by Casey Hagen
Or if one of us got in too deep instead of keeping it light and fun. “It wasn’t a big deal. I thought I had a pinched nerve. Turns out I had a rib out of place, and he fixed it.”
“He’s your doctor now?” Eve said, pushing her way into the kitchen.
Shit.
“He’s someone who knew what he was talking about and I’m someone with shitty health insurance. Seemed like a no-brainer if I wanted to stay upright.”
“He couldn’t be here at a worse time. We’re going to be under a microscope applying for the WRDF. If they catch wind he’s not only here, but sniffing around one of our players, everything we’ve worked for will be for nothing,” Rory said with a wary glance between Eve and me.
I slapped a smile on my face to reassure her, but she only narrowed her eyes and studied me harder.
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.
Rory shot up in her seat and hunched over her phone. “The girl’s parents sure were vocal about the whole thing. At least the mother according to this. They were at the ribbon cutting ceremony of the new physical therapy wing at the hospital about four years ago now, and she, well, let’s just say she’s still bitter.”
I glanced down at the picture on Rory’s phone. “What does it say?”
“We’re proud to be here and witness the opening of yada, yada, yada, if only the negligence of one of our own in Galloway Bay hadn’t cost our Lana her ability to walk, who knows if we would have even needed a place like this.”
Marty cringed. “I don’t think that came out how she intended. At least I hope that’s not how she meant it.”
“I don’t know about that. She goes on, each comment more awful than the last,” Rory said with a wince.
The beer turned bitter on my tongue. “She literally disregarded anyone else who might have a need for physical therapy. I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Sean moved through the room, offering each of us cheese. “Poor Lana. Damn.”
“Well, I didn’t see this before. Lana Bradley made a statement to The East Coaster in direct response to her mother’s comments.” Rory scanned her phone, a gleam in her eye and an eager grin spreading over her face. “Oh shit, this is good.”
“Well, read it, girl; don’t keep it all to yourself,” Marty said from the kitchen as she dumped the shrimp in the water.
“Unfortunately, my mother refuses to accept that I’m responsible for where I am today,” Rory began. “I knew how old I was when I skated onto the track, and I knew I didn’t belong there. Fact of the matter is, I was selfish and I didn’t care. I paid the price for it. Someone I care a whole lot about also paid the price of my selfishness through no fault of his own. It’s time to move on. My mother forgets that the world does not revolve around me. The
truth, and what she should have acknowledged, is this new physical therapy wing is going to make a huge difference in the quality of life for our community. For the investors that made this happen, thank you. And may I suggest focusing the next infusion of funds on advanced mental health services, particularly for people in denial.”
Someone she cares a whole lot about…Priest. I shouldn’t be jealous of that. It made no sense to be jealous that this woman I didn’t even know, knew him on a much more personal level than I did.
I needed something stronger than a damn beer.
“Very grown-up and ended with a snarky dismount. I dig it,” Sean said.
“Through no fault of his own,” Zara said quietly. “She’s got to be talking about Priest. But how could he not know?”
Marty sucked the beer off her upper lip. “Backed up her birth year by a year when she signed up probably.”
“Why are we even hashing this out? It doesn’t matter. If everyone just stays away from him, the problem is solved,” Eve said.
All eyes swung in my direction.
“Hey, I don’t like that tone.”
Rory smirked. “We didn’t say anything.”
“Your eyes said plenty and they’re mouthy little bastards. Put your faces away.”
“Well, none of us were hanging out with him. Twice,” Zara said with a shrug.
“Banked Track was not my fault. And The Shipwreck—you know what, that wasn’t my fault either.”
“Dude, are you blushing?” Marty asked.
“What? No!” I scrambled over to the mirror only to find that I was definitely blushing.
“I’ve never seen you blush before. Didn’t know it was possible. Turn red with rage, sure, but blushing? You?” Marty said with a snort, putting me even more on the spot.
“This is going to be a problem. I can feel it,” Eve muttered.
“It’s not like he’s some kind of God and I’m some feckless female just waiting to fall tits up at his feet. You all act like I can’t resist the dick. I dated her,” I said, pointing at Eve, “for a full year and never even missed the dick.” I tossed the words over my shoulder, willing my rogue cheeks to stop breaking out in a flush that had freshly fucked written all over it. I mean, if this was happening over a trip down memory lane, getting a rib set in place, what the hell would happen if—you know what, no if. They were waiting for me to surrender to the if.
No. If.
“Just doing my job,” Eve said, the corner of her mouth twitching with the words.
“Look, I’m not looking to hop on a bone because who needs the hassle of a damn man when I can buy one in any size I want and it doesn’t talk back,” Rory began, “but even I know that guy is like biting into shortbread, finding out it’s a gooey chocolate chunk, and an hour later realizing you ate an edible.”
“It’s simple then. Just say no,” Zara said with a straight face, making the rest of us break out in cackling laughter, easing the tension, but not obliterating it altogether.
Cause like she said, Priest was gooey chocolate chunk and while drugs had never been my thing, I was all of a sudden totally down with popping an edible.
7
With a couple quick knocks on the side door at Rockabilly’s, I waited to see if Jackson Stone would answer. I should have called, but I itched to do something, anything at this point that got me out of my own head and kept me from finding...Mayhem.
Yeah, I was itching to see her again.
