Return to Sender (7 page)

The awkward moment bursts the second I get my arms around Karen, lifting her off the ground. I bury my face in her hair and kiss her cheek at least half a dozen times before setting her down.

Her arms are still tight around my neck, her forehead touching mine when she says, “I can’t let you go to college. I think you need to ditch that plan and hang out with me all the time instead.”

“You’re right. I don’t need higher education with you winning all these big meets. We can live off your endorsements and prize money, right?”

Karen laughs. “You mean that prize money I turned down to keep my NCAA eligibility intact?”

I lean down and kiss her nose. “You have some new freckles.” I plant a couple kisses under her eye. “At least four.”

“I went to the pool with Blair yesterday,” she says, looking my face over carefully. “And you have a tan. That’s so unfair. I get freckles and you get dark and handsome.”

Both of us suddenly become aware of several pairs of staring eyes, zooming in on us. I pull Karen’s arms from around my neck and turn her around to face TJ.

“This is my roommate, TJ,” I say, avoiding Liberty’s gaze. “TJ, Karen.”

“The girlfriend.” He gives her a quick nod, then his gaze travels to Stevie and a few of the other senior girls that arrived together. “You guys are the ones taking up gym three from six to nine thirty every morning for the next month.”

“I don’t know, are we?” She glances over her shoulder at me for confirmation.

I’m not sure what kind of workout schedule Nina Jones has planned for them, but I can assume TJ’s concerned that they’re moving in on his territory. He’s been working out early every morning in gym three.

“Let’s get your stuff and find your cabin.” I tug Karen’s hand and pull her toward the van and away from TJ and Liberty.

A few minutes later, I’m hauling her and Stevie’s suitcases toward my cabin. They’ve been assigned the empty room on the left side.

“Does Nina really have us working out at six in the morning?” Karen asks, stepping around mud puddles from last night’s rainstorm.

“She might not have a choice. Campers start warm-ups at nine and rotations at nine thirty.”

“Six is not that different from seven,” Stevie says. “Of course, I’m sure she’s got us scheduled for another four hours in the afternoon.”

I open the door and let them step inside first. Both girls glance in the direction of the room TJ and I are sharing before settling in their empty one.

“Top or bottom bunk?” Karen asks Stevie, who immediately points to the top.

Two more of the senior national team girls come inside, too, rolling their own suitcases and heading for the back room, which is three times the size of our rooms but sleeps four. Stevie heads over to the girls to say hi, and after tossing Karen’s luggage onto the bottom bunk, I grab her hand and pull her out the door, taking advantage of the opportunity to sneak away.

“I’ll give you the grand tour.” I flash her a grin and she quickly slides in front of me, heading away from the other girls even faster than me.

“God, I need a gymnastics mental break.” Karen rubs her temples, closing her eyes briefly. “Two flights with Stevie talking strategy, code of points, and difficulty scores is a bit much. How’s it going here? Your roommate seems…”

“What?” I tease, leading her away from the cabins, towards the gyms. “Don’t tell me you’re going to swoon over him like every other female staff member?”

She glares at me. “I’ve never swooned in my life. He seems bitter about the whole schedule issue, that’s all I was going to say.”

I toss an arm around her shoulder and kiss her cheek. “I was kidding. TJ’s all right. Don’t worry about him.” That’s pretty much all I could say. Explaining TJ is a daunting task. I’m not really sure what his deal is, but we’ve had some fun together in the past couple weeks. He kept quiet during most of the training and he observed other coaches all of last week. Campers arrive tomorrow for the new week and he’ll be coaching tumbling on his own. “So what happened with your grandma?”

She shrugs. “She was a little bit easier to deal with than I expected. I think she wants to see me more, to talk more. We had dinner together almost every night and went shopping a couple times. Maybe it’s all sinking in now for her, you know? I’m her only family.”

“That’s good, right?” I sense some concealed information between her words. “You never told me the rest of the story with her impending inquisition, did you guys end up talking about—”

“You?” Karen supplies, laughing a little, but it’s a nervous laugh, which makes me nervous.

“Yeah, and you know… the house. Is it all finished?” I hate that I wasn’t there for her when she went back in there. For both selfish and unselfish reasons. I guess on some level, I like that she needs me. I like that no one else in her life understands what she’s going through.

“It’s finished.” She looks away from me and seems to be done with the subject.

“Okay, and the part where you and your grandma gossiped about me… ?”

“We did not gossip about you.” She chews on her lower lip, causing me to think about kissing her.

I shake my head and continue walking. “You’re keeping secrets from me. I can tell.”

She exhales, stops, and leans against a tree just outside of the entrance to gym three. “She thinks it’s… it’s not appropriate for me to stay with you and your dad. She wants me to get my own apartment near the gym.”

I’ve never met Karen’s grandma, but from the bits and pieces I’ve learned about her, she’s not a lady I’m particularly fond of. Then again, it sounds like things might be improving on that front. “You’re only seventeen. Isn’t living on your own kind of extreme?”

She shrugs, but there’s stress in the way her shoulders ride up toward her neck. “I’m seventeen and a half now. I drive myself to gym every day, to all my therapy sessions. I do my own shopping now. I’m done with high school. I was totally against the idea at first.” Her gaze drops to her hands. “But Blair said something yesterday that got me thinking.”

“What?”

“She said that I’m going to get a lot more media attention and if gets out that you and I are together, that I live with my male coach and it’s gonna be just the two of us pretty soon…”

Okay, I see where this is going.

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Karen rushes to say, finally meeting my gaze. “It’s your dad. He doesn’t deserve to be raked over the coals for something he did out of kindness. I don’t even think that would happen, but rumors suck and those will most definitely happen. What do you think?”

