by Tracy Wolff
Slashed is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Flirt eBook Original
Copyright © 2015 by Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney
Excerpt from Major Misconduct by Kelly Jamieson copyright © 2015 by Kelly Jamieson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Flirt, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
FLIRT is a registered trademark and the FLIRT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Major Misconduct by Kelly Jamieson. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eBook ISBN 9780553395167
Cover design: Caroline Teagle
Cover photograph: © CURAPhotography/Shutterstock
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1: Cam
Chapter 2: Luc
Chapter 3: Cam
Chapter 4: Luc
Chapter 5: Cam
Chapter 6: Luc
Chapter 7: Cam
Chapter 8: Luc
Chapter 9: Cam
Chapter 10: Luc
Chapter 11: Cam
Chapter 12: Luc
Chapter 13: Cam
Chapter 14: Luc
Chapter 15: Cam
Chapter 16: Luc
Chapter 17: Cam
Chapter 18: Luc
Chapter 19: Cam
Chapter 20: Luc
Epilogue
Dedication
By Tracy Wolff
About the Author
Excerpt from Major Misconduct
Chapter 1
Cam
I don’t like being ignored. Or, more specifically, I don’t like being ignored by Luc.
The guy who’s been my best friend since I was four years old.
The guy who taught me how to ride my very first snowboard.
The guy who knows everything about me—and who I know everything about.
Or at least I did. Now, as he sits across from me talking and joking around with anyone and everyone but me, I’m not sure I know anything about him anymore. He sure as hell doesn’t want to know anything about me. He won’t even look at me. And if he puts any more distance between us, he’s going to end up falling off the back of the damn boat the first time we hit a rough wave.
Which at the moment, I might actually pay good money to see. Especially when he glances up from his super intense conversation with Ash, and our eyes meet for the first time in way too long. I start to smile, but he yanks his gaze away before he sees it. And I’m left feeling like a total idiot.
And the worst part is, it’s all my fault. The weirdness, the awkwardness, Luc’s inability to even look at me—I’m responsible for all of it. I’m the one who got drunk a few months ago when Z first got together with Ophelia. I’m the one who threw myself at Luc when he was equally drunk, who kept pushing and pushing until he took me back to his place. And I’m the one who freaked out so completely when I woke up in bed with him the next morning. He’d tried to be cool, to be nice—and I had lost it completely.
Nothing has been the same since.
I’ve spent the last few months trying to clean up the mess I made—doing anything and everything I could think of to get us back on even ground—but it isn’t working. We used to practically live in each other’s pockets, and now we only hang out when the others are around. When he can use Z and Ash and Tansy and Ophelia as a buffer between us. And only when he doesn’t have to say more than one or two sentences to me at any given time.
It’s driving me absolutely, totally, completely, batshit crazy.
Part of me wants to apologize—again—for freaking out on him instead of just going the whole one-time friends-with-benefits route, especially since I’m the one who initiated everything. But there’s another part of me that wants to slap the hell out of him. I mean, yes, I handled the morning after badly. But, really, one mistake and sixteen years of friendship are suddenly null and void?
Just the thought makes me mad. I’d never shut him out like this—I wouldn’t even know how. The fact that he’s doing it so easily hurts me more than I want to admit, even to myself.
“So, who’s up first?” Ash calls from where he’s lounging against the side of the boat, his girlfriend, Tansy, balanced on his lap.
“I am,” I tell him, reaching for my wakeboard.
“That’s my girl!” Z whoops as he starts to slow the speedboat down. “Get out there early, show ’em how it’s done!”
“Oh, I plan to.”
Z’s girlfriend, Ophelia, laughs even as she holds her hand up for a high five. “Ten bucks says Cam can stay up longer than any of the guys.”
“No bet there,” Ash tells her. “Cam fucking rules on a wakeboard.”
I shoot him a look. “Almost as much as I rule on a snowboard.”
“Hey now, it’s a little early for trash talking, isn’t it?” Z asks.
“It’s not trash talking if it’s true,” Ash’s younger brother, Logan, says. He flashes me a huge smile and I can’t resist giving him a quick, one-armed hug. I love this fourteen-year-old kid so much it’s ridiculous, and the fact that he can still smile, still be so upbeat even with everything he’s had to handle in the last year, blows my mind completely. Not only did he lose his parents in a horrific car wreck, he also lost the use of his legs in that same wreck. And yet, here he is, laughing and joking around like the total badass that he is.
“At least Logan knows the truth,” I tell him with a wink. “And that’s all that matters.”
“Can you teach me?” Tansy asks as Z brings the boat to a stop.
“Sure. I—”
“Hey, I’ll teach you, babe,” Ash tells her.
“But you just said that Cam’s better than you,” she tells him, eyes wide and innocent. “And I want to learn from the best.”