Restless to the point Lilith was ready to strangle me with the straps of the baby carrier she’d just gotten in the mail, I hightailed it out of there to give her space and give me—well, hell if I knew.
I avoided town. With so much speculation about my interest in Mayhem, the last thing I wanted to do was hover in her space—basically anywhere within a five-mile radius—and feed the voracious gossips in town.
I didn’t need to be giving the town the wrong idea.
Or her.
Or me for that matter.
Because the closer I got, the harder it became to see the boundaries between reason and a colossal mistake in the making. And that was after only two encounters.
It was going to be a hell of a long two months.
Curling my fist, I pounded the door again.
I tried to imagine the guy I knew so well from school and endless weekends at the skate park running the decades old roller rink, but I could never see him managing the place like an actual grown-up. Definitely not the same as his father and grandfather before him.
After all, he spent his teen years running with the crew of punk kids often banned from the property for getting high in the woods at the edge of the parking lot. Family or not, Old Man Stone, the original owner of Rockabilly’s and third generation hard-ass, didn’t put up with bullshit.
A laugh crept into my throat as an old memory of him took hold, cigar clenched between his teeth in the corner of his mouth, smoke wafting into his one eye, making him squint. Thick bushy eyebrows low and pinched as he griped about dumbass teens and their wacky tobacky.
Old Man Stone could be a real son of a bitch, but a weathered New Englander to the core, he always shot straight.
Jackson sitting at the 1950s steel tanker of a desk his grandfather coveted as good ol' American craftsmanship? God no. All I could imagine was Jackson, lounging in the high-back chair, his feet propped on the edge of that scarred monstrosity, headphones blasting The Ramones and Beastie Boys as he suffered through his own personal hell—or in this case, his birthright.
But then, sometimes birthrights were a punch in the balls like that.
At least he had a legacy worth taking over. Some of us had a mountain of rot ingrained in us from one parent that we try relentlessly to keep from infecting the good in us from the other parent, leaving us wondering if we really are an even split of our mom and dad or if the bad managed to wield a majority stake in our soul.
This was exactly why I convinced Lilith and Jordan to raise their kids at the family farm we’d inherited fifty/fifty. This was the chance for something good to come from my mistakes. For smiles and laughter to overwrite the loss and sadness.
With no sign of life from the other side of the door, I pounded louder with enough force to rattle the sheet metal on either side of the frame. I debated giving up for all of a handful of seconds, but I had to burn off the past week and what town was doing to me each day I stayed.
Come on, Jackson.
The blue box monstrosity with swathes of red and yellow signage drew in families from Bangor and Augusta where roller rinks had all but died under the crushing costs of upkeep and stiff competition from growing cities with more modern entertainment options.
Even with the support of the towns surrounding Galloway Bay, I wondered if this place could survive the onslaught of competition, but I also knew if anyone could pull off saving it, it was Jackson Stone.
He’d saved me from myself a time or two with his quick wit, his free spirit, and loyalty.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t make myself go now.
I needed a friend—I hated admitting that even to myself. I still had a few in town, but I needed someone who wouldn’t try to pick me apart and just let me be. Most of all, I wanted to see what he made of this place—how much had changed, how much had stayed the same.
I wanted to see if I could find a bit of my youth here, the guy I had been before everything went wrong not once, but twice.
The door burst open and Jackson swung out with it, his lanky body stretched between his firm grip on the door handle and his feet firmly planted in the doorway. He scanned the area, his shrewd gaze barely visible through the safety glasses shielding his eyes, a laser tag vest strapped to his chest, and a laser gun locked in his hand.
“You alone?” Jackson asked with a quick flick of his chin and pursed lips while he scanned the parking lot.
The tightness in my chest eased with my laugh. His good dose of humor I so desperately needed taking a swipe at my loaded memories.
“Dude, you really are never going to grow up, are you?”
Sliding his glasses up a fraction, his familiar hazel eyes, now with the beginnings of crow’s feet, met mine. “Why the fuck would I do that?” His mouth split into a lopsided grin as he took a step back. “Come on in, man. It’s been too long.”
I tapped the vest with my knuckles on my way past him. “Am I interrupting?”
“God, I hope so,” he said, scrubbing a hand through the wavy hair falling into his face. “No one should have to face a full day of paperwork. I’d rather someone drive nails through my balls.”
The familiar scent of popcorn and commercial carpet cleaner lingered in the air. Gone was the underlying scent of cigarette smoke that seemed to cling for years after the laws that finally outlawed smoking inside. “What the hell is so miserable it has you considering mutilation?”
“Prepping for tax season. I thought I’d get a jump on it, saving myself a few headaches, but the only thing that will do that is a fucking full-time accountant. That’s what I get for trying to be responsible. I thought this adulting shit was a scam. I was right.”
I grinned and gestured at his chest. “And the laser tag gear? How does that come into play?”
“I think better with gear on. Reminds me what’s at stake if I don’t get this shit done. You see the addition on the back? We’ve got a wild laser tag setup now.” He unclipped the vest and tossed it into the chair he’d likely just vacated, a clear sign he didn’t plan to plant his ass there again anytime soon. The gun and glasses followed just seconds later.
“Hard to miss. It’s purple.”
“The whole building will be purple soon.”
“Didn’t Old Man Stone hate purple?”
Jackson crossed his ankles and propped his shoulder against the wall with a cocky grin. “Yup. Seemed like the upside to me.”