The Unfinished Line

Scene 44

“Did you figure out what we’re ordering for dinner?”

Startled by Seren’s head craning over her shoulder, Dillon shoved her phone beneath the hotel duvet and swatted her sister away from her. “Don’t be a creeper.”

“What—are you sexting?” Seren teased, flicking the back of Dillon’s neck.

“It revolts me to even hear you use that word.”

Huffing, Seren flopped down beside her. “I’m single, not dead, thank you very much.”

“Still… yuck. You’re my sister. I prefer to think of you living a life of celibacy.”

“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint you, but—”

“La-la-la, I don’t want to hear this!” Dillon made a show of sticking her fingers in her ears.

Taking advantage of her unguarded ribcage, Seren poked her in the side, and then dove for the phone tucked beneath the covers. Slowed by her limited mobility—her collarbone still healing and leg locked in a knee immobilizer—Dillon wasn’t fast enough to block her.

“Alright, Romeo,” Seren held the phone aloft, “let’s see what Kam…” her voice trailed off as she realized there would be no golden opportunity to embarrass her sister. The screen was left on an Instagram account for Dr. Robert Monaghan.

Surgeon to the Stars was the handle.

“Do they really call him that?” Seren rolled her eyes, handing the mobile back to Dillon.

Dillon shrugged. Outside, snow began to cling to the seventeenth-story hotel window, the tops of the trees covering Central Park dusted in white. She turned her attention back to the phone.

The surgeon’s profile photo had to be at least a decade old. The man she met this morning had wrinkles and a bad spray-on tan. But his handshake was firm and his confidence even firmer, his office littered with signed photos of his former patients. Tiger Woods. Tom Brady. Harrison Ford. Bill Clinton. That sort.

Three weeks ago, Kam sat cross-legged on Dillon’s bed and explained how she’d met with a surgeon renowned for taking on cases others found unsolvable. A specialist who focused on bio-medicine.

“He thinks you could run again.”

Dillon had looked over the material Kam brought with her from NYC. Paste grafting and stem cell cartilage repair .

As his moniker suggested, he dealt primarily with celebrity clientele, cherry-picking his patients. He was out of Dillon’s league, but that was no longer the case for Kam. A call to a friend-of-a-friend and she had been granted his full attention.

Dillon had set the pamphlet aside.

“You know I can’t afford this.” His practice worked outside the parameters of insurance—a cash-only basis which provided him the ability to pursue unconventional treatments.

“Please don’t insult me.” Kam’s jaw tightened. “I would give every penny I have if it meant you would be able to race again—if that’s what you want. If the tables were turned, I know you would do the same for me.”

The tables had turned. It had once been Dillon who was at the height of her career. Dillon who’d traveled the world. Who’d earned the better living. Kam was lightyears ahead of her now—the disparity between them only broadening.

But if she could race again? If she could make it to Los Angeles? If she could etch her name in stone—in gold —to solidify her place in Sports History?

Maybe her story wasn’t finished.

If that’s what you want Kam had said.

There should have been no question.

Dillon’s entire world had collapsed with her wreck back in Hamburg. Everything she’d pushed for. Everything she’d fought for, suffered through, year after year, mile after mile, clawing tooth and nail to achieve. Gone in the fraction of a second—the clipping, or unclipping, of a cleat.

So why had she hesitated to jump on the opportunity? Why, in the last couple weeks, had a contentment crept in, whispering to her the promise of peace?

It didn’t belong there. She was born to compete.

Dropping her head into Kam’s lap, she’d closed her eyes to the familiar comfort of the fingers trailing through her hair and nodded her agreement. She would meet with Dr. Monaghan. See what magic he could weave.

And today, three weeks later, he’d stood in his office and assured Dillon eighty percent of patients who underwent this specific type of surgery returned to competition. If all went well, by the end of the week, she’d be on her way home with a different forecast for her knee. A month non-weight bearing. Another month in a brace.

After that, only time would tell.

Could she run by spring?

His pepper-gray brows had knit, wrinkling his bronzed forehead. He was not so arrogant as to guarantee a timeline. Every injury healed at a different speed. But at the door he’d stopped, clapping her on the shoulder. “A long shot is better than a final whistle.” He’d drawn his arm back to throw an imaginary ball. “After all, sometimes a Hail Mary finds the end zone.”

Dillon forced herself to sign on the dotted line—she wasn’t a quitter—and Kam wired over more money than Dillon made in an entire year.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Shifting her attention off the headshot of the doctor, Dillon’s thoughts returned to her sister. “Of course I am.” She tossed her phone on the bedside table. “What a stupid question.”

“It’s not, though, is it?” Seren set a tentative hand on her leg. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

Frustration building, Dillon shoved the hand away, angry at herself for wavering on her conviction, and angry at Seren for always seeing through her.

