CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Her right thumb was trying to secede from her body. It was a lemming, fighting its way off the cliff of her hand.

Because…the pain.

The slicing, searing pain ripped through her hand in a tornado of hurt. She gritted her teeth, not wanting to cry. Don’t let the opposing team see you weak.

Play had halted. Her teammates skated over where she was curled up in a ball on the rink. Janine wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her up.

“C’mon, girl. Let’s get you some ice,” she said softly, guiding Elle off the rink.

She whimpered as she skated slowly to the carpeted floor. Camille was there, ready with an ice pack. “Here, let me help you.”

With her left hand, Elle waved Janine back to the floor. “Go. Finish. I’m fine,” she said with a wince, as another wave of agony crushed the life out of her hand. Her right hip joined in the pity party, too, aching from where she’d smashed onto the hardwood of the rink, her hand and hip taking the brunt of the fall. Carefully, she sat on a bench at one of the tables.

The whistle blasted and her teammates returned to the track, the music blaring again, and the emcee bleating loudly on the overhead PA system. As the game whirled behind her, her sister pressed the ice pack on her traitorous thumb, wrapping it around to the wrist.

Elle flinched from the cold as the biting chill swept over her hand.

“You’re going to be fine. I bet that smarts like hell though,” Camille said gently.

“Is it broken?” she croaked out.

“In my humble opinion as a self-appointed orthopedic nurse, I’m going to go out on a limb and say nope. But you should get it checked out.”

Alex walked over and slid in next to her. “You okay, Mom?”

Elle lifted her face and smiled faintly at her son. He patted her back gently.

“I’m going to be fine.”

He raised an eyebrow then peered at her hand. “You should get it checked out. Like Aunt Camille said.”

Tough Elle slid back into place, and she shoved off the pain. “I’m okay.”

“No. We need to take you in to get it looked at. Make sure it’s not anything serious,” Alex said, slipping into his role as man of the house. He dipped his hand into the pocket of his cargo shorts. “By the way, your phone went off. I didn’t look, but here it is.”

He placed it on the table, and the text message icon flashed on the screen.

Several times, indicating several messages. Her stomach plummeted when she saw who they were from.

She hurt a thousand times worse as she gingerly unlocked the phone with her left hand and read each one.

* * *

He pictured raging waters sloshing over the front of the kayak as he paddled through a rough spot. He jammed the paddles harder into the water than he needed to, but the current—the tension on the rowing machine—pushed back. He rowed faster, the equipment at the row club screeching loudly, as if it were about to snap. Part of him didn’t care. Part of him cared deeply. Another part of him was pissed, and the only thing that mattered was the battle he was waging with the machine.

And himself.

Maybe he shouldn’t have said those things. Maybe he should have been smarter, kinder, softer.

But at the very least he’d been honest.

That had to count for something, didn’t it?

The machine had no answers. As it simulated a river, the rowing machine simply jerked and pulled, and he fought back, wishing he were on the water for real, far away from land and able to totally disconnect.

But it was eleven o’clock at night, and this was the only way to fight the demons that whispered temptation in his ear. He was mad, he was frustrated, he was ashamed, and beneath it all, he was strangely happy, too.

For Marcus. For the chance the kid took and the chance Colin had to get to know him in a new way. For Shan and Michael as well. He and Ryan had taken Marcus to meet them, and it had gone well. But dammit. Today should have been something positive and good. Something that could represent a fresh start.

But the day turned sour when he’d overreacted. He’d been a total asshole to Elle. Like Kayla when he broke up with her. He cringed at how shitty he’d felt about himself when he saw her messages, and he hated thinking that Elle might feel that way now.

He wished he could erase those messages. Wished he could do the day over again. Pick up the phone. Call her. Or better yet, just show up at the rink and talk to her. Instead, he’d given her a taste of her own medicine.

But with far too much dosage.

Now, all he wanted was to spend the night with his onetime loves.

Patrón and pills.

Instead, he rowed. He paddled. He gripped. The sound of the gears slammed in his ears over and over. Soon, soon, it would drown out his horrible longing. It had to.

Oh God, please, it has to.

* * *

Her mother dangled the white pill in front of her, waving it back and forth like it was a dinosaur vitamin for a three-year-old. “Just take one.”

Elle batted it away.

“It’ll taste so good,” her mom said, in a singsong voice.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to make a bigger deal of her crash. “I don’t want it.”

Her mom shot her a glare as Elle settled into the couch. “You have a dislocated thumb, and you’re in so much pain your sister said you were squealing. Now stop being such a pigheaded lady, miss.”

“I was not squealing,” Elle insisted. “And please. It’s a dislocated thumb. Thumb,” she said, emphasizing the extreme mildness of her injury. The urgent care doctor had diagnosed her with a simple dislocation. Then he’d clasped Elle’s hand in both of his and manipulated the thumb back in place.

Sounded easy. Hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

Fine. Maybe she had squealed then. Possibly she’d shed the tears she hadn’t let slide down her cheeks at the rink. Perhaps they’d even served double duty—tears of pain and tears of sadness from Colin’s barrage of notes.

She’d deserved them.

Still, they’d hurt.

The doctor had placed a metal splint on her thumb and told her she’d be fine in a day or so. “These type of injuries hurt like the Dickens when they happen and for the next twenty-four hours, but then it’s pretty much over and done. But just in case, I want you to have some of these,” he’d said as he wrote out a prescription for pain meds.

