I stared ahead at the bookcase, remembering my perfect white house and my perfect pink bedroom and my perfect, strict schedule posted on the refrigerator.
“I was a twenty-four-hour tennis player, and the only people I spoke to were my family, newscasters, and my coach, Chase Stiles.” I looked at Tyler. “He was twenty-six at the time.”
His expression turned guarded. “Chase Stiles? Am I going to like where this is going?”
I gave him a soothing smile and continued.
“He was so devoted to me,” I admitted. “Always encouraging me and spending so much more time working with me than what he was paid for. He would buy me things, and I liked it, because I thought he was the only one who cared about who I was on the inside. He asked me about my interests outside of tennis.”
Tyler stayed quiet, and I hesitated, feeling my stomach knot as the old fear started to surface.
But I forced it out, keeping my eyes downcast. “I didn’t see it as wrong when he started buying me outfits.” I went on. “Tight shorts and sports bras to train in. And I didn’t think it was such a big deal when he took pictures of me posing in the outfits he’d bought.”
“Easton,” Tyler inched out, apprehension thick in his voice. He didn’t like where this was going.
I swallowed through the tightness in my throat, still not meeting his eyes. “But then he started getting familiar,” I explained, chewing on my bottom lip. “Patting me on the behind when I did well or hugging me for too long.” I blinked, pushing away the shame I felt creep up. “A couple of times he came into the locker room while I was showering, pretending it was an accident.”
At the time, I’d felt like it was my fault. Like I was enticing him, or that what he was doing was normal. We’d spent a lot of time together. Training, traveling… We were close, so maybe he was just a really good friend or someone, like my parents, whom I should trust to never hurt me.
“I didn’t tell anyone what was going on, and I didn’t confront Chase about any of it,” I told Tyler. “I just started getting more stressed, and I became angry. Very angry,” I added.
“I started refusing his gifts,” I continued. “And I threw fits when my mother would try to leave me alone with him on the court. After a while, I finally broke down and told them about his behavior.”
“Did he force himself on you?” Tyler bit out, his voice turning angry.
I shook my head. “No. But the behavior was escalating,” I explained. “My parents fired him, but they didn’t press charges. They didn’t want America’s next tennis darling tainted with a scandal forever preserved in the newspapers.”
I looked at Tyler and could see his fists balled up under his arms.
“And then, on top of that,” he deduced, “you lost your parents and your sister two years later. That’s a lot for a young person to go through.”
I nodded. “It was.”
Chase’s abuse, and my parents’ and sister’s deaths, had almost killed me five years ago. I dove into a world of turning chaos into order and building such a tough outer shell that nothing bad could hurt me again.
It wasn’t until recently that I’d realized, looking up at Tyler, that my shell protected me from all the good stuff, too.
“I started arranging and counting things as a coping mechanism, a way to have consistency,” I told him. “To know what I could count on. Awareness of my surroundings, everything in its place…” I went on. “I didn’t like surprises.”
“You needed control,” he assessed.
I nodded. “Yeah. After Stiles and then the accident, Jack and I tried to keep it going, but as you saw online, I couldn’t get it together. My game fell apart. We sold our house and moved here, so I could have a fresh start and my brother could pursue his own dreams finally.”
Tyler pushed off the desk and approached me, standing tall above me and looking down intently.
“And what’s your dream?” he asked.
I inhaled a long breath and took my hands out from behind my head. Running one up his leg to the inside of his thigh, I whispered, “To not want you as much as I do.”
The next week flew by, fall conferences having started, and I needed to get ahead on revising lesson plans that I’d already completed last summer.
I’d expected that to happen, as classes don’t always go according to schedule and certain changes I’d decided to make at the last minute needed to be accounted for later. I didn’t mind how my personal life had changed or even how unpredictable it had become, but I didn’t want to lose control of my career. Being a good teacher was acceptable. Being a great teacher was my mission.