by Casey Hagen
Upright was good.
“Good, now get back on, climb to the top, and skate down and over the coping a hundred more times.”
MAISY
“Hey, Mayhem,” Rory said as she climbed up the bank for the eighty-third time. “Your coach is a real asshole, you know that? Fuck.”
“It’s for the kids. Just remember it’s for the kids,” I said, my thighs burning from climbing the bank, sweat dripping from my face landing with a fat splatter against the track.
“Yeah, tell that to my fucking quads. They’re already trash,” Marty chimed in.
“Just think, if a guy pisses you off while you’re riding him, you can crush his pelvis with your new muscles,” I said, trying to keep it positive while my thigh muscles burned and quivered under my skin.
“If a guy pisses her off? You mean when. When a guy pisses her off,” Marty said with a snort.
Where did she manage to find the air to snort?
If I sucked in a quick burst of air right now, I’d die. I could barely wheeze at this point.
Maybe that’s what Priest wanted. If we run, he gets his track back and his life gets a whole lot less complicated.
We’d barely started, but all it took was adding a little incline and it was like hitting the gym for the first time in months after the round of food holidays and fifteen extra pounds.
I’d imagined all the ways Priest could make me lose my breath, bruising kisses laced with angry surrender, hot foreplay—a total assault of his big hands, hard thrusts with that bat in his shorts, but this…there was nothing sexy about this. Because ladies got jock sweat too and right now, I was pretty sure I was sweating myself what looked like the outline of crotchless underwear with a case of swamp ass not far behind.
That had kissing repellent written all over it.
I’d go take a roll in the snow if that didn’t mean putting on a steam show fit for a sauna with my roasting hoo-ha.
I was smuggling a damn swamp cooler in my pants at this point.
“Ah, but I’m talking about said pissing off when she’s riding him only,” I finally managed to scrape out past my heavy breaths.
“Me too,” Marty said.
“You know, she’s not wrong—God, this hurts—but I swear dudes always forget about literally everything when we get on top,” Rory began between gasps, her words on pause while we skated off the track and coping, only to turn and begin our climb to do it all over again. “They fucking lie back with their hands folded behind their heads, happy to let us do everything. I mean, dude, I’ll do the hip work. At least then I know I’m going to come, but if you don’t at least give me some nipple action and touch them like you mean it, I might just tear this dick off with my rocking’ Kegels.”
“Pelvic muscles might end up being the only muscles that don’t hurt by the time we’re done,” Marty said before blowing out a hard breath and swiping the sweat off her forehead with her bare forearm.
“Ours maybe, but Mayhem’s on the other hand,” Rory said with a side glance at me. “Priest has her all hot and bothered. I’m willing to bet all this time together has her flexing those fuckers like a new mother who pees herself every time the wind blows.”
Eve glared at us then, the fact that she heard us written all over her face.
“If I flex anything else right now, I’ll die.” I attempted humor to brush off their comments, hoping to appease Eve. But Rory wasn’t wrong. And she needed to shut up.
And tonight…after my shit day, after what was proving to be the shittiest practice of shittiest practices, I’d talk to her. I needed to just be honest, not only about Priest, but about her and me.
No more riding this whole life is just too full right now and I’m not looking for anything serious, but it’s been fun excuse. I needed to make it abundantly clear that while I love her, I just didn’t think in the end either of us would be happy.
Truth was, she was too eager to protect me. I thought I wanted that in a partner after losing my mom and spending years at the mercy of a system designed to send kids on their way the minute they aged out with no real support. But when her idea of protecting me turned to stifling me and not giving me room to make decisions without barreling over me—or worse—thinking she could make decisions for me, I knew it had to end.
I rolled down the bank one last time, rested my hands on my hips, and took a deep breath as I continued across the infield.
“Holy shit,” Sean said, her eyes focused on something past us.
“Oh, hell no,” Eve spat. “No. No. And in case you didn’t hear me…fuck no!”
“What the hell is she doing here?” Marty said.
Their voices collided and I spun in the direction they faced…to find Tilly standing in the doorway, uniform on, her duffel slung over her shoulder.
“She,” Priest said, his unyielding gaze on mine, “is your fifteenth player.”
My teammates all started in at once, their voices rising with anger, but the sound disappeared with the buzz of white-hot rage filling my head.
Remember…there’s a reason for everything.
There were no evasive glances this time around. None of my teammates hung their heads being confronted with their less than grateful reception to Priest’s help. Nope, they were all hands on hips, chin jutting indignation, circling Priest and ripping into him.
Not that I could hear them.
Because my blood surged through my blood vessels like I’d sucked down a handful of speed before practice started.
My stomach ached; a band squeezed my chest like a vise—everything hurt.
Body…and heart.
He’d found the one part of me that just wouldn’t heal no matter what and he’d poured acid into it. I blinked back tears, grateful for the sweat burning my eyes to hide the way he cut me deep.
I wouldn’t let him have that power over me.
It was bad enough I let Tilly.
