My Coach, My Stalker by Jessa Kane

Chapter 7

Margot

I win gold.

I can’t really believe it. All this work. Years of it. Of course I had the obligatory fantasies of Olympic glory, but so did everyone else. I didn’t think mine could be the one to come true.

Yet as I stand on the podium with the medal around my neck and a bouquet of roses cradled in my arms, the national anthem playing over the loudspeakers, there is a heavy sense of disappointment in my gut. Everett is talking to news reporters, shaking hands. Other diving coaches are coming up and congratulating him, slapping him on the back. And I haven’t seen him look this happy since I’ve known him. He’s usually very tense and reserved. Not now. His eyes have taken on a brighter tint of blue. There is a bounce in his step.

Because I won gold.

Is that all he ever wanted from me?

Did he tell me he loved me because he meant it? Or because I said it first and he didn’t want to hurt my feelings before the competition?

After the medal ceremony, he’s nowhere to be found. Just poof. Gone.

My parents wait outside the locker room while I shower and get dressed, wanting to bring me out to a special dinner in Tokyo. Everett is missing. Is he finished with me? I gave him what he wanted and now he has the prestige to coach at an even higher level? If I was more important to him than the glory, wouldn’t he be here right now, accompanying us to dinner?

I do my best to maintain my smile while eating with my parents, although there is definite awkwardness between me and my father. Not to mention, they seem more apt to accept congratulations than I am, taking credit for my training. My victory. Is that all anyone in my life has ever wanted from me?

After we finish and get back to Olympic Village, another hour passes with no sign of my coach. Tears fill my vision, a weight pressing down on the center of my chest.

He’s left me.

He got what he wanted and took off without a word.

My heart wrenches painfully as I pace my small room, looking out over the bright lights of the Olympic compound. Suddenly there is nothing I want more than my own bed. At home in Austin. I have to get out of here. All of the pressure that has been weighing down on me to perform my best was manageable as long as I had Everett. But obviously I misjudged him. Where is he now? What is he doing? I’m going to go crazy with the possibilities and I can’t stand to wonder. What if he shows up later or tomorrow and I see disinterest on his face? What if he really only took me to bed so I would dive better and no other reason? I don’t want to know.

So I’m leaving.

As fast as possible, I pack my clothes, my toiletries and medal. I leave word for my parents with one of the coordinators and zip to the airport in a cab, booking a last-minute flight on the way, desperate to escape this place and the noise and reminders that everything is about winning. I’m halfway through security when I realize I left in such a hurry that I forgot my phone. It’s still charging on the floor of my room. There’s nothing I can do about it now, though. My plane is leaving in twenty minutes.

I board with tears in my eyes, throwing myself into the seat closest to the window. And I watch the lights of Tokyo grow smaller and smaller through the double-paned glass.

When I land in Austin, I’m emotionally spent, exhausted from the surges of adrenaline during competition and the jet lag isn’t helping. I melt into the back of another cab, nearly falling asleep on the way home. And when I do walk through the front door of my family’s place and the familiarity greets me, I burst into big hiccupping sobs, clutching at my broken heart as I stumble to my bed where I fall fast asleep for several hours, vowing to shower and go buy a new phone when I wake up.

* * *

My eyes popopen in the darkness.

Or near darkness, anyway. I turn my head and glance at the clock on my wall, the ticking arms filling me in that it’s five-twenty pm. Did I get home today or has another full day passed on top of that? I have no idea. There’s no sense of time and space while I shower and dress, urgency needling me to go buy a new phone. We don’t have a landline in this house and while I might have left a message for my parents, they must be worried, wondering if I got home okay.

Is Everett worried?

Maybe he hasn’t even realized I’m gone yet. That’s more likely.

With eyes still gritty from sleep and crying, I enter our cool garage through the door in the kitchen, unlocking my Jetta and sliding into the driver’s seat. I turn on the ignition, sighing over the pleasant waft of air conditioning that bathes my bare arms and legs, fluttering the hem of my loose, indigo blue dress.

I press the button to open the garage and I’m just about to pull down the driveway and onto the street when something on the passenger seat draws my eye. It’s a book about sports psychology. Staying focused. Everett gave it to me before the Games and I never had a chance to read it. Pulse speeding up, I lift the book into my lap and flip it open to the first page, surprised to find there is an inscription in Everett’s bold, all caps handwriting.

