Page 80 of False Start

“Fine.” I dragged out the stool one seat down and faced her. “I might have fucked up tonight.”

“Nope. Not close enough,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “You did fuck up tonight. There’s no might have. Might have is what you say when you might have left the toilet seat up or you might have walked through the house with wet boots. There’s no might in inviting the biggest flaming twat in existence onto our team without saying a word about it. You did do that and the least you could do is own it.”

“I fucked up,” I said, waiting for her to turn to me. When she finally did, the betrayal I saw in her eyes took me to another time, another place, another mistake, and made it hard to speak. “I’m sorry.”

She searched my face, silent until her shoulders slumped. “Nope, that’s not satisfying either.” Turning away, she wrapped her fingers around her glass.

“I’ll tell her she’s off the team.”

She froze with her glass halfway to her lips and cut me a glance. “If you do that, I’m going to beat you with my skate, I swear to God.”

“You don’t want me to kick her off the team?”

“I didn’t want her on the team to begin with, but that ship sailed. It’s gone. Now that you put me in this position, you’ve made me more fuel for her fire.” She leaned on the bar and tilted her head. “What do you think happens if Tilly is kicked off because of me? Because you damn well know after watching the shit she pulled in that bout that she will definitely blame it all on me.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“See it now, hotshot? For a cop, you sure are slow.” She slammed her glass down, looked at Rory, and pointed over her shoulder. “Stop worrying about me, I’ve got this. Pay attention to Gerald. He’s serving himself now.”

Rory whipped around. “Shit!”

“You can’t turn your back on him,” Mayhem said, turning away from me again, glancing into the bottom of her glass like the amount of liquid left was an hourglass—the liquor the sand—telling her just how much longer she had to suffer my presence.

“Where’s Patti?” It wasn’t like her to not be here—to let Rory cover her when the woman knew the team had their first practice tonight. She’d want to be here, with all of them, living vicariously through every detail.

“She wasn’t feeling well,” she said, saying as few words as possible, making me pull the conversation out of her one stubborn word at a time.

“I took your power away.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You sure did.”

A weight settled in my chest. I swallowed the unexpected knot wedged in my throat and forced the words past my lips. “And I weaponized you for her.”

“Yup.”

“Are you going to tell me what the deal is between you and Tilly?”

“Nope. Now, if you’d asked me before—” She shrugged and pulled a twenty from her bag and tossed it on the counter. “Doesn’t matter now.” But her mouth trembled when she said it—just one of a dozen different ways she showed me it mattered.

“You’re just going to let me go into this blind?”

“How does it feel?” she snapped as she slid off the stool.

Rory glanced between the two of us and moved in closer. Ready to protect Mayhem—from me.

In the span of one disastrous move, I now stood apart from the team—maybe even more separated than Tilly. God, that was a kick in the balls right there.

Mayhem started past me without even a glance and I couldn’t let her go. My sister was right… I was already well on my way to falling in love with her and if I let her walk away from me now, she might walk away from me for good.

I curled my fingers around her arm and let them slide down over her wrist to her hand.

She slowed to a stop next to me and closed her eyes.

Afraid to breathe, I waited to see what she would do when my palm slid against hers.

She glanced down at our hands, her index finger twitching against my skin. I felt the shudder move through her a split second before she lightly laced her fingers with mine.

“I won’t let her hurt you,” I promised her, squeezing her hand gently, afraid to push her any farther.

Damp, bright-blue eyes heavy with unshed tears ripped into me with a glimpse of what I’d done to her.

“You can’t protect me,” she murmured as she let my fingers go and walked out the door.

I can’t protect anyone.

But for the first time since Abel died, my instinct wasn’t to run from trying.

---