Here I was, paralyzed with betrayal, and my team defending me. I never realized we’d arrived at this place where they saw me as weak, too weak to speak up for myself. I thought this was between me and Eve.
Maybe not.
Maybe what was going on between Eve and me had bled onto the team as a whole.
We had work to do to change the dynamic—and very little time to do it.
To start, I needed to defend myself.
Just not like this. Not in some dressing down in front of everyone.
“Guys…stop.” When their chatter died down, but didn’t stop completely, I raise my voice. “Just stop!” My voice almost broke—almost.
And the way Priest cut a glance at me made me think he heard it.
I didn’t know why he did this. At the moment I didn’t care. I hurt too much to care. The only thing keeping me from bursting apart in a million little pieces—the big picture—the kids hanging in the balance.
My team’s rumblings faded away and an awkward silence filled the room.
Priest looked at me, but those feelings, his thoughts, he kept them close. He didn’t show me one damn thing to reassure me that he hadn’t done this to be cruel.
All I had was the echo of his words in my head.
And the memory of raw kisses that weren’t polished or by design. If anything, they were pieces of our hearts—bursting from the cages we’d tried to keep them locked in—finding their way around old wounds, clawing their way through the scar tissue we’d both built up to protect us from others.
From ourselves.
“We need all the help we can get,” he said, his voice low and final. “A fifteenth player means three fresh sets of five. It’s one more powerful player to use to your advantage. She’s in it for Crossroads too. She knows what hangs in the balance.”
The bit of camaraderie that had bloomed in reluctant smiles and winces of pain on my team’s faces retreated to wary distrust. Maybe not back to the beginning, but he practically demolished the fragile bridge he’d built in the past hour with this addition.
&nb
sp; I didn’t feel one bit of sympathy for him. Not at all.
“You,” he said, pointing at Tilly who’d made her way onto the track and into the infield. “No dirty play. You throw even one elbow here and you’re out. Got it?”
Tilly nodded like she was in boot camp. “Got it.”
Ass kisser.
But then, she’d always been. It wasn’t how she behaved when everyone was looking. It was the words she’d sharpened, delivered on her cruel tongue when no one else was listening that had been the problem.
“No warnings. You know the rules, you know what I expect. No second chances.” His mouth had thinned into a hard, angry line. His eyes narrowed, irritability in the set of his rigid shoulders. A complete one eighty from how he dealt with us even in the beginning when Eve pushed his boundaries.
Maybe he wasn’t as comfortable with this addition as he let us all believe.
Or maybe he was one hell of an actor.
“Understood,” Tilly said.
“Good. Get your gear on and get your ass on the track.” He turned to us then and I thought I saw it, a flash of apology in his eyes. “Laps!” he snapped. “One skating forward. One skating backward. Don’t roll off that bank until you’ve done another fifty.”
Guess I imagined it.
Maybe I didn’t go back far enough in the instinct department because it looked like I should have been trusting my flaming asshole instincts all along.
16
I eyed my door at the sound of the knock on the other side and immediately regretted coming straight home. A ball of restless agitation settled in my gut and fuck if anyone thought I was hiding and licking my wounds.
I wanted to drop-kick a certain coach right in the grapes for the stunt he pulled.
And I needed someone to talk it over with, but after the stunning realization that my team had turned into this hardened shell on the outside, treating me like some shiny, dainty pearl on the inside, I sure as hell couldn’t talk to any of them.
Because we still needed him.
Especially now that we not only had money into applying to the WRDF, but we’d paid to register for the exhibition and had travel expenses coming for that too.
I couldn’t say he didn’t warn me of impending doom—he did, kinda.
The fucker.
But I deserved a hell of a lot more than some vague warning while he busied himself collecting another hot kiss on a technicality.
If he tried to kiss me now, I’d bite his tongue off.
And that better not be him on the other side of the door.
I’d literally take anyone else. Maybe even Tilly and that was saying something. At least with her I knew what to expect. I hadn’t managed to let her shitty comments roll off just yet, but she didn’t have any new material.
If anything, her willingness to stand there while Priest hammered into her the expectations as we all looked on was new. Authority had never really been her thing, landing her in Bay Wilderness to begin with when her family decided she was too much of a behavioral issue and signed her over to the state.
Something I always pitied when we were teenagers. Not that I told her that.
For her to take Priest’s rules without a flicker of nastiness in her eyes or a sneer twitching at the corner of her lips was new territory entirely.
I opened the door, ready to give whoever was on the other side hell, when Eve sailed right past me and let herself in.
“We need to talk,” she said, her voice bone-white with fury.
I threw the door shut behind her. “Yes, we do—”
“We can’t trust him,” she said, cutting me off.
I sighed. I’d put a whole lot more value in her words if they were really about him, but this had our personal relationship written all over it.
This newfound clarity could kiss my ass. “And why is that?”
She whirled on me then, her jaw slack, and huffed out a livid breath. “He brought Tilly onto the team without saying a fucking word. That’s not reason enough?”
