Hometown Hero

by Dani Collins

  “Noooo,” she cried softly, the sting of humiliation bleeding into her veins as she realized how easily that could have happened. Every second day, there was a new workshop or bulletin about kids and technology and cyber threats.

  Still, she tried to will reality from manifesting.

  Squinching her eyes shut, she curled deeper under the blankets. “Please tell me you’re joking,” she whimpered.

  “Someone from Channel Nine’s news desk just called the house.”

  “Stan—”

  “I’m not kidding. Mom just got off the phone. I looked it up. It’s you and Chase Goodwin.”

  “Oh Ga-awd. Remind Mom I love her, would you? Because I have to go throw myself off the back of Copper Mountain now.” She curled tight as a pill bug into the space under her blankets. “I hate my life, Stan. Why does it keep getting worse?”

  He sighed, both sweetly protective and impatient at the same time. He hadn’t wanted her to marry Terry, especially so young. He hadn’t wanted her to stand by Terry while he sorted out his life, then keep living in this big, empty house. After their father died, he’d begged her to move back to the ranch. I’m not squeezing you out of your share, he had insisted a million times. This will always be your home, too.

  But this house was her dream home, the one piece she had left of the Happily Ever After pie she’d been baking when she’d married Terry. Terry had felt guilty enough to sign it over to her, so why should she sell it?

  “Goodwin’s a big deal,” Stan said. “You might wind up with quite a bit of attention. Come out here for a week or so until it blows over.”

  Tempting, but along with everything else, she and his wife lived better apart. And if growing up on a ranch had taught her nothing else, it was that you didn’t let a bit of hardship defeat you. When you landed in the dirt, you got on your feet and back in the saddle before fear had a chance to take hold. It sucked. It meant feeling the bruises while you rode out the pain, but it had to be done.

  “No, I’ll…figure it out,” she murmured, not even trying to imagine how. Get out of bed, shower, dress, drive to the school. Pretend everything was normal and fine.

  Seriously? The internet? Why did God hate her?

  “You know, you’re allowed to be angry, Skye, but you should take it out on Terry. He’s the one who cut you the raw deal.”

  She was, but not enough to hurt him. He was her best friend. She loved him. Not as a husband, but as much as she loved Stan. Terry had tried so hard to be what everyone wanted him to be, to give Skye her dream—which hadn’t seemed like a big ask at the time, but it had turned out to be impossible.

  Which was why she was so angry, she supposed. She came from simple folk and her dream hadn’t been far-fetched. All she’d asked for was a steady man who wanted to make a family and a good life. If things hadn’t worked out, it should have been due to a normal problem like money or cheating. She didn’t understand why her marriage had had to explode in such an extraordinary and public way. Wolcotts weren’t flashy. They didn’t demand attention. Why did her private business have to wind up in the spotlight?

  On social media, for heaven’s sake. Really?

  Her phone buzzed with a second call. Terry.

  This was going to be a long, hard day in the saddle.

  *

  “She’s not a wing-nut. I won’t say that,” Chase insisted wearily to the team’s publicist.

  His phone had exploded last night, about fifteen minutes after they got home. Flynn had elbowed his lanky, teenaged frame into Chase’s room and said, One of the guys got Ms. Baynard’s meltdown on his phone. He posted it while we were at the dance. I just told him to take it down, but it’s already been shared like a hundred times.

  Chase had just stared at his brother. He was here to keep Flynn’s life under control, not lose his grasp on his own. The players in the series were the ones under the media microscope right now, not the guy who was out with an injury, leaving his team at the bottom of the standings. He’d been so relieved by the idea of coasting under the radar for the next few months, he’d actually been pissed when he’d learned the town wanted to honor him with Quinn Douglas and a handful of other outstanding local athletes. Quinn deserved it, but not him. He felt like a tool as it was.

  Now they were up into the hundred-thousand territory of shares on YouTube. Network news was asking for a statement.

  “So you don’t want to refute anything she said?” the publicist demanded in a surly voice.

  “I don’t have a tiny dick! Let’s get that straight,” he growled.

  An hour later he dropped Flynn at school and met up with the physiotherapist he was supposed to visit twice weekly while he was here. The scar from the surgery to repair his torn rotator cuff was healing nicely, but bringing all the muscles back to full strength and range of motion was taking more time. The kind of time that had already been making him antsy when he’d thought Flynn and everything else in Marietta was fine. He hated downtime, preferring the intensity of being caught up in the season: the training, the need to keep his head in the game. Some found the demands exhausting, but he found them a perfect distraction from the mess of real life.

  Messes like Flynn taking up drinking and getting kicked off the football team.

  All his life, Chase had had one goal: Don’t grow up like the old man. That had meant leaning toward baseball over football, which had been his father’s first love and ultimate downfall. Not making the cut for a college team had sent his dad into a bottle and he’d never come out.

  Chase and Flynn had inherited their father’s natural athleticism, but now Chase worried Flynn had inherited the same destructive thirst as well.

