In the Fast Lane (Fast Series Book 1) (3 page)

“No, you nosey fuck. I am not. I don’t need it.”

“Yeah, you do. Go to the doctor, figure out what will work best for you, and get a prescription. Then get your ass to the Olympic training center. I’ve got a new team, and I need you. But I need you focused.”

Dalton closed his eyes and gave his all toward concentrating. God, he did not want to do this. He didn’t know if he could look Jessi Pruitt in the eye. Maybe that made him less of a man, but there were some things that weren’t worth the embarrassment of rehashing.

Eight years ago, he’d been attracted to her, but she was just a kid with a crush. He knew on sight that he would chew her poor little heart up and spit it out. Rather than leave her alone like he should have, he’d been a dick and hung out with her on couches, sat by her at dinner, kissed her in a hallway. Crap.

He’d been devastated by his losses in the pool, but that didn’t make up for the way he’d treated Jessi. So maybe Sawyer was right. Maybe he could make up for some of that by helping her win gold now.

As much as it pissed him off to admit it, Sawyer was right about other things, too. Dalton was going through the motions of life and always would be as long as the world saw him as nothing more than the asshole who stood next to Sawyer during the national anthem. That damn song would never play for him...but it could play
because
of him. Working with Jessi might just be worth it if it meant showing the world he was more than a playboy, sometimes athlete. It might also let him prove the same thing to himself.

“I haven’t said yes. You realize that, right?”

“Yeah, but you will. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You can’t help yourself. I’m that charming.”

“I hate you. I want you to know that.”

“No, you don’t. You just like to flirt.” Sawyer had a cocky grin pasted on his face that a younger Dalton would have punched off.

Taking a deep breath and remembering his age, Dalton continued. “Fine. I’ll think about it. In the meantime, I’ve got to get these walls up by tonight, and unless you’re going to grab a nail gun—” Dalton nodded at the one in his hand then returned his gaze to Sawyer “—you’d better go get a hotel room.”

Much to Dalton’s chagrin, Sawyer walked over to the workbench and grabbed a nail gun. “Where do you want me to start?”

“You know how to use that?” Dalton replied dubiously.

“Yup.”

Of course he did. Great.

“Fine. Start on that end. And make sure everything is square, dammit!”

They worked in surprisingly companionable silence for the rest of the day.

“I remember this.” Sawyer wiped sweat from his eyes and looked over at Dalton.

“Remember what?”

“The way we swam lanes together for hours with no one else getting in the way to mess it up. It was nice. Okay, not exactly
nice
, but it was good, you know?”

“I am not going to make out with you, Sawyer Jameson, so quit asking.”

Sawyer chuckled, and Dalton went back to pounding. He continued to think about their time as competitive swimmers. They really had worked well together, despite the rivalry. They pushed each other, made sure the other was holding his end and setting a good pace for the rest of the swimmers. They didn’t like each other, but that had been because of the competition, Dalton’s crap attitude, and Sawyer’s annoying tendency toward overall greatness.

“All right, dude. You’ve had enough time to think. I want you to come help me train this year’s team.”

“No.” Dalton wasn’t ready to make a commitment. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet. He wouldn’t be suckered into anything until he was.

“Why? Do you really like what you’re doing here? This isn’t you, man.”

“It’s
quiet
.” He looked at Sawyer and raised an eyebrow to emphasize the sarcasm that he’d infused in that one word. “It’s also something I’ve done on my own, and I’m proud of it. So... yes, I like it.”

“All right. I’ll give you that. But you need to be in swimming. You are one of the best at what you do. You
are
the best at the butterfly.”

Dalton started to interrupt.

“And don’t even mention the fucking medals again. That’s your go-to, and I’m sick of it.”

“It’s kind of a big deal, Sawyer. You know that.”

“I sure know it’s the same old, tired, lame-ass excuse you always use. Your Omaha record still stands, despite all the juicing that’s going on right now. That’s some amazing shit. I want you beside me when I take this group to Canada. The money’s good, and the endorsements are there afterward. And then there’s the chance to flip off the media. Take back your story. Let them see what we can do together. Redeem yourself, man. Show the world that my medals are just as much yours as they are mine.”

So they’d finally come to it. Sawyer wasn’t going to leave without an answer, whether Dalton was ready to give it to him or not. “Why don’t you tell them? They listen to you.”

“Because I’ve already told our story a million times and no one wants to hear it. We show them a team that can’t be beat—that
we
built? Man, that’ll shut them up and put you in the history books.”

“Right next to you—in second place.”

“Not if you coach the flyers. That is all you. I didn’t hold a candle to your butterfly.”

“I’ve got a business to run.”

“You’ve got one fucking client, asshole!” Sawyer hadn’t really meant to yell. He usually left that to Dalton.

Dalton nodded his head. “You’ve had enough of me, haven’t you?” He grinned at Sawyer.

“I fucking swear no one pisses me off like you do, McKinney.”

Dalton winked. “You’re welcome. So, you’ve been checking up on me? It’s gotten so bad that you know how many clients I have?”

Sawyer sighed. “Yeah, I checked. I needed to know what I was up against. Lord knows you aren’t forthcoming, so I did a little digging. You’ve got one hell of a buyer here, and this is going to be a shittastic house, but seriously, how much business can a one-man show really do? How do you get things done anyway?”