Forget the medals. You’ve already won just by being you. -Coach

Tears blurthe words in front of me, my injured heart squeezing in my chest.

Lies. He couldn’t have meant that. Or maybe he did at the time, but once he got a taste of the accolades that come with winning a gold medal, he changed.

After drying my eyes with the hem of my dress, I leave the house. But instead of driving to the phone store, as planned, I find myself idling in front of Everett’s house. It’s a small but well-tended Colonial not too far from where I live. There are several newspapers in the driveway since he hasn’t been home to receive them. The shades are pulled down tight.

I’ve never once been inside, which is odd. How many times has he been over to my house for dinner? More than I can count. I’m sure it’s meticulously organized and functional, just like the man himself.

That thought causes my throat muscles to tighten up. I miss him. The lack of him is a physical ache growing worse and worse by the second. I don’t think I’ve gone a full day without some form of contact with my coach for two full years. It feels wrong. It hurts. I want him. To hear his voice and feel him inside of me, his hand around my throat or his sweat dripping on my back. Those strained calls of my name are haunting me.

A rising need to have some form of contact with Everett has me climbing out of the car without realizing what I’m doing. Feeling out of sorts and wired and hypnotized all at once, I go through a low gate and circle around to the back of his house. There is one chair on the patio. A barbeque. A round, glass table with a hole for an umbrella.

I sit in the chair in an attempt to be close with Everett, running my palms up and down the metal arms, but it’s not enough. I need more. I’m suddenly breathless. Fiending for connection with this man who has become my life, then taken himself out of it.

Turning in the chair, my eyes land on a series of rocks in the garden. One of them is ever so slightly askew and somehow I know there’s a key underneath. I get to my feet, anticipation building in my bloodstream. And I toe the rock aside, staring down at the shiny metal key in the dirt. Picking it up and all but throwing myself at the back door, fitting metal into lock, heart rapping with the need to get inside. To be near him.

I step into his kitchen and the scent of him attacks my senses immediately. Crisp aftershave with hints of pear and sandalwood. All I can do is close my eyes and suck it down.

It’s when I open my eyes, that everything I believed about Everett becomes a lie.

Just beyond the kitchen is the living room. And it’s in shambles.

The walls have been slashed so badly, one could almost assume he’s been robbed. Or targeted by someone with a vendetta. Or one might assume that if it wasn’t my name carved into every available inch of the wall. It’s a wonder they’re still standing.

I swallow hard and move farther into the living room, the space throbbing around me like a beating heart. My old swimsuits are tacked to the walls alongside pictures of me. Photos where I am unaware of being pictured at all. Oblivious. I’m sleeping in some of them, my leg thrown over the comforter. There are up close shots of my private parts. My sex. My breasts. My mouth. So many pictures of my mouth. Stolen panties and various items I thought I’d misplaced over the years surround me on every surface.

And there’s an electronic device siting on a side table.

Fingers numb, I turn it on and listen to the crackle of static that matches the white noise in my brain. A second later, I hear my parents’ voices through the device, tinny and distant.

“Margot? Honey? Are you home?” Then more quietly, “Her stuff is here. She must have been here at some point…”

Oh God.

There’s a listening device in my house. My room.

Everett has been listening to me.

He’s been stalking me.

How did I not have a clue?

I stumble backward and my back lands against a wall of photos and souvenirs, my breath sounding loud in my head. What do I do? I have to get out of here. I have to run, right? If Everett took a flight home after me, he could be home any second. I should…report this. I should tell my parents.

But I don’t move.

I can’t move because my thighs are squeezing together in an attempt to subdue the erotic dampening. The clenching of tiny muscles. I’m not turned on by this. I can’t be.

Am I?

My head tips back of its own accord and I drag a hand down over my throat, moaning over the soreness his grip left behind. He’s been in this room for what looks like months, maybe years, obsessing over me. Watching me. I left Tokyo upset, believing the man I love to be indifferent about me, but he’s the furthest thing from that.

He’s consumed.

So am I.

My fingers are trailing down, down, over my mound, preparing to slip under my dress so I can touch myself—but the door is kicked open in that moment, splintered wood flying in several directions, rattling the walls. And there is my coach outlined in the frame, nothing short of a man possessed.