and let him pass out their supper. She choreographed the movements of her hands above the table so that hers never brushed his. The awareness she felt and her body’s intense curiosity each time their hands came within a hairbreadth was because she’d been living the life of a nun for five years. It was absolutely not because of Micah.
You tell yourself another tall one.
It couldn’t be Micah. She’d never survive.
The aroma of spice and beans wafting from the food overpowered the generic hotel room smell. While he opened the bag of tortilla chips and cup of salsa, she shoved a fork and napkin under his makeshift plate. Swallowing a sigh, she prepared herself to pretend that interrogation and attempted coercion was the same thing as conversation. Second to running, weathering a cross-examination might be her greatest skill.
When he smiled and asked about her drive down here, she realized she’d underestimated Micah. He was practiced at making people feel comfortable. As they made small talk about the changes to Chicago’s lakefront, the weather and the possibility of either baseball team making the playoffs, Ruby wondered if Micah’s skill at easing people’s anxiety had come after his disability, was part of his training to be a sportscaster, a natural trait that had helped make him a star football player or all of the above. Being a sportscaster had a least helped with the magic spell he was trying to weave and she was trying to resist. As far as she remembered, he hadn’t been nearly so charming five years ago.
He also hadn’t been trying, because who would waste the effort charming the sporting princess who’d had it all and been stupid enough to throw it all away? He hadn’t needed to try. She’d fallen prey to his face with probably little effort on his part. A walking, talking, running doll, with little else to recommend her.
“Do you hate me?” she asked, interrupting his story about meeting his childhood hero, Joe Montana.
She saw by his face that he was considering answering her question with a meaningless of course not, when he set his fork down, folded his arms on the table and looked at her. His eyes darkened as he regarded her and thought about her question. She would not squirm. She was not afraid of him any longer. Wary—but caution came from experience and was not the same as fear.
Finally, he said, “Why are you asking that question? Do you mean, do I hate that you can walk and I can’t? Do I hate that you are trying to return to your sport, even if only as an amateur, when I must report from the sidelines? Instead of hating, I could resent—”
She held up a hand to stop him. He might come up with reasons she hadn’t thought of yet and she wasn’t sure her tender decision not to be caged could withstand rough treatment. “Do you hate me for cheating? For throwing away a career and a life and a dream? For disgracing my sport? Can I be forgiven for that?”
The combination of exhaustion, tequila and heavy hotel drapes protecting her from the outside world must have made her willing to ask such a question. If she had let the world into this room by opening her blinds or turning on the television, she’d realize she was opening her heart to this man—again—and inviting him to stick a stake in it. But Micah had made her feel safe, so she’d stuck her neck out and was now waiting for him to drop the guillotine.
Instead, he was silent for several seconds. Ruby was about to tell him to forget she asked when he said, “Why are you asking me this question and not someone else?”
“Because when everyone close to me was telling me that blood doping was no big deal, you came right out and told me that I was the emperor wearing no clothes.” After that interview, faced with his scorn, she’d been naked, shivering with exposure. “If I specifically ask you for the truth, you won’t lie to me.”
Micah drummed his fingers on the table as he regarded her, again stripping away the protective layers she’d so carefully constructed over the past several years until her raw nakedness was exposed. She shivered.
“Do people lie to you regularly?” he asked.
“Forget it.” She shoved a heaping pile of refried beans onto her fork. It was more than she could fit in her mouth, but the protein in the beans would help her build back the layers she needed to protect herself. “Despite you pretending earlier, this isn’t a conversation. Hell, it’s not even an interview. This is turning into some weird therapy session.”
“You’re the one who asked the question.”
“And you’ve only answered with questions of your own. And how did it make you feel knowing that the people you trusted most said, ‘everyone does it,’ and you wanted to win so badly that you believed them? How does it make you feel that people call you a lying bitch at the grocery store for cheating and a betraying bitch for confessing?” she mocked.
Suddenly cold, she pushed her chair back from the table, using so much force that the back legs caught on the carpet and she had to grab on to the table before she toppled over. Once she’d righted herself, she rooted around in her bag for a sweatshirt, desperate for more cover. But she wasn’t going to run away and hide from him. When she returned to the table, she lifted her chin and looked him directly in the eyes.
The drumming of his fingers irritated her to no end. So did his placid face. He should be angry. Or something. Not this provoking openness that made her ask such questions in the first place. She pushed her beans around the take-out container. Forgive her or yell at her. None of this middle-ground crap.
“So people do lie to you.”
“I assume the ones calling me a bitch are expressing their true feelings. It’s the people who tell me, ‘it’s not so bad,’ that I doubt.” He was doing it again—getting her to answer a question without answering one himself. She scooped beans onto her fork and took a bite, again getting more beans than were possible for her to swallow easily. Maybe now she’d think and chew before giving in to his questions.
Micah took a big sip of his drink. Ruby mashed the beans with her tongue, wishing she were eating something chewy, like bread, so she could pretend her food needed several good chomps and fight her body’s reflex to swallow. Could she outchew him?
Just as she decided he wasn’t going to answer, Micah spoke. “I did hate you. After that interview, when you were so naive and stupid and blind about the trust you’d abused. And you had the audacity to compare your cheating to my disability. Like a freak accident that changed my body forever is the same thing as your calculated decision to modify yours. You hid out in your parents’ house, coming out only when it was convenient for you and, for the most part, your world has not changed. Meanwhile, I have to fight for the world to recognize that my life has as much worth now that I can’t wiggle my toes as it did when I could.”
She swallowed, the taste of her food overwhelmed by the bitterness of her past ignorance. “Yes, I’m...”
“Stop.” Weariness overcame his face. “Apologizing only makes it worse.”
“Can I agree that I was stupid?”
To her surprise—and apparently to his, as well—Micah smiled. “Yes, you can agree with me on that.” He cocked his head to the side and the pendant lamp caught a twinkle in his eyes. God, he was good-looking. “I like to be agreed with.”
“When you said hate, you used the past tense.”
“I have better things to spend my energy on than keeping alive a feeling as powerful as hate for you.”
About as much worth hating as a pebble stuck in his tire, she was sure. “So why interview me about ultramarathons? Why not Geoff Roes or Jenn Shelton or Currito?”
“Geoff has his own movie and Jenn her own book. Currito is an interesting guy, but you getting back into running would be the story of the year. Everyone would be wondering if America’s Darling had really reformed. You’d be back on the cover of People. Sports Illustrated would do another story on you. If Oprah were still on, you’d be invited to sit on her couch. And you know it, too.”
He was right, she did know it. And it was part of the reason she would say