CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Big dots of primary-colored light swirled in a speed race across the slick hardwood floors, as the music of the B-52s pulsed throughout the rink.

“All right, my crazy skaters, I want to see how excited you get when you go to the looooooooove shack.” The directive came from Elle’s sister Camille. Mic at her mouth, she worked up the crowds at the Skyway Roller Rink, where she was the manager.

A flurry of teens, sprinkled with a few moms and the regular crew of older skaters who still rocked out on the quads nearly every night, motored around the oval, picking up the pace to the popular skating tune. The song was an appropriate number for the conversation Elle needed to have with her little sister, considering Elle and Colin were having a “Love Shack” kind of relationship.

The getaway kind. The sneak-off-and-get together kind.

Or was it more accurate to say they’d had that kind?

That was why she was here: to figure out if she needed to cut things off with him. But she flinched from the mere thought of ending the sweetest thing she’d had in ages—their secret, sexy, wonderful affair.

“That’s right!” Camille shouted. “Skate like there’s glitter on the highway!”

Camille held up a finger and mouthed one more minute. As Elle waited for the upbeat song to end, she dropped her head to her hand, Marcus’s confession echoing in her mind. There was no way she could tell Colin about his brother. That would be wrong. It wasn’t her place. But she felt awful knowing this news was barreling toward him and that any day he’d learn he had a long-lost brother.

There was something so very soapy about it, as if she could be reading the crib notes to a storyline on As the World Turns.

The character of the mother becomes pregnant before the murder of her husband. The mother hides her pregnancy during what turns out to be a speedy trial. She goes to jail six months pregnant. No one in her family knows about the baby in her belly. The only one the wiser—besides the medical staff at the correctional facility—is her lover on the outside. The lover whose hands were clean of the crime.

Elle shuddered as her sister encouraged the crowd to “bang, bang, bang on the door.”

Then the half-brother is born in prison and handed over to his father, who moves far, far away from Vegas with his baby son. He’s not required to tell a soul. There are no prison rules, nor federal ones, requiring a parent to disclose to half-siblings that they have a new little brother.

The father meets a new woman in San Diego, falls in love with her, fathers more children, and returns to Vegas a few years ago with his oddly blended family.

Elle had started to replay the rest of the story when the song ended and Camille introduced an MC Hammer tune then set down her mic. She nodded to the little gate at the edge of her DJ booth. Elle rose and followed Camille to the skate racks as she began straightening pairs of rental skates. Elle joined in, knowing the routine well from having helped out here before.

“So what’s the story? Time to spill,” Camille said in her no-nonsense tone as she tucked some laces into a pair of skates.

“The problem is, I can’t even tell you what the problem is,” Elle said, frustration thick in her voice as she adjusted the wheels on another pair.

Camille arched an eyebrow and stared at Elle with her deep brown eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“Well, unswear yourself, girl, so I can help out,” Camille said, nudging Elle with an elbow. “Or do I need to tickle it out of you, like when we were kids?”

Elle stepped away and held up her hands in surrender. “Not the tickle! Anything but the tickle.”

“Fine. I won’t torture you like that. But tell me what’s on your mind. I have ten minutes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice queued up before I need to get back there, and I want to help you,” she said as she worked her way down a row. Camille’s dark hair was twisted into a looped-over ponytail, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt. She’d been managing this rink since after college. Both sisters had been avid skaters growing up, and Camille loved music and happy places, as she liked to say, so the job fit her perfectly. She’d been the one to encourage Elle to try out for the Fishnet Brigade a few years ago. Perfect therapy to deal with your crazy-ass baby daddy, she’d said. Camille had never been fond of Sam, and with good reason.

Elle sighed and tried to figure out how to begin to ask for the advice she couldn’t even truly ask for. “So there’s this guy…”

“Ah, the plot thickens.”

“And I like him.”

“Oooh. It’s even thicker.”

“But it’s not serious.”

“Because of you or him?”

Elle stopped unknotting a gnarled lace to consider the question. Did Colin want to be serious with her? From time to time, he’d seemed to. But he never pushed her. He understood her boundaries. “Both of us are fine with the way it is,” she answered before she had time to delve any deeper into why she’d been experiencing more moments when she wanted to shed the boundaries and erase the lines between them. To dive in full speed ahead, damn the consequences. “But the thing is, I learned something about him and his family that he doesn’t know.”

