The Nexus' Woodlands neighborhood, two days later...

I came up for air, my breath heavy and panting before someone handed me a towel to wipe my face of the pristine lake water. "Second place," I breathed, taking in the cheers of the small crowd. "I thought I was going to win this race."

"Sorry, kid, but that's all me," the brunette-haired female swimmer next to me, a resident of Winterhaven, told me good-naturedly as we shook hands. "I still hold the record of being the top swimmer. At least you can say that you came close to beating an elite athlete."

"True," I agreed as we got out of the water.

I was currently attending a luxury-themed lake party held by one of Eva's modeling friends from Axis, one of the several events that I received invitations to attend since everyone seemed to know who I was and how I was related to both God and Lucifer. Of course, Eva and Caroline was there as well as some of their friends from their respective social circles. Sadly, Chance and the others couldn't attend since they had other agendas to take care of, meaning that I wouldn't catch a glance at the jock who captivated my heart.

After I finished drying off my body and wrapping my towel to protect my modesty (I was wearing a speedo that left little to imagination), I soon rejoined the girls as Eva handed me a glass of water. "You're pretty badass, love," she said to me. "I never knew you were a great swimmer."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Well, it helps to have a pool at my place," I couldn't help but reply, "and have some swimming lessons back in high school."

"Who taught you to swim?" Carolina wanted to know.

"Surprisingly enough, it was Chance. I wasn't allowed to join the sports team to add some extracurricular activities to my schedule since my parents thought that I wasn't fit to be part of the elite crowd. But I also had to fulfill my PE requirements as well. So Headmistress Berkmar had assigned Chance to be my personal instructor for private lessons. Of course, she wasn't thrilled with the idea of a jock teaching a nerd, but Chance was on the swimming and diving teams and we were relatively good friends at the time..."

FLASHBACK (Freshman Year, September 2016)...

"I feel like I'm being prepped for a gay porn video," I complained as I emerged from the locker room now down to a pair of red speedos that hugged and contoured my groin. I faced the jock who looked as if he was created to be a modern-day version of Michaelangelo's David statue with his black speedo hugging his groin and buttocks in the right places. "How the heck do you get used to wearing these things?"

Chance chuckled, coming over to my side. "No need to feel so mortified, bro," he said. "You got a nice body yourself. You just need to add some more muscle to your frame and maybe get a tan."

"That'll be the say since my parents didn't want me to spend summer vacations with them."

Chance gave me a soft look of pity. "They don't see the greatness inside you," he told me. "Not in the same way that I do. They expect you to succeed, only to raise the bar on you and make you feel worthless. I see a warrior ready to come out from the shadows. You just gotta believe in it yourself."

He briefly cupped my chin before leading me to the Olympic-sized swimming pool. "We're going to start with the basics," he said as we slowly got into the pool, the chlorinated water making my skin go numb with the cold as I was soon waist-deep with the jock. "You know how to do the front crawl?"

I nodded. "Before being sent to boarding schools for the summer, I was able to swim in the backyard pool with someone watching me."

"Have you ever gotten to the deep end?"

I nodded. "Had a few missteps, but was able to make it a few times."

"Then you should be good to go with the breathing techniques and all that," Chance said. "Let me see you swim a full lap."

And so began the first of the many daily swimming lessons with the jock who became my personal coach. The first three days were a bit chaotic and I almost drowned a few times, but I slowly got the used to the freestyle techniques. That led to me being taught how to do the butterfly, the backstroke, and then the breaststroke. In the days that followed, I soon got used to having Chance as my coach since he was also the only person who was willing to sit next to me at lunchtime. In between lessons, we got to know more about each other and how I learned that he was basically a born swimmer despite his parents saying that the sport was meant for his younger and older sisters. "Dad said that I was wasting my time and accused me of being gay," he had said. "He even said that I was taking the opportunity to flirt with some of my male teammates at a Christian school..."

"Wow," Carolina said. "I never knew that Chance was your private teacher at the time. That's why you became so good at the race with Gianna."

"How long did the lessons last?" Eva asked.

"Not very long," I replied. "Only three weeks."

"What?" the girls said in unison. "Why?"