  He wanted to believe that one Friday night of being a jackass did not a drunkard make, but he’d been out with his injury so he’d flown home to yank his half-brother back onto the straight and narrow. A few heart-to-hearts with Max, Mitch Holden and the other coaches, and he’d earned Flynn a chance to keep up with practice on his various teams. Flynn would bench-warm through the next few games, but sport had been Chase’s salvation through high school. Flynn had potential if he would only keep at it. If nothing else, Chase prayed that having a sober father-figure show up and act like he gave a damn would carry some influence.

  The fact he was a god to some of Flynn’s posse was a plus. They wanted to hang with him so Flynn didn’t have to make excuses or feel torn between his brother and his friends. He and Flynn got on well, regardless. Flynn’s mother—and her pregnancy with Flynn—might have been the reason Chase’s mother had left, but he didn’t blame his kid brother. At least Flynn’s mother had stuck with their dad.

  She’d been the main breadwinner until Chase had been old enough to get a real job. That had meant Chase had been the babysitter, dragging Flynn with him if he wanted to go anywhere, balancing him on the handlebars of his bike so he could make practice. Later, Flynn had met him at the feed store after school where Flynn had waited out Chase’s four-hour shift, asking Chase for help with his homework between Chase’s spurts of loading and unloading trucks.

  He hadn’t felt good about leaving Flynn when he was drafted, even though his step-mom had had a decent paying job by then. Now he wondered yet again if it had been a mistake, but everything he’d accomplished since leaving Marietta had allowed him to keep a roof over their heads. He and Flynn had talked more than once about Flynn coming to live with him, but Flynn liked his friends here and Marietta was a solid town full of solid people, even if their father wasn’t one of them.

  Chase really felt he’d done the best he could and he was here now, when Flynn was struggling. That had to count for something. Flynn was a good kid at heart, he reminded himself, just going through the typical strains and growing pains of approaching graduation and adulthood.

  He hoped that’s all it was. He’d find out while he was here. His entire focus for the rest of the month would be Flynn.

  If he could work up the nerve to go into the school and collect the fo
rms that would allow him to hang around students and help with extra-curricular events.

  Damned background checks. He’d told Max he would go all-in. Parent driver, chaperone, whatever they needed. Just get the forms from the office, Max had said.

  It had sounded like a five-minute formality, but that had been before the school secretary had publicly disemboweled him.

  Now that formality had become an entry into the Gorgon’s cave. He’d texted Max this morning, asking if he could pick up the forms for him. Max’s response: Hell no. Max had felt bad last night, saying, I shouldn’t have said anything to you about it. I know better. A town like this, you can’t move on if everyone keeps bringing up your shit.

  Chase knew something about that, growing up overhearing neighbors talking about his dad, watching people shake their heads with pity and disgust when they heard he was Gary Goodwin’s boy. Just thinking about it brought back the sick knot in his belly, the one he used to get before a game, knowing some jerk from a neighboring team would trash talk about his father, trying to get a rise out of him. Trying to get him thrown from the game for fighting.

  It’s why he’d been so anxious to leave town. Hell, he liked Montana. He liked the big sky and the clean air. Sitting in the car in the school parking lot, window open, he took a moment to drink in the sweetly familiar scent of a late summer morning in Marietta. The mower was taking down the grass on the field, the sun was baking dust onto the asphalt, the pines were sweating just enough to tinge the breeze with their faint scent. It smelled like a promise.

  Rock music approached with the rumble of an engine. A kid with his mother’s car pulled in and slung a backpack over his shoulder. He gave Chase a double-take and a crooked, slightly puzzled grin. He obviously recognized him and wondered what he was doing sitting in the school parking lot.

  Procrastinating.

  Maybe Skye had called in sick.

  Maybe he could apologize and smooth the whole thing over.

  Maybe he should just do it.

  Leaving the rented SUV, he trailed the kid and entered that unique sound of a school with classes in session, teachers’ voices rising indistinctly above the restlessness of students who resented putting their social lives on hold.

  They’d painted. He’d noticed that last night. Had a few more trophies in the case.

  Quit stalling. He forced his feet to take him to the office.

  Ah hell, there she was, turning away to hang up her phone then swing back around in her chair to her computer screen, face pale, expression stoic, gaze lifting as she realized someone was at the open door.

  Her eyes widened and he heard her thoughts in the persecution that flashed across her face. Are you serious right now?

  *

  If he had come to apologize, she was going to tell him where to shove it.

  This had been the worst day of her life, worse even than when Terry came out. Then, at least, she’d been the wronged party. Today people were asking, What were you thinking? Even Terry had defended stupid Chase Goodwin. He’s not a homophobe, Skye. I, uh, think he always knew I had a bit of a crush on him. He was really decent about it.

  She had not needed to know her ex-husband had shared her crush on the town treasure.

  “I’m not interested in talking to you,” she said to Chase, glancing anxiously toward the open door of the counselor’s office, where Brenda had left to fetch a student, then the firmly closed door of the principal’s office, where he was meeting with the VP and one of the trustees.

  She didn’t know which was worse, having witnesses to this confrontation or not.

  Chase leaned on the counter exactly the way the students did, like they wanted to order ice cream or a beer. “Maybe you can ask someone else to help me, then,” he said without emotion.

