Page 67 of False Start

“And you’re Lilith.”

“Cain’s sister, yes.”

Ahhhh, gotcha. You’re something to him, I’m nothing to him, and this is you letting me know where we stand when it comes to YOUR brother. Got it.

Chilly, but then, being an outsider wasn’t exactly new to me. “Well, Lilith…it was nice to meet you. I’m going to head up and get to work.” I didn’t wait for a reply, just tore up the ground between my car and the hill, stomping over the packed-down path that had been heavily sanded for traction, the roiling in my gut a familiar feeling.

Outsider.

Always an outsider.

I may be an outsider, but then…so was he.

I stopped at the door and spotted his familiar shoulders as he raced around the corner.

An outsider to his own heritage. Mistakes keeping him away from something he ached for. Keeping him away from people he’d die for.

I’d never seen a banked track in person.

Hell, I wasn’t really seeing it now.

Because the man there commanded every last bit of my attention.

The track howled drowning out The Clash playing in the background with the echo of Priest’s skates as he shot down the straightaways. Tucking in his shoulder, he snapped around the inside corner only to speed up down the other side.

Crouched low, his mouth hard, his eyes haunted, he leaned into his power and tore up the surface with every crossover of his feet and swing of his arms. The skates with the flames keeping up with every brutal demand to go faster from whatever he tried to outrun up there.

Because he was definitely running.

The same energy that radiated from him from where he sat in that metal folding chair, from the bar at Banked Track, from the tortured sound of his voice when he told me to get my ass back inside Banked Track the other night—the hint of desperation—it lay unveiled here.

He hadn’t cared that I stood there on the sidewalk with no jacket.

He cared that I’d found a crack to burrow into. A weak spot in that aloof armor he’d clutched for a decade.

And he hated that he couldn’t run.

This was what he wouldn’t let others see. But it lingered behind the shimmering threadbare parts of his defense. If you turned to him fast enough, caught him off guard for just a split second—you could spot the turmoil simmering below the surface.

Here lay his safe place.

He raced around the banked track, his mask gone, a mountain of complications revealed.

I should have turned away and given him his privacy in this moment. Or at the very least, announced my presence.

But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mysteries swirling around him. Living, breathing, and unfinished, it’s like they wanted to murmur truths he refused to let slip past his lips.

They wanted to be set free.

And at the same time, this track was his lover. He may have abandoned it over time, but he always came back. They had secrets, the two of them. Secrets they whispered between one another with every glide of his skates over the Masonite, and I was the outsider here too.

This was more than agreeing to help a youth center survive. This was so much more than acting on mutual attraction.

These were living, breathing wounds he struggled against. There was safety in the familiar, even if it brought you excruciating pain.

When he held my face in his hands, his soul desperate to protect itself from me—from whatever was happening between us—I didn’t just ask him to help us win an exhibition. I asked him to face whatever haunted him and break it wide open.

My excitement over his agreement crumbled to dust in a pile of apprehension. The weight of his yes crushed my heart where it stumbled in my chest.

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