“Oh, now the plot is molasses thick,” Camille said, her eyes glittery with excitement from the prospect of a juicy tale.

“And I can’t divulge what I know because of confidentiality guidelines as a social worker, and it’s kind of a big thing, so I just have to wait and see if this other person will divulge it to him. And ugh, Camille, I just feel like a mess in here,” she said, grabbing her belly. “I’m all twisted and turned, and I feel like I’m lying to him, but I’m not. I just can’t tell him. It’s not my secret to tell.”

Camille’s expression turned serious and she stepped away from the row of skates. She parked her hands on Elle’s shoulders. “You can’t solve every problem. If this is something you can’t do anything about, you need to try not to let it eat away at you. You worry too much, and you take on the weight of everything. And I get it. You’ve had some tough shit to deal with yourself.”

“But do I keep seeing him while knowing this secret and not being able to say it?”

“Do you want to see him?”

Elle nodded. Easiest question of the night.

“If your hands are tied, your hands are tied. You can’t untie them, just like you couldn’t make Sam a better dad,” she said, reminding Elle of how hard she’d tried to fix the things beyond fixing. “Lord knows, if you’re having a nice time with this new guy, you deserve it. Let go of the things you can’t control.” Camille snapped her fingers. “That reminds me of a song. Lace up!”

Elle grabbed a pair of skates, tied them quickly, and rolled over to the rink, eagerly anticipating her sister’s musical choice for her life.

Camille returned to her perch at the mic. “Boys and girls, men and women of all ages. I need to take a break from Vanilla Ice because every now and then we must heed the advice of the one and only Ice Queen, Elsa.”

Elle cracked up over her sister’s choice. Only Camille could find inspiration in the insanely popular Disney song that blared through the rink. Maybe the verses of “Let It Go” weren’t entirely on point where Elle’s problem was concerned, but the chorus and the final few lines gave her something else she needed.

A reminder that this battle wasn’t hers to pick and choose. It wasn’t hers to fight or not fight. All she could do was stand on the sidelines.

Let the storm rage on.

Whatever was brewing in Colin’s life wasn’t Elle’s storm. It would rage on of its own power, whether or not she saw the man again.

* * *

Later that night, Alex grabbed an extra composition notebook from the school supplies aisle at Target and showed it to Elle. “For planning.”

“Always good to plan for school.”

He shook his head. “Nope. This one is for State of Decay. I came up with a new strategy today, and I want to write it down and test it out, step by step.”

She shook her head, bemused. “Look, sweetie. I’m glad you like the game, but your freshman year of high school starts in about a week, and you do need to start focusing on schoolwork. Maybe we should get you a history review book, and you can work on how World War I began instead of your zombie attack plan.”

“Don’t worry. It was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and I’ll still bring home straight As,” he said, flashing her a toothy smile. He wasn’t exactly a straight-A student, but he earned enough of them that she didn’t stress much about his grades.

She snagged the notebook from him and dangled it like an offering. “Tell you what, mister. I won’t worry about your strategy plans, if you agree to review history facts like that one every day for the next week—before you spend any time on your new project.”

He held out his hand to shake. “Deal.”

She dropped the notebook into the cart. “And now, we are off to find a history review book.”

He shot her a look like she was crazy.

“What? You just said you’d study up on history facts?”

“I will. But seriously, Mom. A book? Maybe an app with history quizzes or something instead?”

She held up a hand, but gave in. “Fine. But track it down by tomorrow, and show it to me.”

He pumped a fist in victory. “Awesome. And listen, I came up with a whole new approach to State of Decay,” he said, his voice rising in excitement as she rolled the cart to the highlighters. “That guy at the center, Colin, told me to.”

She stopped immediately and tilted her head. “He did?” she asked, unsure what to make of Colin’s chat with her son. True, the two had talked before. But still, she was damn curious what they had chatted about.

“He said you just devise a strategy and follow it,” he said, sweeping one hand across the other and pointing forward, like a general launching into battle. “But don’t be afraid to change if it’s not working.”

As he dropped a yellow highlighter onto their pile of supplies, she had her answer. Funny that it came from Colin through her son.

Time for her to change her approach.