Page 8 of Pivot Point

Just like these two men might if Mom ever found me.

“What happened, Lou?” Niko asked, quietly but gently.

I stared at my clenched hands. “She had my coach murdered. Left him for me to find. Acted as if it was a good thing because I could finally move on in the direction she wanted.”

Jasper sucked in a ragged breath. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” I said, fighting down my nausea. “That was when I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I grabbed what I could and took off—and Rafael insisted on coming too. He’s been my bodyguard for years. I needed to find someplace she’d never think to look for me and, well, we ended up in Hobb Creek. You basically know the rest of that story.”

Rafael’s gaze slid from one man to the other, his expression grim. “She’s felt guilty about not telling you everything, even though she didn’t owe it to you. Even now, she could have cut and run rather than getting into it. Remember that.”

Jasper rubbed his hand over his face and blinked at me. “That just sounds crazy. Whyareyou telling us now?”

He wasn’t recoiling in disgust, which I guessed was a win. But now I had to get into the hardest part.

“My mom will be searching for me. If she figures out where I am, I don’t know what she’ll do, but you could become targets. I’m already getting harassed by a stalker who could be connected to her somehow—we don’t even know.”

I lifted my gaze to meet Jasper’s and then Niko’s eyes. “She might kill you if she realizes I’ve been skating with you, like she did to my old coach. The more publicity we get, the bigger events we compete in, the higher the chance is that she’ll catch on and you’ll be in danger. I don’t want that to happen. And I totally understand if you don’t want anything at all to do with me now. I didn’t mean to get your hopes up under false pretenses.”

Niko leaned toward me, searching my face. “How much danger areyouin, Lou? You said someone’s already been bothering you?”

Really? After everything I’d just told him, he was worried aboutme?

“I don’t know,” I said. “Some sicko has left dead animals around my house and things like that, but I have no idea who’s doing it. But it just proves that I’m a magnet for trouble.”

Jasper snorted. “Well, we already knew that, Punk.”

The joke came out a little strained, and his smile was stiff around the edges. But he looked at me steadily.

“There was always something that sounded a little strange about your story,” he added. “This whole thingiscrazy, but somehow I don’t even feel that surprised. It’s not okay that anyone’s messing with you, doing psycho shit like that. If you need to crash somewhere else for a while—”

“You’re welcome to stay here, as long as you need,” Niko jumped in before Jasper could make the offer it’d seemed he was leading up to.

I gaped at both of them. “Are you listening to me? Your lives could be on the line. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure she doesn’t discover what I’m doing and to keep you safe if she does, but it’s a huge risk, no matter how you slice it. A risk I can’t ask you to take.”

Jasper flexed his shoulders, a scowl crossing his face. “I’m not going to run away and let you take all the heat on your own.”

Rafael cleared his throat and aimed a glower at the younger guy. “I can look after Lou just fine.”

Oh, shit, if they weren’t kicking me to the curb, I still had to explain about my evolving relationship with my no-longer-just-a-bodyguard too.

Were my skater men really taking my confession in stride? I studied both of them again, afraid to let myself get relieved just yet. Not sure I even should be relieved.

“You’d really want to stick with me? Both of you? I don’t know how—Jasper needs to get out there and compete in bigger events—I don’t want to hold him back.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Jasper said without hesitation. “You deserve to be out there in the spotlight too.”

He cut his gaze to Niko, who nodded emphatically. “We aren’t going to abandon you, Lou. We’re a team.” He glanced up at Rafael. “All of us.”

I swiped my hand across my mouth. “Um, if that’s the case, then about the whole team thing… I should probably also tell you that while Rafael and Iweren’tanything more than friends when I introduced him to you, it seems like that may be changing.”

As both of the other guys’ attention zeroed in on the man standing next to me, Rafael drew himself even straighter, his expression as impenetrable as usual.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want the two of you too,” I added hastily. “The way I feel about all of you… Maybe it’s selfish. But there’s something there, something special even if it’s different with each of you. Again, it’s up to you what you do with that information. I just felt I should keep being honest with you about seeing other people.”

To my shock, Niko broke into a laugh. “Well, when you have all that history with him, and he cared enough to stay with you even after you ran away—honestly, I was surprised when it sounded like there was nothing more going on.”

He caught Jasper’s gaze, and some wordless communication appeared to pass between them. I resisted the urge to fidget as another silence fell over us. Of course they needed a little time to process everything.

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