Page 22 of False Start

One very much to blame, who didn’t deserve forgiveness. One who fooled himself into thinking he could move on only to have karma crash around him until he retreated into his misery again.

If I let her get too close, if I let her tap into the long-buried part of me, it wouldn’t eek out in a trickle. Oh no. I’d been holding that shit back for so long, it rivaled the force of any turbulent, storm-ravaged sea crashing relentlessly against a rocky coast.

Cracking open that well of pain, anger, and resentment would flood everything and everyone in its path.

Resurrecting the past wouldn’t change it. It would only bring agony, but fuck if I could separate the two and make sense of any of it. Even when I knew every encounter with her, with derby, with my mistakes would eventually destroy everyone left in the world I cared about, here I was, itching to challenge her.

I wanted her in my face, full of attitude and insults. Every time I came at her, I wanted her to come back harder. I wanted to push every button she had until I figured out her reactions, her every impulse, and then, only then, I’d bend her to my will. I wanted to teach her how to hammer every one of her weaknesses, pummeling them over and over until all that remained was steely strength.

I wanted to coach.

Needed to coach.

And I couldn’t.

Perhaps the most dangerous of all, I wanted to answer her question the other morning, and any that came after. That’s how I knew I was in real trouble. So much so I put off coming into town for two days just so I wouldn’t run into her or anything derby.

Old me stirred deep inside and for the first time in ten years, I wondered if I’d be able to hold him back. To keep him from falling into this sport, this town, this legacy once again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I’d have to be dead inside to miss the way her body reacted to mine.

News flash, I’m not dead inside.

If anything, I’m a lot less dead inside than I was hoping I would be.

Or need to be, to make it through another fifty-eight days in Galloway Bay.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. “Yo!”

I jerked and glanced toward the familiar voice outside my window.

“Stalking doesn’t suit you, Coach. It’s pretty gross, actually. Can’t they take your badge for that?” Lana laughed as she rolled back a few inches, giving me room to open my door.

“Still a smart-ass. Aren’t you getting too old for that?” The tightness in my chest eased with the playful back and forth. Until my gaze fell to Lana’s atrophied, lifeless legs.

Once-thick thighs, heavy with powerful muscles, now laid narrow and almost flat. The jeans that fit snug to her hips laid baggy over legs that would never work again.

“I’m taking notes from Patti’s playbook so…never. Besides, you love it and you know it. All the ladies around you saying whatever pops into their heads while you get to be all superior and above that shit.” She rolled back until her wheels lined up to the ramp leading into the cottage and waited for me to follow along.

I forced the lump of guilt back with a hard swallow. “That shit? You mean emotional outbursts?”

Her lips quirked with amusement, her rosy cheeks mocking me as her mouth slid into a full grin. “I mean being human.”

“Hey, I’m human.” The acid churning in my gut was a sure sign.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re repressed.”

“So you’re a therapist now?”

Lifting her chin and her eyes wide, she pierced me with a determined look I recognized. “Almost.”

I cocked my head and waited for her to burst out laughing, but nope. “Wait, seriously?”

“Seriously. Come on, Coach. I’ve got fresh coffee, and you and I have some catching up to do.”

I followed her up the ramp, making sure the wood had been completely cleared of snow like I’d hired Powell Landscaping to do over the winter. I paid them well to make sure Lana could move freely around the property and all along the pathways around and through Bay Park, all the way to the library, and the bus stop. Sure, the town cleaned up the roads and sidewalks, but they did under the assumption that people would be navigating them by car or on foot.

Lana wouldn’t be doing either.

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