Page 18 of Rivals and Liars

"Okay," Kate agrees without arguing.

Half an hour later, Thomas—who has been with her since the Berlin Open the previous year—works in a silence Kate is grateful for, because she has no desire to talk. He's had her lie down on the portable table he always brings with him, applied heat for ten minutes, and then started on the massage. Forty-five minutes of deep work on her paraspinals and piriformis, followed by two rounds of passive stretching that Kate endures with her teeth clenched and her face buried in the face cradle while Diane goes over her notes one last time on the videos they watched yesterday about today's opponent.

"On a scale of one to ten, how bad was the pain before you took the pill?" Thomas asks when he wraps up.

Kate is sitting on the table, and her eyes find Diane's as if, in that moment, this woman is the only thing keeping her upright.

"Seven. Eight when I moved."

"Got it. I'll talk to Faruk in case we need to adjust the treatment. I'll see you before the match to put a patch on."

She nods, and the physical therapist folds up the table and leaves the room.

The match starts at ten, and her body responds the way she needs it to, even though there are moments when the discomfort threatens to surface and pulls her focus—but not enough to cost her the match. She wins in three sets: six-three, four-six, six-four.

She shakes hands with her opponent and her eyes go straight to the stands to look for Leire, who isn't sitting with the other players but in a lower players' box, beside her father. Kate catches her attempted smile and that guarded expression in her gaze—something that used to feel like enough, and now cracks her chest open with an ache she could easily compare to the one in her back.

She showers quickly and, even though she knows it won't happen, part of her always waits for Leire to push open the door and walk in to congratulate her after a match, the way Kate does for her. But the Spanish woman never finds the courage to take that step.

She walks to the press room and sits down in front of the microphone. The questions are the usual kind, except for the third one, when a journalist asks about her back.

"In the last game of the second set you put your hand on your lower back. Are you still dealing with something from Roland Garros? You had a problem there too. Do you feel fit enough to make it to the final?"

Kate freezes for a couple of seconds, searching her memory for the moment the journalist is describing. She doesn't remember touching her back, but she does it so often lately that it's probably become a habit she's no longer even aware of.

"It's a minor twinge, nothing serious," she says, forcing that warm smile that has half the world won over. "At this point in the season every player has something nagging at her. It's part of the game."

Candela Valle, sitting in the second row, checks that she's recorded the answer and jots a couple of notes in her notebook. She can't pull anything interesting out of this press conference; the interesting thing, she knows, is what she has in the form of an image a stranger sent her a couple of days ago—and since then she hasn't been sleeping well, still going back and forth between warning them or staying out of something that's none of her business and that, besides, she only suspects.

Diane is in the hallway when Kate comes out of the press conference, waiting with her bag so they can head straight back to the hotel.

"I talked to Faruk," she says. "We'll do the same as today: from now until the end of the tournament, we move physio to first thing in the morning and add another session in the afternoon."

"Okay."

Diane loops her arm through Kate's.

"You played really well," she says, changing the subject.

Kate glances at her sideways and smiles.

"Let's go get something to eat," she suggests, and slows her pace a little when she sees Leire and her father at the far end of the hallway, talking to two other players.

The Spanish woman hasn't noticed her yet, but she turns at the exact moment Kate is looking at her, as if she'd sensed the weight of those green eyes on her body.

"Good match, Brogan," Leire says in greeting as they pass, extending her hand.

Kate shakes it and lets her fingers drag across Leire's palm as she pulls away. It's barely a second, but she watches terror flash across Leire's expression at the brush of the caress against her skin.

"I'll never be her priority," Kate murmurs under her breath as they walk away.

Diane presses her lips together and exhales through her nose, reining in the urge to spin around, grab Leire by the arms, and shake her until she comes to her senses.

"I don't know if it helps, but you're mine, sweetheart," she says.

Kate manages a sad smile and drapes an arm over her shoulders.

"It does, Diane. Thank you," she murmurs, and kisses her on the cheek.