Free In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) by Catherine Gayle Page A

the breeze fluttering the hem of her skirt.
    “I think it would be better if you took me home. You said you’d leave me alone after a date.”
    “I will.” I opened the car door and waited while she got in. I didn’t close it, though, leaning over it so she had to look up at me. “If you want me to back off after tonight, I will. But please, let me take you to do one more thing.”
    She frowned, but after a moment the cold must have started to get to her, and she shivered. “Will you close the door?”
    “If you agree to let me show you what we came out here to see.”
    “Fine. But then I want you to take me home.”
    “After this, I’ll do anything you want me to.”
    Now I had to make sure that what Brie wanted, when everything was said and done, was me.
     
     

 
     

    K EITH DIDN’T DRIVE far before parking in one of the lots at Oaks Park, not far at all from where we’d been earlier. I really wasn’t in the mood to go roller-skating again, even though it had been fun before, and I had no doubt he knew that, so I couldn’t imagine why we were returning.
    He shut off the engine and sent a scorching look in my direction. “Ready?”
    Ready for what?
    There were dozens of other people crossing the lot and heading toward the riverbank, so there must be something big going on. I shrugged and climbed out of his car. I hadn’t even shut the door yet and he was standing there, right in front of me, holding out a hand for mine.
    I hesitated, but then I slammed the car door and forced myself to close the distance between us. I mentally kicked myself the whole time for acting the way I was. He didn’t deserve my acting like a shrew around him. It wasn’t Keith I was upset with; it was myself. Because he was right. Maybe he wasn’t right about me not being fat—I had a mirror, after all—but he might be right about me letting myself believe everything Val had said to me for so many years. I still heard Val’s voice in my head when I saw pictures of myself and when I looked in the bathroom mirror in the mornings. His voice was at its loudest when I saw myself in the studio mirrors.
    How you think we can win if you looking like this? he’d said to me again and again in his thick Russian accent. Fat! Your body doesn’t look right when we move together. I need my old partner back. That hadn’t even been the worst of it, either. Those were the kinds of things he’d said when we were in public, when others might hear. When we were alone, it was so much worse. I can’t look at you like that. You make me sick. How you expect me to get turned on? It’s like fucking a whale.
    The things he’d said to me hadn’t been lies, no matter what Keith wanted me to believe now. My body no longer moved the way it used to move. I couldn’t wear the slinky outfits I’d always worn in competition—the type that had emphasized my sleek body, my toned muscle, just the right curves in very specific places. If I put something like that on now, the people who saw me would want to cover their eyes and tell me to change into something more appropriate for a person my size.
    It wasn’t just what I saw, and it wasn’t only about the things Val had said to me. I saw the way people looked at me now. I knew the way they treated me.
    It’s a very different experience, being a heavy girl. I’d spent most of my life on the other end of the spectrum, so there weren’t many people who could make the comparison as readily as me. I never realized how easy some things were for me until all of a sudden they were next to impossible. It wasn’t all bad, though. These days, it was easy for me to be invisible, despite the fact that I took up twice as much space as I used to. I preferred to be invisible. That was a heck of a lot easier than dealing with the pitying stares or the disgusted expressions I got otherwise.
    I couldn’t deny that the way Keith looked at me was different from everyone else, though. He looked at me the way Val used