Breakaway

Chapter 10 - Breakaway

DANA

For the first time since my arrival in Portland, the Storm's players were really, truly working together as a team.

That wasn't a good realization, considering I'd witnessed a handful of their games already—most of them losses, even if in a few of them they'd managed to scrape together a point in overtime or a shoot-out. Points are important for the standings, but wins are more important for the psyche. Athletes don't like losing, and to make it to this level in any sport, you have to be ultracompetitive.

But this afternoon, Sergeant McDougal presented them with something they couldn't successfully complete unless they worked as a single, cohesive unit. Work as one, or fail. It was that simple and that complex, all at the same time.

The military obstacle course was as elaborate and seemingly impossible to navigate as anything you could imagine. It was designed as a rescue mission unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

At the start, most of the team had to crawl through the thick mud under a rope net. When they got everyone through, they had to retrieve a ring of keys that was hanging from a ten-foot-tall post. The keys unlocked the cell that three guys were trapped in. Once they were out of the cell, all of them had to go back through the mud...but the "prisoners" had their hands bound and were attached to a rope that spanned the entire obstacle course, making it impossible for them to veer even just a little bit off the designated path.

Scotty had initially suggested I participate, like I had joined in on the ice at Central Park—that maybe I could be one of the prisoners since I weighed less than any of the guys and would be easy to lift and carry. Being locked up in a cell with my hands bound while surrounded by a bunch of men didn't sound like such a good idea to me.

Eric agreed with me, although he went about stating his case in a grouchy, authoritarian sort of way. He'd told Scotty there was no way in hell that was going to happen, so he could just forget about the idea entirely.

When he looked at me afterward, fierce protectiveness mingling with something softer in his eyes—which had giant, exhausted bags underneath them—my legs had felt like mush. I couldn't stop thinking about how he'd kissed my forehead last night, how I hadn't run away in panic.

How I wanted him to do it again.

The way he had looked at me made me wish I could be braver. I was curious, almost painfully so, about how it would feel if he kissed me on the lips. What if he'd done that last night? The thought of it made concentrating on the team's progress through the obstacle course nearly impossible.

At the other end of the mud pit, they had to scale a twelve-foot vertical wall by using nothing but a single rope attached at the top and their ingenuity. This was the first time they really started to gel on the course, to work as one instead of twenty-three disparate parts. In order to reach the rope, they had to either make a running jump for it or give each other a boost.

It was difficult enough to accomplish for the guys who had full use of their arms, but they also had to get the prisoners whose hands were bound up and over the wall. Sorting out the best way to accomplish it didn't seem to go well. They had guys trying different things, but they weren't really working as a unit. Everyone did his own thing, pretty much. Eventually, Eric and a couple of the other guys who weren't bound got up to the top, and they lifted the prisoners up and over while the guys on the ground pushed from below.

This was yet another reason I couldn't have participated. If I was able to jump up to the rope and pull myself over, that might have been okay. But with my hands bound? I didn't think I could have even let Eric pull me over like they were doing. I had let him hold my hand and put his hand on my waist, sure. I'd let him brush his finger over my chin and kiss my forehead. But to have some of those guys below me, pushing up on my legs, trying to lift me? No way. Not now. I couldn't do that.