that I?d like you to see.”
In her current state, Cat could have easily mistaken Dylan?s question for a proposition?heck, her body was responding already. Pleasantly, at that. But one look in those clear, magnificent eyes told her it was friendship, not intimacy, that was to be on the agenda for the afternoon.
Her hormones got a kick in the shins as she screwed on her best smile. “Sure! What did you have in mind?”
“It?ll explain itself when you see it.”
“Hmm. Going all mysterious on me, are you?”
Dylan?s smirk was her only answer.
“Wow,” Cat groaned as she sunk into the padded leather luxury of Dylan?s 427SC Cobra. “Maybe I?ll skip playing altogether and move right into coaching, if this is how the other half lives.”
“The ?other half? got this while she was still playing,” Dylan remarked, eyes shifting rapidly from her rearview mirror to the windshield and back again as she maneuvered the sports car into thick, rush hour traffic.
“Oh. Guess that means I?ve gotta stick around a few more years, then, huh?”
Dylan smiled slightly. “That would be best, yes.”
The two settled quickly into a comfortable silence; a silence broken only by the wind as it rushed through their hair, whipping it back in flying streamers of black and gold. Soon, rush hour traffic was a thing of the past as Dylan took an exit off the main freeway and headed north. City congestion dwindled into rural complacency, and greenery began to make a reappearance. Further on, ranches, farmlands, and large estates dotted the landscape here and there; the dark, straight ribbon of highway cutting through like a plumb line.
Cat took in several deep breaths of clean, country air and grinned. A city girl by nature, she?d always loved trips into the country, especially when she was young. Her father would get it into his head that the family “needed air”, and off they?d go, half in the old VW bus they named “Stinky”, and the other half in the wood-paneled station wagon.
God, Cat thought, we were the Brady Bunch come to life!
Shuddering at the thought, she pushed it down and away, instead concentrating on the beautiful scenery passing quickly by.
At last, after almost an hour of travel, Dylan pulled into a long driveway and came to a stop in front of a large ranch house. When Dylan shut the engine off, Cat could hear the barking of dogs and the whinnying of horses. Bemused, she levered herself out of the car and watched as the front door opened and a tall, handsome woman appeared. In her early forties, she wore her long, blonde hair tightly braided. Her eyes, a deep amber, were very intelligent, and her smile was radiant as she spied Dylan unfolding herself from the car.