False Start: A Roller Derby Romance (Beautifully Brutal Book 1)

by Casey Hagen

  The girl better take that damn ring.

  “Ah, yes, that. Turns out derby is expensive, but there were teams. As long as I could buy the equipment…as long as I was eighteen. That was a hard and fast rule. No parents signing waivers on that one. And I’d heard the coach was a real stickler for rules.”

  Rules Lana broke.

  “And I’m no good at waiting. I had just enough in savings for the laminator and offering my services for a brief time replenished my savings, leaving me with money for equipment and a sparkling fake ID that would fool even the most seasoned cop,” Lana said, meeting Priest’s eyes. “Or not, but why would a coach suspect a fake anyway? It’s all just paperwork.”

  “Lana Ann!”

  “I paid for it. Dearly. And so did Priest. You made him pay the worst,” Lana said, her voice going from heartbroken to angry in a split second. “You gossiped about him, turned people against him, took every shot you could, even to this day. And you, Dad. You stayed silent while she did, knowing the whole time the money for my medical bills, my rehab, my house, and college—all of it came from him. Piece by piece you stood by and let him sell off chunks of property at Bishop Farm—while you stayed silent and let Mom vilify him. When no one else believed in me, he did, and you crucified him for it.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks, the last of her childhood dying as she fully came into her own and took back her power.

  There was a kind of grieving in that. In letting go, even of the things that hurt you, because it also meant letting go of the familiar and jumping into the unknown. Forging a new path.

  But Zach had her.

  A splash of color rose on Priest’s cheeks. His jaw locked tight. “That’s enough. It’s done,” he said quietly, reaching up and sliding Lana off the bar.

  She curled into his arms and he kissed her forehead before passing her to Zach. Without another word, he grabbed my hand and led me out into the frigid night.

  27

  “Where are we going?” I asked as he tugged me along the sidewalk.

  He glanced back at me, a bit of a crazed look in his eye. “To the farm.”

  “My place is right here. We can go up upstairs and talk, if you want.”

  He glanced up as though considering it before shoving a hand through his hair, the chaos turning to more uncertainty now. “You know what—I, it’s too close. I need to get out of here.”

  He was already slipping away, with our last practice done and Jackson going with us to Philly, this tiny fissure of truth Lana broke open had begun working its way between us.

  Only when this ended badly, there’d be no new town, no grieving the friends I’d never see again. I’d be here with the pain. I’d see his sister, eventually meet her husband and baby, and I’d wonder.

  When is he coming to town?

  Would Lilith tell me?

  Would I run into him?

  Would I break?

  Would people in town wonder what happened between us? If I caused it. If I hurt one of their own. Because while memories were long in a small town, they could be incredibly short too.

  Tales were embellished, the villain becoming the saint and the saint becoming the villain.

  And maybe the transplant becoming the outcast again.

  “Okay,” I said, a jagged ball of doubt lodging in my gut.

  “Don’t do that,” he snapped.

  I tugged at my hand, but he only held on tighter. “What?”

  “Say okay like that.” He yanked open the door of his truck and spun on me. “You never just say okay, Mayhem.”

  “I’m not going to force you to be with me. You either want to or you don’t.”

  Wow, so every niggling doubt I could possibly scrape from my insecurities bank was going to come out tonight apparently.

  All of the things we hadn’t been saying up to that point, tired of being kept hidden in the dark.

  Lana told a story and left us all spinning. Now Priest and I were tumbling through uncertainty and tiptoeing around each other in spectacular fashion, parading our insecurities like prized pigs in a 4H competition.

  “This has nothing to do with wanting to be with you,” he growled, backing me up to the door, pinning me there with his fist curling in my hair and a hard, demanding kiss of his lips. “It’s—I need to get out of town.” He rolled his forehead against mine, his ragged breath fanning my cheek. “Come to the farm with me.”

  I need to get out of town.

  So did my mother.

  It should have made me feel better that he took my hand when the urge to take off struck, but all I could think about was how easy it was for him to walk out of Banked Track and search for safety.

  All because one piece of his life slid out of his tight rein of control and the man didn’t know what the hell to do with himself when it did.

  What the hell would he do if everything actually went his way?

  “Okay,” I said again, my every thought and feeling unpredictable as he spiraled in front of me.

  “Mayhem,” he warned.

  I huffed out a breath. It was either that or the pressure building from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair were going to launch straight out of the top of my head and singe a hole in my lucky bandana. “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Shit,” he bit out. “I don’t know.”

  “So, I’m giving you a few minutes to freak out. You’re welcome.”

  He scrubbed his hand down his face and sighed. “See, that already sounds more like you. Now get your ass in my truck.”

  “And that already sounds more like you. By the way, you’re getting way too comfortable ordering me around,” I said even as I climbed into the cab and gave him one more piece of proof that his authoritarian voice earned compliance.

  The cop in him must love that shit.

