Page 28 of False Start

Cause I was shit at covering my feelings once they bubbled to the surface.

Total and utter shit.

Which was why Tilly managed to crawl under my skin at every bout and tear me apart from the inside out. The ultimate wound that just wouldn’t heal.

“I wouldn’t call it sniffing around. He met Sheriff Chase for breakfast and I just happened to be working.”

“Which naturally led to kissing on the side deck,” Rory replied.

“Again…no kissing.”

Rory shrugged. “Just making sure.”

“Look. It’s not like either of us enjoyed being in close proximity”—God I was a liar—“but the rib hurt and he did fix it so I’m grateful for that. And now I won’t be seeing him again. It’s not like he lives here or anything.”

“If he’s meeting with Sheriff Chase, that could be changing. Wayne Savage is retiring this spring so a position is opening up with the police department,” Sean said.

“Mmm, I don’t know about that. Priest didn’t seem that interested in what he had to say.”

“And you paid close enough attention to notice that, huh?” Eve said with a disgusted snort.

We’d been at this for four years. Four years leveling up in bouts, playing against WRDF teams, and white-knuckling our way through getting our asses kicked over and over while getting better, training harder, until finally we’d earned our way into enough sanctioned games in a season to make filling out the application worth it.

Glancing around at the somber expressions on the faces of my friends, I had to wonder if this was really Eve being a jealous twat or if maybe my excuses had less with pointing out how unreasonable they were being, and a whole lot more to do with how I was feeling about a certain flaming asshole.

It turned out leveling up our game play was only the beginning of the hard work. Once there, we had to form a committee and a code of conduct. We all had our talents, but it turned out not a single one of us had a desire to touch paperwork or anything having to do with making rules. Our “committee,” as we were still getting used to calling it, had more hands-on talents. Eve worked in construction. Rory slung beers behind a bar and effortlessly made every patron, even the assholes, feel like kings and queens. Sean worked as a self-trained pastry chef. Zara worked for a non-profit for homeless youth.

The closest skill set to write a dry as fuck code of conduct was Marty. A certified personal accountant, and when all eyes turned to her, she grunted and said, “I prefer numbers.”

But after three months and several votes to address rules we’d never once imagined we’d have to consider, Marty had done it and because she had, she never had to pay for her drinks at Banked Track again. We all covered her, a permanent arrangement that hadn’t quite banished the twitch in her left eye left over from her time in the trenches with headings, subheadings, bullet lists, articles—basically all the technical writing layout aspects that made our eyes glaze over.

Eve had even tossed in some construction at Rutledge and Brooks law firm to get them to review everything to make sure our code of conduct was complete.

After all of that, and still stumbling in our mind-numbing haze of paperwork, we had training and skills tests for both our players and officials for our team.

In our little corner of the world where people lived modestly, we had players who had a hard time keeping up with equipment needs. Once we managed to overcome that hurdle, it was all about how the hell we would coordinate the schedules in an area where most of us worked nontraditional jobs with odd hours. Add to that the complications of joining a federation and we’d been sapped of every last bit of resources we could scrounge up.

Everyone in this room had sacrificed time, money, peace of mind, and sometimes relationships to march this team toward its ultimate goal of joining the WRDF, and by dabbling in any talk or otherwise with Priest, I was putting it all on the line.

“Shit,” I muttered, gulping down the last of the beer I’d been drinking and grabbing another.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” Zara paced the narrow patch of floor in my living room. “It’s not like Priest was a WRDF coach. So he wasn’t suspended or anything. From what I Googled, it doesn’t even look like there was an investigation.”

“You Googled him?”

Why didn’t I think of that?

Oh, yeah, because my tits were still vibrating from the close encounter that very well might have looked like a kiss for anyone looking on.

Zara shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s Maine; there wasn’t a lot.”

“There wasn’t an investigation because he resigned from the police force, gave up derby, and left town. Unfortunately for him, in a small town, that means he all but laid down and confessed to the crime with all three,” Rory said as she typed something into her phone.

“Crime seems like an awfully strong word,” Zara said with a glance. “The girl was only like three months shy or so of her eighteenth birthday. It’s not like she was a teenager getting her drink on or anything.”

Rory waved away her comment. “You know what I mean.”

“She still had no business on that track no matter how good she was. There are junior leagues for a reason,” Eve pointed out, a thin sliver of anger burning in her eyes.

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