Page 107 of False Start

That’s me.

Stupid.

And walking funny.

That part wasn’t stupid.

Priest marched me into the ER with a towel-wrapped icepack around my throbbing hand.

I was tired. Just sick and damn tired of the whole thing. And frankly, a bit worried about this newfound taste for violence I had.

Priest’s cheek still carried the mark from my hand even an hour later.

I hit a cop. Like, really hit a cop. Not one in this jurisdiction and it was a damn good thing he liked me and all, but holy fuck, I hit a fucking cop.

“Grab a seat and I’ll get you checked in,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my forehead before steering me off to the waiting area.

If I couldn’t play in the snow, and frankly, with my bum hand I couldn’t play anything, I’d damn well wait in the small atrium of the waiting area and enjoy the pretty…a welcome distraction from the incessant beat of my heart pulsing in my swollen hand.

Pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to feel it there.

Rounding the corner, I skidded to a stop when I spotted Tilly. She lay slumped in one of the few chairs, her legs spread out, her head tipped back with a bag of ice on her eye.

She looked almost young again. Stripped of all expression, with her eyes closed, her face almost peaceful.

I’d seen her like this before, icing her face. Only we were fifteen and she’d been laughing at a joke I told her, flipped off the back of the swing she’d been lazily kicking herself on, only to have it nail her in the bridge of her nose when she sat up.

She’d bled down the front of her shirt—well, my shirt—my favorite, that I’d only ever let her borrow.

This had to end. This standoff between us robbing us of time and joy. Every faceoff costing us precious things we wanted.

I dropped into the seat and slumped alongside her. “Aren’t you tired? I know I’m fucking tired.”

She cracked open her good eye and sunk even lower with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, so fucking tired.”

“You were my best friend,” I said quietly.

“Until you left me.” Resigned hurt. That was the only way to describe her tone. Like it was one more letdown on the mountain of letdowns and she couldn’t let it go.

“I didn’t want to. I did everything I could to stay.”

She sighed. “I know. Fuck—I know.” She shifted the ice and hissed as she settled the pack against the goose egg that was her eyebrow. “I heard you begging them—asking them to find a foster home that would take us both. You always did dream big.”

“What you said about my mother—”

“It was a low blow. I guess…I just panicked. We fell into step on the track—”

“No, the first time. At Bay Wilderness. When you told those girls that my mother had to die to get away from me…”

She shook her head and swallowed hard. “I should have never said it. I never once meant it. You were leaving and I was going to be alone. The thought of that place at night, the crying, the fighting—living through that without my best friend, I latched on to whatever I could—whoever I could. And I was so damn hurt that my parents just signed me away. They were off living it up somewhere and I was reduced to a problem child on paper with a list of defects—all unlovable.”

All these years and she still carried it. Maybe more than the rest of us, but then the damage ran deeper with her, the twist of the knife in her back just the beginning of the betrayal. Total abandonment all because she didn’t conform to their idea of what she should be. Instead of accepting her, they slapped labels on her: difficult, stubborn, rebellious, and destructive. Her rich family, with all the money in the world, didn’t even pretend they cared by sending her off to boarding school or abroad under the guise of giving her a top-notch education or life experience—nope, they signed over their rights to the state, sold their properties in Galloway Bay and the surrounding areas and left.

They left her here where she’d have to forge a new life in the ruin of her old one. She’d catch glimpses of the places she called hers but would never be hers again. There was an extra dose of torture in that and I didn’t have to wonder why it turned into savagery to survive, or on the track.

“I loved you,” I whispered next to her, not quite ready to admit that I still did. Not sure she had earned the words.

“I know…you were so easy with love it was terrifying. Your mom taught you that.”

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