  He didn’t say another word as he fired up the engine, cranked the heat, and pulled out of the parking lot. As the lights from town faded away, darkness concealed him in deep shadows. Under the obscurity, he finally spoke.

  “Just say it,” he said, hitting the gas the minute the speed limit sign came into view. His shoulders rigid, he kept flicking glances in the rearview.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Whatever you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not sure now’s the time to waste my colorful personality. Not when you seem like you’re ready to burst into a million pieces over there, all growly and shit. Kind of takes the fun out of it.”

  “I don’t like being under a microscope.”

  But he needed to be on trial. And now he wouldn’t be.

  At least not from anyone but himself.

  That’s what this was. Him poking me until maybe I stumbled upon what he couldn’t bring himself to say. “Apparently, but I don’t think that’s all this is.”

  “Okay, so give it to me. What is it?”

  “You covered for her for a long time.” A decade giving up everything he loved. How many times had he come back here and run into her parents? Heard the whispers? Pretended he didn’t see the glares?

  Because he definitely came back. A man didn’t take care of Lana the way he had without coming back and making sure she was okay.

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “All this time, you ate the shit people in this town dished out to keep her secret.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you know what to do with yourself if you’re not protecting somebody—if you’re not protecting her.”

  His jaw ticked; tortured sorrow etched in the skin bracketing his mouth because although controversy surrounding Lana and her injury were a huge factor, I’d bet there was something else lurking behind it. The protection that scrutiny gave him hid whatever was eating away at him underneath.

  I wanted to touch him. To smooth my fingers over the tension there until he finally relaxed. But I had to know… “Were you in love with her?”

  “Jesus, no—” He turned to me, piercing me with a hard stare
. “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “She’s never going to walk again. She was suffering enough.”

  “And the rest? The money, the house, college…”

  “I should have caught it,” he said, his voice low and full of frustration.

  The man wanted to rewrite history.

  Didn’t we all?

  But if he did—if I did—would we ever have gotten to this place? Would we ever have found each other?

  I didn’t want to go back and rewrite one damn ache from my past if I missed this.

  Missed him.

  “What should you have caught?”

  “The fake. I should have caught it and I didn’t. That was my mistake.”

  “The only crime here was hers.”

  “So what?” he snapped at me. “I should have turned her in then?”

  Ah, there it is. “I didn’t say that, but the fact that you did says plenty.”

  He squeezed the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as he pulled into the driveway, rolled to a stop, and turned off the engine.

  He wouldn’t reach for me. Not right now, not like this. But I would reach for him.

  I flipped the middle console up and slid across the bench seat until my body pressed to his.

  He didn’t let go. His hands flexed. His arms locked and rigid as he stared off at something I couldn’t see. Something from another time. Another place.

  Cupping his chin, I turned him to me.

  “Tell me,” I said quietly.

  “What?” he said, his eyes unfocused as the past held him in its merciless grip.

  “The part you don’t want to say.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat. The echo of tightly restrained pain…and maybe the beginning of his surrender to it. “I don’t want it to touch you.”

  “You don’t need to protect me,” I said as I stroked my fingers through the hair at his temple. Over and over, my nails scraping against his scalp until he leaned into me and his eyelids slid closed.

  “The last person I loved and turned in, ended up dead,” he said, his deep voice gritty with pain.

  I brushed my thumb along that deep dimple and over his cheek, constantly soothing—him and me. “You reported your father.”

  “And brother,” he whispered.

  “This is not your fault.”

  “It feels like it,” he grated out. “Every single day, every single minute it feels like it was all my fault.” His eyes slid closed and he sighed before opening them again. Just a tiny release of the pressure swelling in him. “You know, our names were always this running joke,” he said with a humorless laugh. “Cain and Abel. A good brother and evil brother, but my mother didn’t care; she just liked the names.”

  “And you think you’re the evil brother?”

  “Are you saying he was?” he said, his tone cutting, the last of his defenses lashing out.

  It’s the only part of him I can keep safe now.

  That’s what he’d said.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I said, keeping my voice soft, knowing he wasn’t attacking me; he was still protecting his brother—his brother’s memory. “He was a child and his father didn’t protect him.”

  “I didn’t protect him.”

  “No.” I took his face in my hands and turned him to me. “You were a child too. And your father was supposed to protect you all. Your brother paid a horrible price for your father’s mistakes—and the price you paid—the price you continue to pay is just as high.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I don’t understand? My mother had no ties. She moved me from town to town on a whim while I hid the tears from the heartache of leaving one more town, one more friend, a school I loved. My mother was kind, loving, and she adored me—but she was a fuckup.”

