Return to You (Letters to Nowhere Part 3) Read Free Page B

shoulders deflate under my hands. She’s working hard to relax. More sweat is trickling down the sides of her face.
    “Good.” I rub her shoulders and the back of her neck. “Now close your eyes… count to twenty really slowly in your head.”
    I move onto the bench beside her the second her eyes flutter shut. I wrap an arm around her shoulders. She slumps over, pressing her weight against my side. I continue to rub her back and shoulders until she’s breathing normally again.
    “I hate this,” she mumbles after a few minutes of silence between us. Hot tears roll down her cheeks and land on my hand. “It’s like being blindsided.”
    “I know.” And I do know.
    Stevie approaches us with tentative steps. “Your group is done warming up.”
    Karen sits up immediately and tries to wipe her face with one arm. “Go,” she says to me.
    I hesitate, open my mouth to protest but she shakes her head.
    “Take her to get her head checked out,” I tell Stevie. It’s my compromise. I really don’t want to leave her like this.
    Karen surprises me by laughing. “Yeah, I totally need my head checked out.”
    I plant a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
    After I get up, Stevie takes my spot on the bench, but I head to the gym before catching any potential conversation. I’m not sure if Karen can talk to Stevie like she can with Blair. They don’t seem to have that same close relationship, but I could be wrong.
    A group of six energetic ten-year-old girls are waiting for me in front of the uneven bars. I’m rattled from the morning’s drama, but I plaster on my best coaching face and explain what we’re going to be working on for this rotation. The group is made up of all Level 3 and Level 4 gymnasts, so it’s fairly easy to set up the stations and get everyone going. A few minutes later, I’m spotting cast to handstands on the pit bar, allowing the kids to swing down on the last cast and land in the fluffy pit blocks.
    TJ leaves his group on the tumbling strip doing pushups and walks over to where my group is. “Is she okay?”
    I keep my focus on the kid I’m spotting while forcing my jaw to relax. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about TJ right now. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind punching him, but I can’t tell if that’s because I need to punch something or because I really blame him for Karen falling on her dismount. Falling is an understatement. She nearly killed herself. She would’ve killed herself if TJ hadn’t caught her.
    Another reason why I can’t decide how to feel or who to be pissed at.
    “She’s all right.”
    He exhales, nods, and says, “I didn’t know about her parents.”
    “Well, you do now.” God, I’m being an ass. “I think she’s freaked out more than hurt.”
    “Right.” He tugs at the collar of his staff polo shirt, then turns around and walks back to his group.
    The girls in my first rotation are having a blast with the pit bar and I decide to let them try flyaways, which gets them to the loud squealing version of excited because who doesn’t want to try a flip off the pit bar?
    I’ve moved closer to the tumble strip in order to spot the dismounts and I catch bits and pieces of TJ’s coaching.
    “If you’re gonna cry, get in the back of the line,” he snaps at a girl who’s probably eleven or twelve. She covers her face and makes her way behind the other girls in her group. “No more balking. Go for the double or get out!”
    Jesus Christ.
    I send my girls to get a drink and climb out of the pit to stand beside TJ. “You can’t kick anyone out of the gym,” I whisper. “The counselors are in training sessions right now. There’s no one to watch the kids outside of the gym.”
    He frowns like this is really putting a damper on his coaching style.
    “It’s summer camp,” I remind him. “You don’t have to take them to a competition.”
    “They’re paying eight hundred bucks to work on skills they already know how to