Oh boy. Not exactly the kind of advice I’m qualified to give. “I don’t know. I see both sides to the argument, I guess.” I touch her cheek, tracing over the new freckles with my index finger. “Maybe take a couple weeks to decide. You’re here now, so it’s not really an issue at the moment.”

Finally, she smiles at me and pushes off the tree. “You’re right. I have time to think about it.”

I’m not sure I like the idea of her living alone. That seems a bit extreme, especially with everything she’s going through. But it’s also not my decision to make, so I’ll have to bite my tongue on this one.

We’ve basically had no good make-out sessions in what feels like an eternity, not that we’ve had make-out sessions—we haven’t had any. Period. Seizing the opportunity seems like the best plan for the moment. I lean down and kiss her on the mouth and wait for her to press herself closer to me. It only takes a few seconds and Karen’s hand is on the back of my neck, tugging us together. There’s an urgency in her kiss, especially after our lips part and my tongue slips inside her mouth. Something I haven’t felt from Karen before. Something that says she’s working hard to slow herself down. That’s usually my position.

My heart speeds up, my lips traveling down her neck as her fingers slide under the back of my shirt. I barely register the approaching footsteps at first, but when I do, I grab Karen around the waist and pull her behind the tree. She looks at me, eyes wide with confusion. I turn her head to the side just enough for her to see who is heading for the gym doors.

“Nina,” Karen whispers, then rests her head against the tree closing her eyes and releasing a sigh.

I can’t help smiling. She’s all flushed and showing clear signs of… “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re like completely sexually frustrated.”

She opens her eyes, but focuses on something over my shoulder. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“You do, too.” I place my hands on either side of her head, pinning her in. “You were like sixty seconds from stripping me naked.”

“Yeah right.” She rolls her eyes and attempts to duck under my arms. Her face is bright red.

I keep my arms firmly planted, not allowing her to escape just yet. Sometimes I miss the way things were before we became “Jaren,” as Stevie and Blair like to call us. We would have been able to talk about this with more ease. “You can just tell me whatever you want to do, Karen. It won’t scare me off. I’m up for anything as long as it’s with you.”

When I lean in to kiss her, my eyes closing, she succeeds in escaping my hold and putting several feet of distance between us. “I should go before Nina catches us and accuses us of endorsing teen pregnancy again.”

I want to make a joke about her proving that she’d been thinking dirty thoughts, but I’m afraid to push the issue when she’s clearly uncomfortable discussing it.

I jog to catch up and walk beside her, not taking her hand this time. “Let’s go in the gym and see if she’s got a practice schedule for you guys yet.”

“Okay, sure.” She still can’t look at me.

I’ll have to find a less intrusive way to really talk to her.

***

“Stronger!” Nina shouts. “Chin up! Shoulders down!”

Adrenaline kicks up a notch and I fly into my full twisting straddle jump before prepping for my last tumbling pass—a pike double back somersault. I nail the landing, then finish with a full turn into my final pass.

My chest is heaving from the effort of two full floor routines in a row, but I turn to Nina ready for her to yell at me to go again.

“Where is the artistry?” she says, her eyes narrowed, arms folded over her chest. “Straight legs, pointed feet, perfect landings, good amplitude. But no artistry. I feel nothing.”

Um… way harsh.

I open my mouth to ask her to please explain because this isn’t the first time she’s given me that feedback with no way to fix the problem, but we’re interrupted by the gym door flying open and a shirtless muscular Hispanic guy strutting in.

TJ.

“Excuse me, young man,” Nina says, stalking toward the door. “We have a training session in here for two more hours.”

TJ plasters on a smirk and he and Nina exchange words, in an intense whisper match.

Stevie walks up beside me. “What’s going on? Is he trying to spy on our workouts?”

I shrug, having no idea, but I do know he seemed ticked off yesterday that we were taking up gym three every morning.

Nina turns her back on TJ, shaking her head. He’s still smirking as he walks all the way inside the gym and onto the rod floor, which is a long narrow strip of gymnastics floor, but instead of being made with springs, this one is built on top of metal rods and has a bit more bounce than a traditional gymnastics competition floor. Power tumblers apparently get all the good equipment. And this one is especially awesome because it leads into a giant foam pit.

“You two!” Nina barks at me and Stevie. “Work on tumbling into the pit. Five clean landings for each run.”

Stevie and I both shuffle over to the rod floor. We take a few minutes to pile several eight-inch-thick mats on top of foam blocks until we can see them from the end of the tumble strip. Unlike the tumble track, this strip is identical to the regular competition floor, but narrow and long instead of square-shaped. So, no trampoline benefits for us today. By the time we finish setting up our station, TJ has jumped up and down a few times on the floor, stretched his calves for like two seconds, and shaken out his arms.

“What are you doing?” Stevie snaps at him as soon as he slides in front of her at the end of the floor.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I don’t know, warming up for a senior citizens race,” she says. “Nice stretching routine, by the way.”

One side of his mouth turns up. “Oh yeah? I’d like to watch you stretch your limbs a little. We can test that flexibility of yours later if you want.”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing.

Stevie’s mouth falls open and her cheeks redden with anger. “You’re demented.”

“That’s what they tell me.” He shrugs. “My room or yours?”

“Girls! Enough talking!”

Stevie bites back a reply, her hands balling up at her sides. TJ takes off in a run then propels himself into a round-off, tucked double backflip, two whip back somersaults, followed by a double pike, landing with a firm thud on top of our mat stack in the pit.

TJ brushes past me on his way back and I blurt out, “Not bad.”