Love on the Line (Beaumont Legacy #2)

3. Maya

Chapter three

Maya

M aya blinked at her best friend in utter disbelief. Unless she was dreaming, Delilah, all curly golden hair and bright blue eyes, was standing on the porch, right in front of her. Close enough to touch. Close enough to hug.

She must’ve been dreaming.

It’d been five days since Colton and Cooper had flown back to the East Coast, and though Maya had had short phone calls with both of her brothers since, she’d been going a little stir-crazy alone in this house.

Delilah hadn’t said anything about being able to visit her, especially not now when she was supposed to be at the tournament in Dubai. Maya made a noise in the back of her throat.

Delilah, seeming to sense Maya’s disbelief, charged toward her and wrapped her in a big hug. The moment Delilah’s happy cloud enveloped her, Maya reciprocated, tears welling in her eyes.

It had only been a month since Maya had seen her, and yet it had felt like an eternity. Her doubles partner, her best friend, the person who she’d spent more of her adult life with than her own family, was here .

“H—how? How did you get away?”

Delilah pulled back, her signature smile on her face. She always had a way of making anybody feel like they were the most important person to her.

“You needed me,” she answered simply, her hands slipping into Maya’s.

“No, seriously.”

Tennis wasn’t a sport one could just leave during the season. The tour was intense, and players were at a tournament almost every week. There was no getting away when you were making a run at the top one hundred, as Delilah was currently doing and as Maya had been starting to do before her injury. Players went to every tournament, looked for every opportunity to get more points so they had a shot at even one of the four grand slams. Potentially dropping in the rankings by not playing wasn’t an option.

Delilah squeezed her hands. “Okay, fine. I’m in the main draw for Indian Wells, so we agreed I’d take a couple of weeks off to train and focus on physio,” she responded, talking about the tournament in California in March .

“Main draw is amazing, Del. And nobody questioned you coming to see me?”

“Well, of course I had to fight a little to train in California instead of at the academy, but I’m the one paying them, so what can they do about it?” She laughed.

The Morozov Academy was where Maya had befriended Delilah and the other girls in their group. It was where they and many other men and women on the tour trained when they weren’t on the road, and during the offseason.

Suddenly remembering they were still standing with the door open, Maya joked, “Do you want to come rot with me on the couch?”

“Actually, I promised I would do something active if I came here for the next couple of hours. Want to go for a run?”

Maya snorted. “How about a walk?” she compromised, because she had no interest in being active at all. But Delilah always knew how to get Maya to do things that were good for her, even if she didn’t feel like it. “Let me change real quick. One second.”

She shut the door behind Delilah before she hustled up the stairs to find a clean pair of shorts and a new shirt, hoping her friend hadn’t noticed the clothes she’d opened the door in weren’t in the best shape.

Maya had been trying to keep her promise to her brothers. She’d been showering more—which still wasn’t very often, but she also barely moved from the couch—and she’d even purchased some cheese so her sandwiches weren’ t all PB&Js. She’d given thought to Cooper’s words and had plans to go to physical therapy in the near future. She wasn’t ready yet, but she knew the wallowing had to end soon.

Especially now that her panic attacks were making a reappearance every time she tried to figure out what to do with her life. She’d been on the verge of one when Delilah had shown up, feeling like she had been twelve again, waking up in the middle of the night struggling to breathe, pleading with someone, anyone, to make it go away. Colton would come rushing in and hold her to his chest, coaching her on how to breathe through them until she could relax and fall asleep once more.

Except she wasn’t twelve anymore, and she couldn’t rely on others to get her through this.

She frowned at where her thoughts had led her, like the moment her friend’s radiant presence had faded, she’d fallen back under the dark cloud of despair that’d been following her around for weeks. Maya changed quickly and stepped into her running shoes before meeting Delilah at the bottom of the stairs.

Delilah’s eyes landed on the wrist brace Maya grabbed off the entry table along with her keys, and Maya nearly sighed in relief when her friend’s expression didn’t change to one of pity.

The brace had been a nice change from the cast Maya had worn through the end of January. Maya had gotten another surgery, but even with it, her doctor had told her it hadn’t healed properly.

Hence why she couldn’t play on the tour anymore.

His only advice had been to keep it braced and to go to physical therapy so she could regain some functionality in the future, and she’d clearly only been doing the former.

“Ready?” Delilah asked, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and marching toward the door before Maya could respond. Her friend had already descended the concrete stepping stones in the front lawn and begun walking down the street by the time Maya had gotten the door locked.

A cool February breeze snaked through Maya’s hair, and she breathed in the slightly smoggy Los Angeles morning air. The sun shone brightly through barely there clouds, bathing the streets in a warm glow. Two- to three-story houses sat atop well-manicured lawns, and the sidewalk and streets were some of the most pristine in Southern California.

It paid to have a father who came from money, she mused.

“How are the girls?” Maya inquired.

“They’re doing pretty well! Nicola’s still pushing to get into the top ten, but she dropped to forty-two, and she’s been struggling a bit with that.”

