Page 103 of False Start

I’d never escape this. As long as we coexisted in this town, I’d never escape this or her. She’d find a way to steal every piece of joy I carved for myself.

Every safe place.

My sport.

Even my kids by sabotaging our chances at the exhibition.

My heart hammered behind my ribs, the blood stampeded through my head, and my control snapped.

Memories cascaded through my mind like a stack of pictures slipping from slack fingertips.

My mother tossing the end of her broken and frayed green lace in the trash the last time we skated together.

Waking up alone in our shared room, shivering under a blue flowered quilt the morning she died.

The police at the door telling me I had to go with them.

Every night from then on in a bunkbed, my scratchy standard issue blanket jammed against my ear to drown out the melody of employees' shoes squeaking on the linoleum, screams of kids lashing out in pain and fear, and the sobs of lonely, heartsick girls in the darkness after the lights went out.

The echo of a lifetime collection of her words all came flooding back, cracking open the recently sealed tomb of my pain.

The taunts, the insults, relentless everywhere I turned until she snatched away every bit of comfort I managed to find in a scary world where I was well and truly all alone.

No mother, no father, no family to speak of.

No family friends.

Just me.

Never belonging.

A haze covered my eyes and all I could see were my hands wrapping around her throat. I cut my edge into the concrete, pushed off, and lunged for her, a scream of fury tearing from my lungs. The minute my forearm slid over her shoulder, I bent my elbow, wrapping around her neck.

She grunted right before I squeezed the sound right from her throat as we crashed into the cold, hard ground.

The roaring in my head only grew when I rolled her over under me and met her wide eyes. I drew my hand back, my fingers clenched into a tight fist and punched her. Pain exploded in my knuckle when it caught the edge of her helmet, but I didn’t care. Blood burst across her skin over her eye and I drew my hand back and hit her again to spill some more.

“Oh shit!”

“Grab her!”

Hands reached out for me, but I threw them off.

I wrapped my fingers around the strap of her helmet and shook her. “Don’t you ever talk about her again! Ever!” I screamed, my skin tight, my lips peeled back from my teeth. My heart exploded in my chest, my thighs squeezing her waist as I tried to crush her right here on the concrete while I pulled my fist back a third time.

Powerful fingers locked on my forearm. “Maisy, stop!” Priest’s commanding voice cut through the voices of my team, but not through the haze of violence rioting inside me.

His fault.

I spun around and met his narrowed dark eyes, the flicker of disappointment there—that was his fault too. A storm of animosity burst from somewhere deep in my heart. I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me.

For how this one mistake continued to hurt me.

Drawing back my other hand, I swung at him.

The gasps of my teammates cut through the haze filling my head.

His eyes widened as he ducked my hand, and when he straightened, he pierced me with a cold, hard glare. “You took a swing at me.” His tone dropped impossibly low, his words lethal and deathly calm.

---