He did say a word…just not the right ones, but that was between him and me.
“No, it’s not. We have a youth center hanging in the balance. So no, it’s not enough.” And because it didn’t make sense. He knew how important this was to me. He knew, dammit. He saw me with my kids. He skated with my kids. The guy who ran from me three nights ago—the guy who said no over and over—the guy who relented…he didn’t do it to lay some sort of trap so he could be cruel.
“So you’re just going to let him run all over you and get away with it?”
“Don’t piss me off, Eve. I’m exhausted and I have just enough anger to unleash on him. I’m not interested in wasting it with you.”
“Good,” she said, beginning to pace. “You do that. While you’re at it—”
“No more. Just knock this shit off. You’re not going to run all over me in the name of what he did. Do you really think I’m that weak that you can just plow right through me and what I want?”
She stopped and whipped around. “And you want him?”
“That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
Hurt crept into her eyes and for a second, instincts told me to waver—to back off and leave this alone, but that’s what got me here. Avoiding the hard shit. Keeping the peace. Fearing the loss of the few connections I had in Galloway Bay.
And I’d had her for longer than almost anyone else.
I wanted a lot of things. Yeah, I wanted him. But right now, in this moment, I wanted some damn respect—and I didn’t want to lose Eve. I had to risk losing her by putting my foot down to have any hope of keeping her. Because I couldn’t unsee the dynamic and its power to destroy everything if I didn’t grow up and speak out.
“What you’re doing right now is no different than what he just did. Actually, it’s worse. Instead of just being indignant about what he did—which sucked by the way—you bulldozed in here, not trusting me to take care of me.”
At least Priest had given me that. In a way, by not telling me first, he showed me he trusted me to handle it. To be an adult. He did it with the information at hand. Oh, he was still wrong. So fucking wrong. And he’d pay for it. But from a coach’s standpoint, I could see the appeal. Tilly was a strong, agile force on the track when she wasn’t targeting me over childhood slights. Take those out of the equation and our chances only grew.
“I’m thinking about you,” she pleaded as she took a step toward me.
I took a step back. “No, you’re not. You’re thinking about us being together again—and we’re over, Eve. We talked about this.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“No, I don’t.”
“The rest of the team spoke up at the practice. It’s not like I’m the only one who feels this way.”
“Yes, and are they here right now? I told everyone to stop and what did they do? They respected it.”
Eve pulled her shoulders back, a showing of stubborn pride for her. “I don’t know how to not protect you.”
“I know. And that’s my fault. You came into my life at a really scary time and it felt good to have someone take over a little bit. To have a best friend I could count on to have my back. But at some point, it felt a little too good—too easy. It’s bled into our team, Eve. I didn’t see it until tonight. And we can’t afford that.”
“So, what are you saying, that you don’t want me as a best friend now?”
“No, I’m saying I want you as my best friend again. We’re not there right now. I can’t talk to you about—it’s just not the same.”
“I still love you.” She said the words—her voice so low and full of pain it made it hard for me to breathe.
“And I still love you. But it’s different for me than it is for you and I don’t know how to help you get over that. I don’t know if I’m even the right person. But I know I need you to let me go. I need you to respect my decisions. You can’t say you love me and that you want to protect me, while taking a
way my choices. It’s the same thing he did to me tonight.”
“And you choose him?”
“To coach us, yes.”
“But you want more?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want, because I can’t have it.”
She stepped into me, backed me right against the wall, and kissed me, tugging my bottom lip between her teeth like I used to love.
And I felt nothing. No spark. No want. No need.
Just regret. So much regret that I might have ruined my single most important friendship by crossing the line into more.
She stilled then, her eyelids slowly opening, her ice-blue eyes on mine. “It really is over, isn’t it?”
I cupped her cheek, the wounded look in her eyes squeezing my heart as we lost something in that moment. A piece we had before we turned into lovers—something that attached itself to the attraction that flickered between us, only to die when that mutual attraction faltered.
She still wanted me—which might very well be her pride talking—but that look in her eyes told me she felt it too.
“It’s really over,” I whispered, wishing I could hug her, but knowing I’d be sending her the wrong message if I did. If I ever wanted to be able to hug her again, I couldn’t wrap my arms around her now.
She leaned her forehead on mine, her fingers curled around the back of my neck. “God, I love you so fucking much. I don’t want to let you go.”
“Or are you afraid of finding the one who’s really right for you, Eve? They’re out there somewhere and when you find them, nothing in your world will ever be the same again and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. They’re going to be the last person you expect.” My throat turned thick and burned with unshed tears as I let her go, praying this was the way to finding our friendship again. “Don’t miss out on it because you’re holding on too tight to me.”
She swallowed hard and took a step back. Her eyes turning glassy with tears, I knew she'd sooner gouge her own eyes out than shed them in front of me as she headed for the door.
Turning the handle, she gave the door a hard tug, the familiar squeak cutting into the heavy silence of our final goodbye. “So, practice tomorrow, then?” she said without looking me in the eye.