I took a deep breath. "Some of the teachers thought that Chance was starting to get a little too close to me and my parents thought that he was going to bring down my grades since I was mainly told to focus on my school work," I explained. "And of course, my parents and Berkmar thought that it was best that I had an older teacher to keep me focused..."

"Hustle, kid!" I heard the voice of Myron Alton, a former Olympic swimmer boom from the surface as I continued to swim a a fast pace. "Keep your arms extended and your breathing steady!"

I soon reached the T of the wall as I soon came up for air, taking off my swimming goggles.

The coach glanced at his watch. "Three minutes, forty-nine seconds," he intoned. "Coming along, son. Your freestyle is improving quite nicely. Still gotta work on your upper body strength so you can work on those strokes. We also need to work on your lower body to tone those legs."

"I'll do what I must, sir," I breathed as I saw Headmistress Berkmar and my parents enter the natatorium before they soon approached me while I got out of the pool. "Headmistress. Mom and Dad."

"Hezekiah," the principal greeted me with a thin smile. "Mr. Alton is giving you quite a workout, hasn't he?"

"I'm making sure that the kid doesn't let himself get lazy even when he's focused on his books," the swimming instructor said, giving me an appraising once-over. "Gotta make sure he adds some muscle to his bones."

"But of course," Dad said. To me, "Hezekiah, I told your mother and Headmistress Berkmar that you'll need to add some more lessons to get some air in your lungs. Even though you can't join the sports teams here, it'll do you some good to get some exercise in you. Which is why we decided to give you private lessons in other sports that are deemed worthy- mainly tennis and racquetball, maybe some golfing lessons. And you'll also have a personal trainer to make sure that your body is well-fitted for the pool."

"We know that you've been missing Mr. Dalton for quite some time, but it's for the best that we decided that you needed a more-mature teacher to keep you on the level," Mom piped up. "The boy can be quite a distraction from what your father and I learned so far."

Chance being a distraction?

"It's for the greater good for your family's expectations," Headmistress Berkmar told me gently. "Chance has other obligations to fulfill as a student-athlete and you have yours to fulfill as a student in general. Trust us, young man, when we say that you two need to keep separate for the time being."

I nodded slowly. "Thank you, ma'am," I said.

"All right, son, time to head back in the waters," Mr. Alton said. "We still got to work on your breaststroke and butterfly techniques before you head to lunch..."

"That's so unfair," Carolina scoffed. "How the heck can Chance be distracting you when you two were just being friends?"

"Trust me, Carolina. It's not the first ime that Chance and I were kept separated by the teachers and my parents," I replied. "In their eyes, Chance was a jock and I was a nerd. And some people weren't compatible, according to them. They believed that my world should be full of books, supervised sports lessons, and no time being spent with anyone that Mom and Dad thought were beneath them. Add in the fact that I wasn't a true Chamblee by blood because I was the son of my mother's rapist, and you can say that I wasn't going to have it easy on Earth."

Eva gave me a sad look. "Your parents should've been put in the knacker yard and given lobotomies," she said bitterly. They gave you too many expectations to fulfill yet said that you weren't good enough for them once you did fulfill them."

"That's the sad part," I commented as I stood up. "If not for that fact, I was always the one to be the family chew toy. If not for Cameron and the servants, I'd be climbing up the walls."

"They'll get what's theirs soon enough," Carolina assured me. "And I hope Lucifer has a special place in the lake of fire for the whole family other than your one supporter. All you can do now is live in the now and embrace your new life here in the Nexus."

I smiled gratefully, my heart being full of support. "Thanks," I said.

"What are friends for?"

I liked that. Friends.

There are always going to be people who want to keep you from people who believe in you. The people who tear you down think that you should think and act like them in every possible way. The people who believe that you can be and do better are the ones who want you to succeed, to evolve into someone more confident. Chance sees greatness in Hezekiah while the latter's parents and everyone at Allendale Christian Academy only sees my homeboy as the son of a rapist.

We all need more people like Chance, Minnie Jean, and others who supported Hezekiah in our lives.

Anyway, we're going to see Catalina Slade throwing shade on Hezekiah as the topic of soulmates is mentioned in the next chapter as an unexpected pairing is announced! Stay tuned!

Song: "Blue Ocean Floor" by Justin Timberlake.

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