Maya felt for Nicola. She’d worked so hard since she’d won big in the juniors, but she never seemed to be able to get back up to the top. It was why she’d moved to the Morozov Academy this past November. She and her coaches had wanted a change for her, and even though Maya had only known her for a couple of months, Nicola had become an integral part of their group in her eyes .

“Harper and Sahar are good too. Harper and I have been grinding to move up into the top one hundred. Sahar’s still top fifty, I think. They’re all in Dubai right now. Not much has changed since we saw you last, honestly. You know how busy the tour is. We’ve only been able to train together a few times.”

“And Anya?” Maya questioned before she could filter herself. Delilah would know exactly what she was asking, and it had nothing to do with Anya’s tennis.

A little over a year ago, Maya had been hooking up with Ryan, a guy on the men’s tour who had trained with them at the academy. After developing feelings for each other, he’d told Maya he wasn’t ready for a relationship. As if that hadn’t made her feel unwanted enough, only a few months later, he’d started dating Anya, the daughter of the owners of the academy and the woman her friends mutually agreed was their frenemy, on and off the court.

Well, except Delilah. Delilah was friends with everyone, which meant Anya was often included in the few outings and birthday celebrations the tour allowed them.

“She and Ryan are…okay,” she said slowly, like she was trying to choose her words carefully. “I think they’ve been fighting. They both lost pretty badly at the Australian Open and have been struggling a bit on the tour. You know how it is dating another player. It’s good when you’re doing well at tournaments and bad when you’re not.”

Maya tried not to be so happy about that.

“But enough about that. How are you ?” Delilah turned her head to look at Maya as she asked. Just like before, there was no pity, only genuine concern, and Maya loved her friend all the more for it.

Like with her brothers, Maya didn’t want Delilah to worry about her, but she also knew that, like her brothers, Delilah would be able to sniff out a lie if she pretended she was fine.

Honesty, then.

“I’m—” She searched for the right word. “I’m trying to be okay. The stress of not knowing what to do next is getting to me a bit.” Maya shrugged. “I never imagined my life without tennis. I still can’t. I knew I’d retire one day, but I figured I would have made a bit more of a dent in the tennis world than this. I couldn’t even break 150,” she mumbled the last sentence.

Delilah stopped abruptly, and Maya looked back at her questioningly.

“Maya! I can’t believe you’re thinking about yourself like that. Do you know how impressive it is to be one of the best two hundred women in the world? There are over twenty-five hundred women on the tour. You were in the top eight percent and well into the top teeny tiny percent in the world . You’ve played in two grand slams now. Billions of people on this planet can’t say the same.”

Delilah hadn’t mentioned Maya had barely made it through the first round of one and lost in the first round of the other, but Maya got the point. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment because her friend was absolutely right.

She ducked her head, and Delilah placed an arm around her shoulder, continuing their walk around Maya’s neighborhood.

“And you know what I think?” her friend continued. “I’ve seen you coach, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, one day, you’re on tour with a player you’re coaching.”

Maya turned that over in her mind. She liked coaching, she really did. She just wanted to do more , find something that helped people more than that. Maya wanted to give back to the community she loved so much in another, bigger way. She just couldn’t quite figure out what that bigger way was.

“Coaching.” Maya nodded. “I can see it. Maybe I can start there and find something that excites me like the tour did along the way.”

Her friend squeezed her shoulder lovingly. “Exactly.”

Delilah began filling her in more about the tour and gossip about people at the academy. With so many competitors in one place training to be the best, it was no surprise there was often drama. But, when Delilah casually brushed over her father asking her for money, it was Maya’s turn to stop her.

“Del, what? He asked for money again ?”

Her father was the definition of a deadbeat drunk, and her mother had been out of the picture since her youngest twin siblings were born. Delilah had grown up the oldest of four children, and from a very young age, she’d had to take care of her siblings. She’d worked hard to make ends meet for her family, and when a young couple had discovered how talented she was on the court and had sponsored her move to a training facility, then the academy, it’d been the big break she’d needed to keep her siblings safe and healthy. All her money had been going to her coaches and her family, which is why she’d shared a tiny apartment just outside the academy with Maya.

The fact that her father was asking for more than the money she’d already sent him pissed Maya off, but she knew Delilah was too sweet to say no.

“It’s…complicated. I just want to make sure they have enough to eat and go to the best schools and get the best of everything. They’re all in college or going to start soon, and I just want to be sure they have everything they need, you know?”

Maya slipped her uninjured hand into Delilah’s to comfort her the way she always comforted Maya. “I know you do. You’re the greatest big sister in the world.”

They walked hand in hand, talking about more drama and plans for the tour, and Maya was thankful her heart didn’t shoot up to her throat the way it usually did when she thought about how the tour was no longer her future. Not that she was coming to terms with it, exactly, but with Delilah by her side, it didn’t hurt quite as badly.

They walked the full two hours Delilah had been allotted, and as Maya watched her drive the rental car out of her neighborhood, the sight of a reporter and cameraman— no doubt wondering if her brothers were inside—made her frown. A good reminder to talk to her father about getting a security system in the house, she supposed.