She pulled back enough to look at me again, forcing me to loosen my arms marginally. “I just didn’t think it was fair that I was getting all of the attention when you’re better than I am.”

“I’m not better than you are,” I denied.

“At tumbling?” Her scoff cut the otherwise silent air. “You so are.”

I shook my head good-naturedly, my frustration easily replaced with affection.

Man, I was in deep with her.

“It’s just hard not to touch you,” I admitted, capturing the end of a strand of her long, brown hair and wrapping it tightly around my finger.

“Oh,” she murmured, enlightened. “I understand.”

Her arms tightened their hold, fingertips digging in through the material of my shirt and scraping at the skin underneath. I nodded at how in sync we were. Marveled at how our thoughts seemed to connect to one another.

“You’re horny,” she said simply.

Exactly.

Wait. What?

That wasn’t what I thought she was going to say.

“No—”

“If you wanted me, you just should have said something.”

“Cal—”

“After all,” she said, widening her eyes meaningfully, “We’re alone now.”

Glancing around the dark room, I noticed the drawn curtains and the closed door and the utter silence from the rooms on either side.

Oh. OH.

I smiled and lifted narrowed one eye playfully, dropping my voice to a raspy whisper. “Do you want me, my little Pea?”

Nodding, she smiled in victory, and my body reacted almost immediately. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Would you say that my fulfillment of this want is essential to your focus during the competition tomorrow?” I prompted with a raise of one brow.

“Yes,” she agreed, bouncing her head enthusiastically. “Definitely.”

“So, really, I’m just doing my job,” I reasoned jokingly.

She pushed me to the bed, happiness radiating from her eyes and straight into the heart of me, and broke me with one simple line.

“Come on, Nik.” Climbing me like a jungle gym, she settled one leg on each side from the top. “Get to work.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked as we lingered in the hall waiting for her name to be announced and the grand march into the gym to begin. Her mother and father were in the stands, and for that I was grateful.

I didn’t plan to have any inappropriate conversations or picture the things we’d done the night before, but we had a routine.

Day in and day out we worked together alone, and that was what we’d become accustomed to. I needed her to feel free to tell me anything she needed to, and I needed to be able to do the same.

In one smooth move, she stood up from her bag and turned to me, lifting both of her hands in the position for a double high five.

I obliged without complaint or question, smiling just as she did when our hands came together and I felt the sticky indication that the gesture wasn’t about high-fiving at all.

“Great,” she said as I pulled my hands away and immediately looked at them. Purple glitter sparkled from the surface. “Ready to fight.” I looked from my hands to her eyes, and that’s when she finished. “Like I have a little bit of magic.”

“I can’t wait to watch,” I told her truthfully, knowing it was going to be the likes of which I hadn’t seen before.

She was more than ready.

The music of the march started, and knowing I had to, I stepped away. She forced her eyes forward and bounced her head to the beat, her tight, smoothed-back ponytail bopping as she did.

Her shoulders were low and her head was raised high, her feet pointed to precision as she began her elegant walk out to the floor.

The line surrounded her, some in front and the rest trailing behind, and when the majority of them cleared I stepped to the end of the hall and turned left to head straight for what I knew would be her first event. She was starting on Vault, what I liked to think of as her neutral event. I didn’t expect her to bring in her highest score, but it wouldn’t be bad either.

She’d recently learned to harness her power a little better. I waited to the side with the other coaches and glanced to the floor as they announced her. She looked up to the crowd with a smile and a wave, turning from one side to the other and back again before standing still back in line. Down the line like a wave, the rest of the girls followed suit in alphabetical order, most of them nearly ten years younger than she was.

Some glanced at her with curiosity, but the others stayed focused, keeping their eyes on the ground or blankly ahead of them, no doubt running through some form of detailed visualization.

It was a heady thing, coming to a competition where you had to show your best or risk losing everything. You could be one of the best performers in the sport at your home gym, but if you didn’t leave it all on the floor on competition day, none of your fancy skills meant squat.

The introductions finally done, the floor cleared and gymnasts scattered in every direction. Callie came directly to the vault, going over to her bag that I’d carried over for her and pulling off her warm up suit.

Her leotard was still purple, the short clipped velvet of the suit portion fading into the mesh and sparkly sleeves with a gradual ombre effect.

She rocked her ankles back and forth, curling the toes of each foot into the ground and pulling back on her toes with her fingers, before bending at the hips and stretching her palms straight to the carpeted floor.

Bouncing to move the muscles further, she came back to standing, twisting back and forth at the hips and then finally throwing each arm individually across her chest to loosen those.

Drills took over, the act of throwing her arms above her head as if setting up for a skill nearly getting lost in a sea of girls doing exactly the same thing.

She wasn’t the first up, so I walked to her instead of standing up by the vaulting table. I didn’t intend to talk to her unless she talked to me because, honestly, she knew everything I could possibly say to her. She didn’t need me to clog her head with a rote listing of the rules, and she didn’t need me to know what was at stake.

She knew all on her own just by looking at the crowd and the judges and into the eyes of her competition.

All of these girls wanted it. Wanted it in a way that clouded the air and threatened to choke you with its oppression.

Think about the pressure you feel after studying for a test for a week, putting in the work and time and effort to do well, and magnify that times a million.

Every athlete there had spent their life preparing for this very day. Whether that meant twenty-something years or seventeen, it didn’t get much more intense than that.

I pulled my eyes from Callie to watch Jillian Kristone take her turn on Vault. She chalked her hands and wiped her feet on the floor, cracking her neck from side to side, then practicing her set and twist.

I knew she’d be doing a Yurchenko two and half, just like Callie, what had become the new standard since every gymnast was capable of it in the Olympics four years ago. A skill that once seemed impossible now towed the line as the minimum. The progression was staggering.

The difference in scoring mostly came from the height and distance, as well as the form.

Jillian Kristone was one of the best vaulters in the country and arguably one of Callie’s biggest competitors for the day. Large and explosive, she knew how to convert her body’s energy into useful speed and blocking.

But where Jillian excelled in power, Callie dominated artistic merit.

And, thanks to a little pushing from me, my girl was looking pretty powerful in her own right.

With a salute to the judges, she scooted onto the runway, glancing at her mark on the thick foam carpet to make sure she was at the right distance. It was the kind of thing girls double checked and triple checked, Callie included, because one step off would be the bearer of more than one step of consequences.