Dangerous fucking territory.
I needed to remember what I was. What I’d done. What I cost the people I love.
What I could cost her.
Taking her hand, I propelled us ahead of Jackson and handed her off. I needed the distance. To make sure she didn’t get the wrong idea.
Okay, to make sure I didn’t get the wrong idea.
Jackson touching her grated on my nerves and in the span of a dozen beats, I was snatching her back from my friend, glaring at the fucking knowing grin on his smug face when I did.
Bastard.
We skated off the floor when the song ended. I avoided the table and made my way to the other side where I dropped into a chair and started tugging at my laces. The boys shot over, their avid gazes on my feet.
“That was awesome. I wanna skate like that.” The dark-haired boy peered down at me with fire in his eyes.
The minute he got on skates, he’d never get off them. “Have Jackson get you fitted with some skates and get out there then.”
“I want skates with flames like yours.”
I glanced at the kid full of enthusiasm now, but a stubborn little shit not ten minutes earlier. “You have to earn the flames, my man.”
“Sounds like you little dudes had a change of heart. Why don’t we go take care of that. Ladies, you want to help me show them the ropes back there?” Jackson ushered the boys and girls to the counter, leaving Mayhem and I alone.
Subtle.
I hope Jackson took a wheel in the taint.
Mayhem sat down next to me, her arm brushing mine. “Thank you for that.”
“For what?” I muttered, trying to ignore her heat as it seeped into me just from our proximity alone.
“You know for what. When someone says thank you, you then say, ‘you’re welcome.’”
“Is that right?” I didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her. So I focused on her skates. I expected her to be out here in her derby skates, maybe a set of Moxies, not the classic high-top white skates with a low heel.
I yanked off my first skate and wondered about her choice to wear those when there were so many better options out there.
None of my business.
“What’s the deal with the lace?” Tie-dye laces ran up the leather and through the eyelets, but on the right, a faded, frayed green lace that looked like it had snapped a decade or two ago ran alongside the new one.
Her startled gaze met mine before her eyes darted down to her skates. She fidgeted on the seat and tucked them under her.
Like she was hiding.
“It, uh—” Her normally confident voice stumbled. “They were my mother’s.”
“The laces?”
“The skates. The last time she took me skating the lace snapped. I didn’t—couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.”
I tugged on my boots, her words squeezing in my chest impossibly tight. Plagued with this feeling that some other force was writing this story between us, and we would be helpless to change the plot, I crammed my toes in so hard, my foot stomped on the floor.
Propping my elbows on my knees, hunched over, her invisible pain so fucking palpable it washed over me and tried to mix with mine. “Your mother’s skates?”
“Yes.” Her voice turned soft, laced with an unexpected sound of longing.
I couldn’t leave her hanging like that alone as much as I wanted to. As much as I needed to get away from her, from whatever this was, or wanted to become. “I get that.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I used to spend a lot of time here as a kid with my mother. At that same table over there.” I glanced over to the corner table, closed my eyes against the slice of pain, and turned back to her again.
“Where is she?” Mayhem swallowed. “Your mother.”
“She died.” I had to get out of here. I didn’t want this heart-to-heart. I didn’t want to give a shit. And I definitely didn’t want to bond over two dead mothers.
I stood, grabbed my skates, and turned away from her without a glance.
“You don’t have to leave.” Her words came out in a rush to my retreating back. Like she was desperate to hold on to something.
Only I was a bad bet and the worst possible anchor in any damn storm.
I stopped but didn’t turn around. “I think I do. It’s not a good idea.”
“I thought you said you weren’t the enemy?” she said quietly, my words coming back to haunt me, like everything else in my past. Just one more reminder why this had to stop now, before it went too far. Before I lost the iron fist on my willpower and gave in to the attraction, immersed myself in her, until it soothed my loneliness or worse.
Until she became someone I couldn’t walk away from.
I turned to look at her one more time over my shoulder then. “And you said we aren’t friends.”
10
Addison, Ellie, Leo, and Noah fell asleep on their way back to Crossroads. Rylee stayed tucked against my side, her eyes wide open as I threaded my fingers through her soft brown hair, enjoying the quiet where I could replay the best moments from our afternoon at Rockabilly’s.
Yeah, that meant the heart-stopping ones too.
Like Priest on that floor.
God, the sight of him on skates, as if he spent more time on wheels than in shoes, sent a bolt of fire lancing through me that had every part of me capable of spine-tingling arousal standing to rapt attention.
And I had questions…so many questions.
Too bad we weren’t friends.
I could kick myself for tossing those words out there.
Actually, I could kick him for remembering them so well and tossing them between us like he’d just framed out a wall…with two-by-sixes instead of two-by-fours.
The boy wasn’t just building any wall. He was building one to withstand a hurricane.
Derby coach didn’t mean skater. It