  He looked insanely attractive, freshly shaved, lightly tanned, his dark brows stern above his intent green eyes, his mouth a sexy male pout that would make any female swoon.

  “I need the parent volunteer forms so I can drive students and help with school events,” he added.

  Take that, Skye. As if he’d come here special to see you. Like he owed you an apology.

  Her throat stung and she feared she might be blushing. Rising, she turned away to open a drawer in the filing cabinet behind her, willing her composure back into place as she took her time fingering through and tugging out the forms. When she turned back, Chase’s eyes swiftly lifted to clash into hers.

  Had he—?

  Her butt tingled and her stomach swooped. Don’t, she thought. The last thing she needed was to start imagining he’d been checking her out. Hot and hating herself for it, she set the forms on the counter near his elbow.

  “I need a copy of your driver’s license,” she told him.

  He reached into his back pocket, the move drawing her eye to the way his T-shirt strained across his shoulders and pecs. Dear Lord, he was beautifully built. Were men allowed to have lean muscles like that without carrying a license for them as deadly weapons?

  He offered the card in two fingers. Something in the way he did it made her lift her eyes to his. His brows went up ever so slightly.

  He’d noticed her checking him out.

  Kill. Me. Now.

  She snatched the card from his grip and boiled with self-consciousness as she turned her back on him to make the copy. If he was looking at her backside again—but why would he? She didn’t want him to, did she?

  What was she doing with her life that she was going off the rails like this? She was basically a happy person. She didn’t have self-destructive thoughts so why would she long for a spark between her and someone who would devastate her in all the ways Terry hadn’t? It was crazy. Literally not sane or logical.

  She took the photocopy to her desk and slapped it into her In tray, refusing to look at his photo even though she was dying to. She’d finish processing this later, after he’d filled out the forms. Sitting down, she set her fingers on her keyboard, determined to carry on with her day and be normal.

  He continued to stand at the counter, watching her expectantly.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Can I have my driver’s license back?”

  Oh for God’s sake. Blushing hard, she shot to her feet so fast her chair rolled back into the filing cabinet with a crash. Get a grip, Skye. She scooped the card from under the lid of the copier and when she slapped it on the counter, she only dared lift her gaze high enough to see he was biting back a rueful grin.

  “Look, I know my being who I am made this worse—”

  “Oh, no, my life is great,” she snarked, managing to keep her tone a level under shrill. “Isn’t it everyone’s dream these days to be an internet sensation? Give the forms to Max when you’ve filled them out. He can leave them in my tray.” Never come back here again, she willed him.

  Then felt inexplicably sad, but honestly. This fixation needed to be carved out of her psyche and cryogenically frozen for a future generation to deal with.

  “Hey, I didn’t post that clip. And for the record, I was being sarcastic last night. I know you can’t turn people gay.”

  “Sure about that?” she shot back, once again finding herself pushing back for the simple reason that he had the gall to say to her what no one else had. “Wanna put it to the test?”

  “I’d love to.”

  The smoky look in his eyes, the deeply male timbre in his tone, crashed over her like a tropical wave, softening her bones and put a tickling feeling deep in the pit of her belly. A type of yearning.

  One that was beyond misguided. Look who he was. He was mocking her. Had to be. Probably because he wasn’t any happier than she was about the way she’d embarrassed him.

  “That’s not funny,” she told him. “It’s mean.” And then, because the backs of her eyes were sizzling, she went into Brenda’s office and shut the door.

  “Skye!” he called.

  She heard a door open and the principal spoke to him, asking if he was looking for her
. After a brief exchange, everything went silent, but she continued to hide, bunching a tissue that she dabbed to keep her makeup under control, until Brenda came back and needed her office.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  Skye had one more gauntlet to run before she could feel like her horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day was over. She’d already been to the post office, stopped at the bank, and picked up a handful of items at the grocery store. After she got her workout at the gym finished, she would have faced down the bulk of the stares and tasteless jokes.

  Part of her wanted to skip it, but the gym was necessary to her mental health. She’d started going years ago, when Terry had bought his membership. Forever looking for ways to stay connected with her often-reticent husband, she’d started meeting him here. She had run the tread while he pulled weights upstairs. Eventually she’d taken an orientation class and started up here as well. After he left, rather than drink herself into a stupor—which she’d been sorely tempted to do—she’d stepped up her workouts.

  She knew there was a passive aggressive motive buried deep inside the action. Rather than wither and crawl away, she was pushing herself more than ever, sculpting herself into the best shape of her life. She was hot, damn it. If anything, gay men ought to be worrying she would turn them straight.

  Working on her image was an attempt to keep her confidence up with a side benefit of exhausting her. After a hard workout, she could fall asleep without grinding all her problems through her head into the wee hours. Today she really, really needed that.

  First, however, she had to take a ribbing from the regulars. Being the only gym in town, it was as much a community meeting place as church, Grey’s Saloon, or the Fall Fair. The gym already had a poster in the window about Homecoming and Jerry, the owner, asked her if she’d drop off the game schedule the next time she was in. Everyone was talking about what a strong football team they had this year, a real chance at the state championship for the first time since the eighties.