Camille had filled them at the pharmacy as she took Elle and Alex home, and her mom had arrived as soon as her shift had ended. Now Elle reached for the light blanket on the back of the couch and pulled it over her legs, then shifted to her side and yelped.

“What is it?” her mom asked, her eyes wide, worry written in them.

“My hip. It’s not dislocated, though. It just hurts since I landed on it, too.” She rubbed the spot where she’d fallen. Using her right hand. Which made her thumb throb. That pain radiated through her hand, up her forearm, and straight to her damn shoulder. She winced. “Guess I shouldn’t use this stupid thumb to rub my stupid hip.”

“Sweetie, just take one. You’ll feel better.”

“I don’t want to,” she said. She needed to stay strong. She couldn’t let a simple dislocation rattle her.

“Mom.” She turned her focus to the hallway door. Alex had popped out of his bedroom. “Take the pill. You’ll feel better. You were crying all evening.”

“I was not,” she said with a huff.

Her mom heaved a sigh then shrugged and addressed her next words to Alex. “Nothing we can do about this stubborn lady.”

“People. You act like I fell off a cliff. This is nothing. I’ll be back in business tomorrow.”

“But you’re out of roller derby the rest of the season,” Alex said, pointing out those doctor’s orders, too. No contact sports for two weeks. Nothing that could lead to re-injury. The season was over in fourteen days.

“Ugh. Thanks for reminding me. Maybe I should take one now. To numb the pain of missing my games,” she said, cracking a small smile.

“Now you’re talking,” her mom said and held out the glass of water.

“But just half of one, please. I don’t want to be all dopey.”

Her mom nodded and broke the pill in half, dropping one part back in the bottle and handing the remainder to Elle, who swallowed the pill. She only had ten in the prescription, and she’d probably just take this one. She didn’t need to spend a sleepless night tossing and turning from the lingering pain.

“Hey. Speaking of missing games, what happened to Colin? I thought he was going to come today, and we were going to hang out,” Alex said, as he sat cross-legged on the floor. Her chest tightened, and she met his eyes. This was hardly the letdown of a lifetime, or even a big letdown in the scheme of things.

Still, she hated that Colin had cancelled the first get-together with her son.

“He couldn’t make it. Something came up,” she said, both lying and telling the truth.

“Well, that sucks,” Alex said, annoyance in his voice. “I was kind of looking forward to all of us hanging out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Mom. It’s his. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, you should show up.”

“I know, sweetie. But something came up for him, and he had to deal with it.”

Alex scoffed. “If you say so.”

Elle had to wonder if she sounded the way she had when she’d defended Sam and his unreliable ways, back in the early days.

“She does say so,” Elle’s mom chimed in, intervening as she shooed Alex back to his bedroom.

All alone on the couch, Elle reached for her phone, and reread the messages.

Each one made her cringe. Because they were all true.

Colin: I’m so sorry. I have to cancel today. Something came up.

Colin: Wait. That’s not what I meant. Let me try again. Because I want to be completely honest, like we discussed.

Colin: Here goes.

Colin: I have to cancel today. Why, you ask? I just met my new brother!

Colin: Crazy, huh? Who would have thought I had another bro?

Colin: Oh, wait. Silly me. YOU would have thought that because you knew.

Colin: I have to cancel today. WTF, Elle?

Colin: I have to cancel today, because you’ve known for weeks. AND YOU DIDN’T SAY A WORD.

Colin: I have to cancel today because I know I should understand that you had no choice, but I don’t know how to do that.

Colin: Mostly, I have to cancel because… I don’t know how I feel about any of this.

Colin: Or you.

She took a deep breath, sucking it in, letting her chest rise and fall on that last one. It was a jagged little knife, chopping at pieces of her heart.

Those two lines weren’t cruel. They weren’t mean. They weren’t underhanded digs. That was what made her heart ache even more. He’d spoken the bare truth, and she’d known this could happen—that his feelings for her might alter when he learned she’d kept Marcus’s secret.

Still, it hurt so much that this choice meant the end of the sweetest thing she’d had in ages. She’d been falling so hard for him.

Maybe she should take the other half of the pill, to lessen the pain. She reached for the bottle, but it was so far away on the table. She barely had the energy to fumble for it now.

Soon, her eyes started to flutter closed, and the aching in her thumb subsided. The pain padded away, slinking out of the room on quiet cat paws, leaving her with only this whitewashing, this smooth, easy feeling in her body.

But before she slipped into slumber, she tapped out a short response with her left hand.

E: I’m so sorry. There was nothing I could do.

She hit send then decided she wanted to fall asleep on a happier note so she skipped over to the Facebook page for the Fishnet Brigade to see if her roller derby friends had posted any photos from the game. She smiled at an image one of the blockers had shared of the team before the match, then of Elle sending Janine around the curve during the game. She posted a smiley face in the comments then ran her finger over the picture as she yawned, the pills working their magic on her brain as well as her hands.

She clicked back to the page to search for more when a notification appeared. Someone had replied to her comment, but it was from a weird name she didn’t recognize, and the words made an eerie warning.

Be careful who you get involved with.

“What?” she mumbled, but she was already floating on a cloud of comfortably numb, and the mystery slipped away with her cares.