“I have help.” Dalton nodded toward Sawyer to prove his point.

“Dick.”

Dalton chuckled. Then he tilted his head back to look at the clear blue sky. It was the color of crisp, cool, Olympic blue pool water. Fuck. “You know this is going to be hard for me, right?”

“I know.”

“I really don’t want to see her again, Sawyer.”

“I know that, too.”

“So it’ll be just her and me?”

“Mostly. You’ll be in charge of all of the flyers, but you’ll have staff to help you out there. Your main focus will be Jessi.”

“Does she know that?”

“Yes and no. She knows I’m bringing you in to fix her stroke. I’ve strategically left out how much time she’ll be spending with you.”

He wanted to say no and leave it at that. There were too many things keeping him from doing it though. The first was the man next to him. He was a brother and a friend and was probably not lying when he said he needed him. The second was the desperate, burning need to do something that earned him a name. Something that cleared his past failures and maybe, just maybe, earned him a gold.

The last, and infinitely more disturbing, reason for him to say yes to Sawyer was to ease his guilt—even if just a little—over the way he’d treated Jessi all those years ago. He’d been a grown man, if a young one. He had known better. He had just been too much of a cocky dickhead to care.

“Okay, fine. You want me? I’ll come. But I have conditions. First, don’t start trying to get into my head again.” Dalton fixed his stare on the boards in his hands. He couldn’t look at Sawyer for this. “You’re right. I need to rewrite this story. You knew that coming here.”

“Dude, it’s just that—”

“I know. And you know that I’ll never rest easy until I win a gold. I can’t do that physically anymore. But maybe I can win in other ways...through other swimmers. I guess it might as well be her. Maybe that’s my penance.”

Sawyer stayed quiet, so Dalton continued. “And yeah, I’m ADHD. And I’m bored. When I get bored, my mind wanders, and that really bothers me. I don’t know how long I’ll last if I’m bored. But I’m not taking medication. My ADHD isn’t that bad. Especially around the water.”

“Listen man, there is nothing wrong with taking medication—”

Dalton cut him off. “I’m not saying there is. I just don’t like how it makes me feel. If I start to get restless, I’ll look into it, but for now, it’s off the table.”

“Fine. You ready to sign?”

“You brought the papers?”

“Yup.”

“Shit. All right then. Get ‘em out, Golden Boy. Let’s do this thing before I come to my senses and shoot you with this nail gun.”

Chapter 3

Dalton watched the swimmers from his perch in the observation deck. While he did his best to take in the whole group, his eyes had a tendency to hone in on one swimmer in particular. Jessi had always been an attractive girl, but she’d grown into a beautiful woman.

Not gorgeous. That term was reserved for a completely different type of woman. Jessi had been, and still was, girl-next-door pretty. Now however, that definition had changed into the long, smooth, carefully-toned lines of womanhood.

“Oh, fuck.” Dalton’s eyes popped wide open as Jessi made a turn to start her last fifty. The one glaring exception to Jessi’s perfection was her swimming. Upon closer inspection, Dalton saw that Sawyer was right. Her butterfly was shit. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered. He was the worst person to have to tell Jessi she was sucking. This was not going to go well.

“Might as well get it over with,” he muttered and proceeded to walk out the door and down the stairs to the pool. He tried to warm himself to the task on the way down. Surely she knew she needed help, right? This couldn’t be
that
bad.

“Jessi.”

Wrong. Jessi looked up from where she stood in the pool. She was squirting water into her mouth from a bottle and spitting it into the drain. At the sound of his voice, her body tensed. For a moment, her eyes widened in shock, but she quickly composed her face into a mask of cool indifference. “What?” she said succinctly.

“Finish up your practice, and then meet me in the film room after team breakfast. We need to go over the tape of your fly. There are some things we need to work on.”

“No.”

God damn, it was too early in the morning for this. “Pardon?” he clipped out, trying not to get angry over the fact that she would start this here.

“I said no. I have a physical therapy session after morning practice.”

“Reschedule it for later. We need to look over that tape and get started on fixing your stroke.” Dalton was both impassive and firm. He’d been around coaches his whole life. He knew that to be successful a coach he needed to be direct. Sometimes that translated into being a complete dickhead.

“Go to hell.” Jessi started to put her goggles on.

“Jessi, get out of the water and meet me in my office.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She glared up at him.

Dalton hunched down on his knees, like he’d seen his old coaches do hundreds of times. The thing about indoor pools was that loud sounds carried. Low sounds, not so much. A coach had to be
really
close to a swimmer to make sure she heard him.

“Okay, here’s the deal, Jessi. I was a dick, and I’m sorry. There. You’ve got my apology.” The look on her face clearly indicated that he needed to work on apologies. “Not good enough?”

“No.”

“Fine.” Dalton stood and put his hands on his hips. He looked around the pool for some inspiration and, finding none, decided to bite the bullet. “I’m sorry that I led you on—”

“You kissed me.”

Jesus, she wasn’t going to give him an inch. “Well, yeah. That too. I’m sorry that I kissed you—”

“Clearly.”

“No. That’s not what I meant! God, just please be quiet for a sec so I can apologize, okay?”

She started to put her goggles back on again. If she thought she was going to go back to her workout...