Frozen moments in time when women balanced on the cruel hand dealt to them of being paraded around in all the trappings of pageantry as they tried to command attention long enough to show them their power, hunger, and resilience on the track.
They made so much out of a sport with so damn little and virtually no control.
Drawn back to the one picture, my eyes caught on something, something I’d never noticed before.
I narrowed my eyes and leaned in struggling to make out the details.
Black metal piping climbing up exposed brick in the background.
I blinked and blinked again. The pieces in my head sliding together.
Glancing in the direction of the door of Banked Track just past Priest’s shoulder, the same kind of piping running up the same kind of exposed brick.
The same kind or the same?
The voices in the bar became a dull hum in the background as I leaned in for a better glimpse.
And found a familiar face.
My ears burned and my stomach fluttered.
A familiar wool cap.
Adrenaline surged through me as my focus narrowed down to one single point.
It couldn’t be.
Pushing my drink aside, I scrambled onto the bar and leaned in closer.
Holy shit.
He was decades younger, but I’d know that crooked grin in the front row of the crowd along the edge of the picture anywhere.
Milton.
“Hey, young lady, no shenanigans in my bar!” Patti said as she hurried over.
I looked down to find an irate Patti glaring up at me. “Where was the banked track you played on?”
She glanced at the wall and back at me. “Right here, girlie. Now scoot off my bar, thank you very much. You’re a health hazard up there. I won’t have you messing with my A rating,” she muttered with a huff.
But I didn’t move. “You played here? In this very room?”
“Sure did. You can still see the scuffs in the wood floor from the support beams,” Patti said, glancing down at her feet, stomping her purple Doc Martens against a deep groove cut into the wood. “Now are you going to get off my damn bar and tell me what in the hell is wrong with you? You sure as hell aren’t drunk, you only had one drink.”
“I know how we can get the money for Crossroads. Where was your practice track?” Goosebumps raced over my skin as excitement, hope, the makings of a damn miracle bloomed in my chest.
Patti leaned in and propped her hands on the bar. “We practiced here.”
My breath stuttered in my throat. “There’s no other track?”
“I didn’t say that,” Patti said, her lips twitching, her gaze sliding over to Priest. “Seems like I remember there being one more around these parts.”
Priest glowered at the two of us, slapped his beer on the bar, and dragged his thumb along his bottom lip, his eyes narrowed in a one hundred percent I-think-the-fuck-not-glare. “No.”
12
I slammed down a stack of cash, snatched my jacket, and stomped out of Banked Track, leaving Mayhem on her hands and knees on the bar.
I figured I had about ten seconds tops before she scrambled off and chased me down.
Ten seconds to get to the parking lot, get in my truck, and get the fuck out of here.
And never come to town again.
My breath billowed before me, illuminated by the dull glow of streetlamps in the inky darkness of the frigid night. I pounded down the sidewalk, the image of her voracious eyes combing over Patti’s pictures playing through my head.
My amusement at her climbing clean up on the counter swept away by an avalanche of bitterness for what they asked of me even without saying the words.
The bitterness of what I couldn’t give them.
But damn, I wanted to.
Too much.
I’d stay at the farm. I’d pay whoever I had to pay for grocery delivery. We’d survive, we could just call it quality time…so much quality, Lilith would be ready to murder me, but then my nephew would be born, Jordan would get home, and I’d be on my way out of town.
“Hey!”
Six damn seconds.
I kept my pace as I whipped around, only to find her chasing me down in that sweater.
That. Fucking. Sweater.
My pulse pounded in my ears. My nostrils flared with the ragged breath I sucked into my lungs.
It didn’t even cover her shoulders and the temperature had mercilessly dropped into the low twenties the minute the sun disappeared over the horizon. By now, we’d plummeted to the teens.
I jabbed a finger in the direction of the bar. “Get your ass inside.”
She skidded to a stop, propped her hands on her hips, and arched an eyebrow. I knew that look. Every man on the planet knew that look and all the variations whether it be aimed with stunning precision at them from a girlfriend, a sister, a mother, or a grandmother. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t have a jacket,” I said, marching back to her, my hands curled into fists because fuck if I didn’t want to haul her ass off somewhere warm and private.
Only I couldn’t trust myself alone with her. Warm and private meant giving in and tearing off every last shred of clothing so I could fuck her until neither of us could stand.
Glowering down at her, I put every bit of anger and frustration into the force of my words, not caring if they hurt her, because they were the only way to save us from absolute disaster. “Get. Your. Ass. Inside.”
Better to hurt her now before the stakes got higher.
Before feelings got involved.
Look at me pretending like they hadn’t already.
We’d been nothing but feelings since our eyes met during her bout. We’d been adding good old-fashioned dry logs to that flame ever since, building the kind of heat that didn’t flash and die, but simmered, building a base of coals so damn hot it reached into the shadowed recesses of our lives.
“Not