I crack up. I can’t help it—the way Ash’s mouth drops open is absolutely priceless, and for a second, I wish my phone were out so I could get a picture of it. I glance at Luc, wanting to share the joke, but he’s looking out over the water. Deliberately not looking at me. Deliberately not joining in the conversation about me.
I freaking hate it.
But now’s not the time—or the place—to dwell on the disaster that is our friendship. So I make my way to the back of the boat, climb up on the seat. I make sure to bump into Luc as I do. It works. For a second, just a second, he’s looking at me. And this time when our eyes meet, he smiles a little.
“Stomp it out there.”
Relief sweeps through me and I smile, probably way more than his comment warrants.
“I plan on it.”
I fasten my wakeboard onto my feet, then slide over the side of the boat and into the water with a splash. I gasp a little at the chill of it—it’s only September, but up here in the mountains, the water is already pretty cold. Not cold enough for a wetsuit, but definitely cold enough to make me shiver at first contact.
“You ready?” Z calls.
I grab the line, get myself in position with my knees pulled toward my chest and the board on its side, running parallel to the back of the boat.
“Hit it!” I tell him.
He laughs a little maniacally, but when he starts moving forward, he keeps it slow and steady. But that’s Z for you. He’s an adrenaline junkie who will try just about anything once—even stuff that’s almost guaranteed to kill him—but when it comes to th
e rest of us, he’s totally rock solid, totally responsible.
It’s one of the things I love about him. One of the things that used to make me think I was in love with him even though it was really more infatuation than anything else. There aren’t many people in my life who try to take care of me—the fact that Z always did made him special. But confusing that kind of friendship with love was stupid on my part, and something I totally got over once I accepted Ophelia wasn’t going anywhere. Because she loves Z for real and he loves her the same way. What she’s done for him—how she’s helped him come to grips with all the shit in his own life—matters more to me than any feelings I might have had for him way back when.
“Hey, faster,” I call, when he seems determined to be all old lady about the speed thing. “We’re barely moving!”
He lets out another maniacal laugh, but waves his hand in acknowledgement. And then we’re moving, cruising through the water at a speed that’s enough to get my adrenaline pumping.
I shift my hips, let the board sink like it’s been wanting to since we started moving. I can feel the pull in my shoulders now, but resist standing up. Not yet, not yet, not yet…
We hit what feels like about twenty miles an hour, and that’s when I pull up. We’re racing across the lake now, and I’m laughing as water sprays up into my face. For long seconds, I keep my arms relaxed, my knees bent, and just ride. We’re going fast, and the boat is kicking the water up, making it a little choppy. But I like it that way—and as Z lays on the speed, I shift my weight and pop a couple Ollies.
Logan cheers, and I laugh, but settle in to do a couple more tricks for him—a corked spin followed by a monkey spin, an invert, a couple different turns. Z guns it then, gets the boat up to what I’m guessing is twenty-three or so miles per hour as he doubles, then triples up.
I’m grinning like a crazy person now, but I love riding when he does that, love what it feels like when the wakes cross and hit three times normal size. Lowering my shoulders, I tuck in, then when it feels right, when it feels perfect, I jump. I catch mad air, just like I’d hoped, and I do a double inverted cork that I land perfectly, despite the huge wake.
It’s a great fucking feeling. The trick. The landing. The rush.
Logan screams encouragement, and I can hear Tansy and Ophelia clapping, too, so I do it again.
I land harder this time—the wake is dissipating and I don’t catch as much air, but it still works. Except then Luc gets up, says something to Z, though I can’t hear what. Then the boat starts to slow, much to my disappointment.
I get one more small jump in before Z gets the speed down too low to board. I let go of the rope, fall backward into the water, then reach down and unlace the boots that hold my feet onto the board as I wait for Z to circle back and pick me up.
It only takes a minute or two, and then Luc is pulling me up and into the boat. Looks like he remembers I exist, after all. Which, hey, I’m not about to knock.
“Thanks,” I say as I set my board next to him.
He just nods, then drops his hands so fast that I can’t help being a little insulted. I mean, we’re not in elementary school and I don’t have cooties.
“Who’s next?” Ophelia asks.
“I am,” Luc tells her, grabbing his own wakeboard and jumping over the side of the boat without even bothering to buckle in.
What. The. Hell.
“That was amazing!” Tansy exclaims, moving over to sit next to me. “I want to be able to do all the tricks you did!”
“It’s not as easy as Cam made it look,” Ash tells her as we wait for Luc to strap in—something that’s much harder to do when you’re in the lake instead of in the boat.
“Well, obviously.” Tansy rolls her eyes at him. “It’s not like I think I’m going to go out there and be able to do that tomorrow. But I want to learn.”
