Page 70 of Unbroken

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“I fucking hate her.”

William waited a moment, then placed his hands on her shoulders. “No you don’t, sweetie. That’s why it’s so hard.”

Ava tried to shove him off, but her actions were noncommittal. The touch brought a sudden flurry of tears she couldn’t control, and she sank to her knees. “I just want her to hug me,” she sobbed. Strong arms belonging to her father wrapped around her, which meant so much, but at that moment it did little to fix the gaping hole in her heart. “Why can’t she just love me, Dad... Why...?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. But I do know this,” he said softly, stroking her hair, damp from sweat. “You can yell, and you can scream all you want. But you’ve always wanted this. To be fighting, haven’t you?”

Ava nodded through her sobs.

“In spite of everything you’ve had done to you—all your injuries, all your pain, all your suffering—you’re still here. You’re still standing. And that’s your greatest fear.”

Ava looked up at him, trying to catch her breath.

“The truth is you’ve been given something everyone wants. A second chance. And you’re afraid of blowing it. But you’re willing to head into that Cage anyway because it’s who you are.

I know what that’s like. I was terrified to see you after so long, but I wanted you back. I wanted us, you and me, to be a family again. You could’ve slammed the theoretical door in my face. I was prepared for that, but I came anyway. I had to try. I would never forgive myself if I don’t give every ounce of effort to be the dad you deserve.

You need to do this honey. Leave nothing left in the tank, or you’ll be sorry forever. Forget about the media. Forget about your mother. Use what you’ve gone through to inspire you. Run up that sand hill. Whatever it takes. Get up there. We are all here because of you. Because we believe in you. Win or lose. Just do your best.”

“What if that’s not enough?”

“If it’s truly your best,” William said, brushing a sticky stray hair from her forehead, “it’s always enough.”

32

Ava awoke roughlythirty seconds before her alarm, as she had grown accustomed to doing of late. She made sure to hold her hand over the speaker as it beeped, giving her the second or so it took to swipe cancel.

Dressing silently in her running gear, she added the arm strap for her phone and ran through the plan. Focused on what she had to do. Something she had never done. Something even highly trained and experienced athletes had failed to do. The Wanda sandhill in one go.

This was her last chance. Ruben had told her when she conquered it, she would be ready for Nash. Christ that had, had an effect on her. Both good and bad. He’d given her a goal to gain confidence in her leg. But he’d also given her a seemingly impossible task. The leg had healed. It still hurt at the end of the day, and she still had a slight limp when she overworked it. But she could kick as strong as she ever could. Yet she was still hesitant. She didn’t trust it to do the job. To handle the pressure. All she could see in her mind was that brace and the pins, drilled into her skin, holding the bone in place.

It didn’t help that it had been a month since her first go at it, and she hadn’t conquered the sandhill yet and was left wondering if the two were connected. The sandhill would be her baptism of fire. Either she climbed to the top, or there was no point in fighting. She couldn’t go into any fight with that kind of mental hindrance, especially not this one.

She gently eased herself out her bedroom door and down the stairs to where the boys were waiting. Usually they would all drive to the sandhills for training, then she would attempt the mammoth task of climbing them while fatigued. But today was different. Only the boys were driving. Ava was going to run the whole way. She had calculated that it would take two hours before she hit the beach and then she would face her nightmare for the last time.

“Ready, babes?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be...” she said, twisting her hips. She looked up into deadpan stares from both boys. They wanted more. They wanted a real answer. “Yes.”

“Then let’s do it,” Chris replied, giving her a fist bump.

Once outside, Ava stretched her calves and hamstrings as the boys started up the car. She set off, keeping to the sidewalk, as she saw the cusp of the sun beginning to rise. With her earbuds blocking the outside world, she focused on herself. Her mind was her worst enemy at times and yet it could be a tremendously calming place. And she needed the calm for what was coming.

The best thing about running at this time of the morning: there was little traffic and that allowed the boys to keep following her at a slow speed. She passed a petrol station, and out of the corner of her eye she spotted tradie workers, filling up their utes, stopping to applaud her. Filthy, some of them. Maybe coming off a construction site. Hard as nails yet they found the time to give her a cheer. She gave a mini fist pump as thanks and continued on.

By the time the sun had risen enough to brighten the morning, Ava had not seen one car on the road, but people had been outside their homes—some with dressing gowns on, some with their sleepy kids in their arms—waiting for her to pass. She was being clapped along by strangers. Encouraged and praised. All she could do was wave and smile, but she wanted to tell them all how much it meant to have the support.

She checked her watch at the halfway point and was amazed she still hadn’t seen one car in either direction. It was only a bright flash of lights from her peripheral vision that made her turn her head. The boys were still following her, but just in front of them was a police highway cruiser.Oh shit.

She didn’t stop, but she did slow. This caused the cruiser to slide away to the further lane, its lights still flashing. Ava turned her head around to see what the boys wanted her to do. Should she stop? What met her gaze meant words, croaky voice or not, would be impossible. Behind the boys was vehicle after vehicle. Both sides of the road had been taken up. The cruiser wasn’t trying to stop her. It was escorting her.

She stopped and turned as she popped one ear bud out to hear a tumultuous cheer from the parade of cars. Car horns, yelling and screaming met her ears. None more so than Chris and Ruben, calling for her to run in front of them. To lead the way. She flicked her eyes to the cruiser and saw the passenger side officer beckoning with his hand out the window.What the hell.

She jogged just a touch faster as she moved to the road, and the noise grew deafening. This was obviously what they had wanted for however long they had been following. Through the pain in her thighs and the sweat she kept having to wipe from her eyebrows, it gave her a surge.

The further she went, the more the lack of cars made sense. They had blocked the passage of her journey to the beach. It was surreal. She didn’t know when, or if, the boys had orchestrated it, or maybe they’d been approached, but it didn’t matter. It meant so much.

There was more hooting, more hollering, and she flicked her gaze back to find even more vehicles had joined the line, but she couldn’t focus on anything except her objective as the road began to soften, and she hit the grass at the beginning of the beach. As she estimated maybe five hundred meters or so until the sandhills, she could almost hear Ruben in her ear saying “Now”. She broke into a sprint that rocketed her towards the downward hill she would traverse before the hundred metres or so of flat sand that led to her nightmare.


Tags: Aaron L. Speer Romance