Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

EVERYTHING HURT.

His shoulders ached. His joints cracked every time he laced his fingers together and stretched them. His fingertips were nothing but hard callouses, at least where they weren't scraped raw.

By the time Elijah unlocked the door to his dark, quiet home, he could barely hold his keys. He dropped them on the shoe rack by the door the moment he shut himself inside. Elijah toed off his shoes and let his bag thud to the linoleum, slouching to the couch in the adjoining living room without even turning on a light.

Ty had run him ragged over the course of two and a half days, and not just with climbing. Elijah smiled at himself, even as he shook his head. He wouldn't have believed he still had that kind of … stamina left if it weren't for Ty basically insisting on him keeping up.

And it had certainly been worth it. Elijah wouldn't deny that for a second. But finally back home in Colorado, it all had the hazy, insubstantial quality of a dream. For two and a half days, he'd trained — and fucked — harder than he had in years. His body sank into the cushions as though Ty had sucked the life out of his very bones, leaving him a heap of useless limbs in the vague shape of a man.

The silence of his empty home rang in his ears. It was odd to be without Ty's excited chatter, his uninhibited and joyous laughter, the cries of pleasure Elijah had come to know extremely well over the course of the weekend. Here at home, there was only Elijah. No roommates, no pets, not even a plant. He had this little one-story ranch-style home to himself. For the past five years, it had been everything he could want, more than big enough for a single guy and close to both the city and climbing areas. Only now did it loom around him, cavernous and strange.

Elijah dragged himself off the couch and flipped on some lights just to make the place feel a little smaller. He hadn't updated the house since he got it, so a lot of it was the kind of cream carpeting and wooden cabinetry that looked like it came right out of the seventies. It drove down the price, though, and Elijah didn't really care what the place looked like as long as he could afford it. It was cozy, convenient and affordable, and that was all he'd thought about when signing the lease.

Will Ty see it some day? What would he think?

Elijah shook himself and shut a refrigerator door he didn't even remember opening. He wasn't really hungry. The motion had been automatic, brought about thanks to a mind distracted with impossible dreams about the future. It was a fun weekend, for sure, but he and Ty had no concrete plans to see each other again. A large part of that was the upcoming competition season. Ty would be all over the world, and Elijah certainly wasn't going to hold him back when Ty should have been out there winning every comp on the IFSC circuit. Then the lead season would start up, and Ty was thinking of doing a few of those as well just to have experience in both disciplines.

Elijah would do nothing but slow him down.

Unless…

The exhaustion ebbed away under a tide of jittery anxiety as Elijah plodded back to the couch to search for his phone. He'd left it on the table with the screen side down, but he hesitated to pick it back up. He hadn't made any hard and fast promises to Ty about getting back into competitions, but he had contacted his sponsors.

It was crazy. There was no way they'd be interested. He hadn't been worthwhile to them in a solid year at least. What could a washed up former climber do for them by wearing a brand logo as he inevitably didn't make it out of the semi-finals ?

Back home, alone in his own space, the very notion seemed ludicrous. With Ty, it had all sounded so much more possible. Still, Elijah hadn't done more than poke at a couple sponsors, none of whom he expected to hear back from. He'd deliver the disappointing news to Ty in a week or so and that would probably be that. Ty would be jet setting from one comp to the next and Elijah would be … here.

He checked his phone anyway, his heart in his throat. Elijah tapped on the email icon and nudged at it to refresh. The phone churned, as though it was as lethargic as Elijah after days on strange networks and set in airplane mode.

Then the app refreshed.

Elijah's phone pinged. Three new emails. Two were spam, but one, one was … one was…

No freaking way.

Mr. Reed , it began, we're delighted to hear from you again and would be very interested in collaborating on future…

The message continued, but Elijah couldn't hold onto the words. He had to pack. He had to plan. He had to contact Ty. But for the immediate moment, he could do little but gape open-mouthed at his phone as a storm of excitement, disbelief and dread warred within him.

He was doing this. Could he do this? He had to do this. He had no choice. There were people depending on him now.

He was going to compete again.