“Tell me, if something happened and you were told you would never ride again—but then an opportunity arose that offered you a second chance, would you not jump on it without ever looking back?”

“I think it’s a little different for me. Aside from you, from Mam, riding is what I love most in the world.”

“And you think I don’t feel the same about racing?” Dillon snapped, defensive.

Seren’s composure remained infuriatingly intact. “I wouldn’t know, because you won’t talk to me. You won’t tell me how you’re feeling. The best I can do is try to read behind the words you aren’t saying. And maybe I’m wrong, but I think, as hard as these last couple of months have been, part of you has embraced the outcome. You’ve had a remarkable career. There’s no shame in hanging up your boots. Thirteen years. Three Olympics. Countless world championships. You have nothing left to prove—”

“Sam won the Ballon d’Or. Competed in three World Cups. Was twice voted FIFA’s Best. Do you think for a single second she wouldn’t give everything in her power to lace up her boots again? To feel the lights of Wembley on her back?”

“You’re not Sam—”

“And you’re not me ! So stop thinking you can psychoanalyze everything!” The brace felt too tight on Dillon’s leg, the sling pinning her elbow to her chest too confining. She wanted to get out of the hotel. To disappear beneath the blanketed canopy of trees. To run from questions she didn’t know how to answer.

How could she put it into words? The fear of trying versus the fear of doing nothing?

“Alistair called,” she said after the silence in the room had grown too stifling. “ British Triathlon’s holding the third quota open. They’ve given me until Leeds to qualify.”

The fine lines around Seren’s mouth deepened. “You don’t have to do this for Team GB. You don’t owe the BOA a thing.”

Dillon’s laugh was dry. “Do you know what kind of investment they’ve made in me? The time? The money?”

“And yet, the moment you were no longer useful to them, they tossed you aside. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they care about you or your career, Dillon. The only reason they’re holding that spot is because they know, if there’s a possibility you can run, you’re still their best chance at a medal.”

“Exactly. The gold medal. I’m their best shot to do what no British woman has ever done. You think Georgina’s going to bring it home?”

“I don’t care—don’t you get that?” Seren’s equilibrium was finally cracking. It brought an odd sense of satisfaction to see her imperturbable sister angry. To see the whites on her knuckles as she slammed her fist into the duvet. “I don’t care about medals. Or breaking records. I don’t care about what hasn’t been done before! The only thing I care about is you ! I want the best for you !”

Dillon lay back and stared at the ceiling. The best for her? She didn’t even know what that was anymore.

But it didn’t matter. It was too late to change her mind. Too many people were counting on her. Too much was invested.

“I’m going to do this. And I’m going to run. It’s what I do.” She closed her eyes. “And I need you to support me.”

She felt Seren move closer, pressing her cheek against her chest. “I have supported you—and will continue to support you—with every fiber of my being, Dillon Sinclair. You’re my little sister. It’s what I do.”

Dillon had to pass the back of her free hand across her eyes, swallowing away an unwelcome lump in her throat. On another day she would have given Seren grief about her shower-damp hair soaking through her shirt. She would have brushed her off, telling her to save her affection for épée, who had no choice but to endure it. But today she welcomed the weight of her sister’s comfort. She’d loved these last few days spent together, just the two of them. The slow, ambling afternoons exploring the city. The drowsy late nights watching American talk shows. The morning tea from the street vendor who didn’t know the difference between matcha and Earl Grey. The friendship, the closeness between them. How it had once been when they were children.

But the respite would soon be over. Seren put her life on hold to travel with Dillon to New York, but when they got home, she’d be off to Italy to compete in Verona. And Dillon would be stuck home with her mam, waiting to see if fate had any compassion. Then would come Christmas. Kam. Holidays spent together.

And after? Would Sinclair Squared still be a thing, or would only one of them see Los Angeles?

It was the unknown that felt the heaviest.

She opened her eyes to find Seren watching her.

“Promise me one thing, Dill?”

She hiked a noncommittal shoulder, feeling the ache in her clavicle.

“If it gets to be too much, you’ll walk away?”

“Seren—”

“I mean it, Dillon. If it’s not working, if things aren’t going as planned, promise me you’ll let it go?”

How easily that was said from someone sitting at the top of her sport, with the Olympic Games steady in her crosshairs. All Seren had to do was pull the trigger.

But Dillon didn’t want to fight. Instead, she eased herself upright and scooted to sit against the headboard. “Fine. But I hate to break it to you, one way or another, I’ll be in Los Angeles.” She nudged her sister with her toe. “Because even if I’m not racing, you’re going to need a groom. And it goes against the Equality Act not to hire someone just because they’re a cripple.”

Seren finally smiled. “What about not hiring someone because they suck at grooming?”

Dillon shrugged. “I’m your sister. You don’t get to say no.”