  “Mayhem—”

  “It’s okay. It’s true. Every day watching you put up with the judgment here to do what’s best for the people you love tore away the romanticism of what she did. She didn’t end up in jail; she didn’t put me in harm’s way with drug dealers and criminals, but the wounds cut deep just the same.” I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and breathed him in as my heart ached for both of us. “When it got hard, she ran. You’re weird,” I said brushing my thumb over his warm bottom lip. “You run when you think they’ve made it easier on you, but maybe you run because when it’s easy, you have no choice but to stare down the demons you’ve been ignoring for so long.”

  “What are your demons?” he asked quietly.

  “I’ve been afraid to speak up, to rock the boat, because I’m so damn scared I would lose what little hold I had on this town because I’ve never had a home,” I said, surprised how easily they rolled off my tongue now when I’d never dared to voice them before.

  He did that.

  He gave me strength and confidence to finally admit them without fear.

  The same strength and confidence he gave me on the track.

  But my insecurities, between never having roots and losing Tilly for so long, were a bit more distinct than his making them easier to tackle.

  His twisted around one another. Loss, betrayal, guilt, and anger he’d sought refuge from on the track and in this sport. The tug of home offering comfort, but also stark truth.

  His other half—he was never coming back.

  And all of it twisted in Lana’s accident and his habit of protecting her above all.

  With Lana finally coming clean, it only left lasting fragments of the parts of his past to focus on. The parts of him still left broken.

  He looked into my eyes, a hint of a smile there, his face softening just a bit. “You don’t have to keep fighting to hold on, because they’re holding on to you.”

  He may be right, but I still couldn’t see it. Couldn’t trust the bond completely. Not quite yet.

  But I could see the bond he had with them. Even at the height of scrutiny, Patti, the sheriff, his friends on the police force, his family—even when circumstances cast him in a questioning light, they never wavered on his integrity. Not once.

  I brushed another kiss over his lips. “You’ve spent so much time protecting people all because of the one person you can’t protect. What happens when the day comes that everyone is okay at the same time and there’s no one else who needs you to protect them? Will you finally let yourself live life then?”

  CAIN

  She seduced me with her soft touch and her remarkable calm, coaxing me into confession. Drawing pain into the light before working to shape it with logic and truth.

  Logic and truth I wasn’t ready to accept.

  I didn’t know what the right thing was anymore; I just knew I was tired of watching the people I cared about pay for my mistakes.

  My skin prickled and I shook my head trying to clear the thoughts—my past a cluster of aggressive vines tangling through my present.

  My own twin called me a traitor, the last words he ever spoke to me, my own exact replica looking back at me with such venom and betrayal. It didn’t matter what anyone said, I still felt his words and I didn’t know how to stop.

  But when I had a purpose, when people needed me, I could forget how much he hated me in our last moments together.

  I stared at the dark house until it blurred and came into focus again. “Something’s not right.”

  “What?” Mayhem asked, glancing over her shoulder at the house.

  “The house is dark.”

  “Lilith probably just went to bed. She is actively making a whole human, you know.”

  “But she didn’t leave our grandfather’s light on. She always leaves it on.”

  “Maybe she’s in the barn,” she said, pointing past me. “The light’s on up there.”

  “I told her not to worry about cleaning up. Shit.” I hopped out of the truck and headed up the hill, Mayhem right behind me. Yes, I knew what I was doing. I was diving right back into someone or something that needed me. “You should be w
earing your jacket.”

  “Some moody asshole dragged me out of the bar without it.”

  “You should be wearing mine then. Why didn’t you grab it?”

  “Because I’m sticking with you while you’re in this mood. Someone has to remind you to be nice.”

  “I’m always nice.”

  She snorted next to me, her bare arms swinging in the bitter cold. “Bullshit.”

  She bolted ahead of me and crossed into the barn first and stopped dead in her tracks.

  “So, I came up to turn off the light and surprise,” Lilith said, panting out the words from where she sat on a metal folding chair, clutching her stomach, beads of sweat gathered across her pale forehead. Just a few feet away, wet concrete.

  I wasn’t here. This was my one job, and I wasn’t here.

  “Okay, let’s get you to the hospital,” I said, reaching her elbow.

  “Nope,” she said, stiffening up.

  “Lilith—”

  “Cain, he’s coming,” she said, her eyes turning frantic as they met mine. “Not only am I not going to make it to the hospital,” she said, gasping as she sucked in a harsh breath. “I’m not going to make it to the house.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, crouching in front of her.

  “Do you think I want to have my son here?” she said, her teeth chattering.

  “Okay,” I nodded, glancing over at Mayhem. “I need towels, blankets, and my bag from the back seat. Can you grab them? There’s a sled on the porch I use to haul gear, you can pile them on that.”

  “Got it.”

  “And on your way down, call 9-1-1.”

  “I’m on it,” she said before turning back toward the house and heading down the hill, her phone pressed to her ear along the way.

  “I’m going to turn on the heaters. Sit tight. Where’s your phone?”

  “I left it in the house,” she said, putting her hand up the minute I opened my mouth to speak. “No lectures.”

  “I swear, I should have put a Life Alert necklace on you.”