“I’ll be happy to teach you,” I tell her, even as I put a placating hand on Ash’s shoulder. The guy means well, but he’s super-protective of her. Which I get—he’s already lost his parents and had his little brother paralyzed. The last thing he wants is anything to happen to Tansy, who’s kind of already had her miracle since she beat cancer, twice. But he can’t keep her in a box, all wrapped up in cotton, either. The girl needs to breathe a little. And since she’s hanging out with a bunch of extreme sports fanatics, is it really such a surprise that she wants to try some of the things we do?
“Yay! When can we start?”
“Today. We’ll try some basic stuff later, okay?”
“Absolutely!”
Ash looks like he wants to argue, but I lean in and whisper, “I promise, nothing crazy. Just grabbing the rope and standing up while Z goes slow, okay?”
He doesn’t look happy, but he nods reluctantly. “Promise?”
“Pinky promise.” I hold my pinky out, then laugh a little when he actually wraps his little finger around mine like we used to do when we were kids.
“Ready any time you are,” Luc calls.
“Shred it!” Z calls back. He starts moving, not quite as slowly as he did for me—the sexist—but it still takes a couple minutes for him to get up to speed.
As soon as he does, Luc rolls to his feet. And then he’s stomping it, nailing trick after trick after trick in a way he’s never been able to on a snowboard. It’s freaking amazing to watch—the air he catches is absolutely sick—and the way he spins is crazy. Like there’s no way he should be able to do what he does, at least not without a kicker to go off of. But he does it, again and again.
We’re all watching now, oohing and aahing, and I can’t help wondering when he got this good. When’s he been practicing? And with whom? We haven’t been out on the water in a couple of months, and the last time we were out, he could only do about half these tricks.
I’m still wondering about it when Z decides he’s had enough and slows the boat down. Luc lets go, falling back into the water with a grin and a shout.
“No offense, Cam, but maybe I want Luc to teach me,” Tansy says, eyes wide with awe.
“No offense taken. I think I want him to teach me, too.”
It’s a weird space to be in. Not that Luc isn’t talented and not like he can’t do a lot of things better than me, but nothing on a board. He’s a talented all-around athlete, but when it comes to boarding—snowboarding or surfing or wakeboarding—he’s always been just a little bit behind the rest of us. Just a little bit weaker. Still great, just not as great.
A quick glance at Ash tells me he’s having the same thoughts I am. Which is kind of a relief, if I’m being honest. Because if I was the only one who didn’t know Luc was working on this, if I’d been the only one he hadn’t told, I’d feel even worse about how things are between us. But if he hasn’t told anyone, maybe it’s just his thing. Maybe he just wanted it to be a surprise. Still weird, but maybe not as weird?
When we stop, I reach down to help him into the boat, but he shrugs me off, and climbs into the boat without any help at all. His biceps bulge a little as he pulls himself up, and I watch before I can stop myself. For a second, just a second, I flash back to the night we spent together—to the way his biceps flexed and tightened as he thrust into me again and again.
My cheeks heat at the thought, and this time I’m the one to yank my eyes away from his.
Chapter 2
Luc
Fuck, she looks good. And fuck, it’s hard to keep my eyes off of her.
Like the other girls, Cam’s dressed in a bikini. But unlike Ophelia and Tansy, hers isn’t two little scraps of cloth held together with strings. No, in typical Cam fashion, she’s wearing a simple black suit that’s much more about athletic function than hotness factor. And still she looks fucking fantastic in it. All long, lean lines and tanned, gorgeous skin, with legs that go on forever—legs that seem specifically designed to drape themselves over a guy’s shoulders as he thrusts into her again and again and again.
Not that I care. Not anymore. I may have been in love with her
once upon a time, but after the disastrous one night we spent together, I am totally over it.
Completely.
Absolutely.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself once a day. More if I’m actually around her for any length of time.
Fake it till you make it. That’s the motto I’m living by these days.
“Dude, where the hell did that come from?” Ash demands as he sits down on the edge of the boat and fastens himself into his wakeboard.
I shrug. The last thing I want to say is the truth, which is I’m sick to fucking death of always coming in last. I’m a good athlete, a really good athlete, and in any other group, that would probably count for something. With my three best friends—all of whom top snowboarding podiums on a regular basis—not so much.
It’s not that I’m jealous of them, because I’m not. They’ve each had some really bad, really heavy shit to deal with through the years and I figure their mad skills are kind of the universe’s way of evening up the scales. Still, it’d be nice to not always feel like the loser. Like the ballast they cart around, not because I contribute anything to the team but out of loyalty.
“That was totally wicked,” Ophelia tells me as I move to the front of the boat. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Thanks.” I shoot her a smile, even knowing she’s just trying to make me feel better.
“Uh, sure you have,” Z tells her even as he grins at me. “I do believe you’ve seen me work a half-pipe before.”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course, baby. And you have a bigger penis, too.”
“Hey, now!” I squawk in mock affront. “That seems a little judgmental considering you haven’t seen the goods.”
“You want to fix that?” she asks, eyebrows raised. But she’s been Z’s girl long enough for me to know she’s all bravado.