“Dad, Landon and I talked about what happened, and if I can forgive him, then I need you to try.” I got it, he was on overprotective mode, especially with what was going on with him and Mom, but he couldn’t take out his insecurities on Landon.
“So he told you why he left?” Dad challenged, his blue eyes going hard.
“Please don’t,” Landon pleaded quietly. “For both our sakes.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The difference between us, Nova, is that I’m firmly ready for my daughter to hate me, if it’s what keeps her out of harm’s way and away from you. Can you say the same?”
My grip tightened on the envelope. “Dad?”
“What did he tell you, sweetheart?”
I didn’t look at Landon. I wasn’t sure I could. “That he had to rejoin the team or they couldn’t put on the competition. It was an all-or-nothing deal.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“Rachel,” Landon whispered.
“Because he left.”
“You’re just going to hurt her more,” Landon said, his voice breaking.
Dad looked over my head at him. “I’d rather hurt her now than her think she can spend her life with someone who can be bought from her side.”
“Bought?” I asked, finally looking up at Landon.
There was so much pain in his eyes, and my first thought was to take it away. How ridiculous was that? “How were you bought?”
He reached for me, but I stepped backward.
“Gremlin pulled the sponsorship of the event, but it wasn’t because I’d left. It was because I was with you.”
I spun and then backed away from them both, moving toward my car. Pieces clicked in my head, the puzzle anything but pretty. “You pulled their funding,” I said to Dad.
He nodded. “I did.”
“And you dumped me to get it back?” I asked Landon, hoping there was another answer, any other way this had gone down.
“Yes.”
“That and more,” Dad added. “Gremlin signed the Renegades for thirty months as a team once Landon returned. With a sizable advance to get them going.”
“You’ve been his paycheck.”
“Yes, and his is a great deal bigger than the others’. That was the deal when he gave you up.”
My heart shattered, the pieces sharp enough to cut through my soul. I shook my head and backed up, but Landon followed. How stupid could I be? I knew Gremlin sponsored their events—I should have logically realized they’d sponsor the individual athletes as well. Or maybe I’d just assumed that Dad hated Landon so much he wouldn’t do business with him. But he’d paid Landon even more to dump me, and Landon had taken it.
How could I have been so wrong about Dad? About them both?
“You have to let me explain. My parents were pissed about what had happened between me and Pax. They didn’t support my career choice, and you were that final straw. They cut off my money.”
My head snapped up. “Money. Are you fucking kidding me? Leaving me for friendship, I forgave. Pax and Penna are basically family to you, and even though you destroyed me, there was still this honor about your choice. But money? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
Panic was etched across his features. “I didn’t have a job. Without the competition, I couldn’t even afford to rent that apartment with you. What the hell kind of life did that leave us?”
“One that we made together! You could have come to me. We could have figured it out together.”
“With everything you’d already given up for me? Your dad showed up and told me that if I walked away from you, he’d have Gremlin restore the funding and sponsor us individually. The competition would go on, and he’d pull every string he had to get you back into Dartmouth, even though you’d just turned them down for me. All I had to do was walk away from you and you’d have the life you were meant to have without me fucking it up for you.”
“You took money for me?” I shouted, uncaring about the rest. “I didn’t care about Dartmouth! I would have lived anywhere with you. I would have left L.A. I didn’t need the money, the fame, the sport—you did. How much was our love worth to you, Landon? Six figures? Seven?”
“It wasn’t like that. Yeah, it was more than the other Renegades, but I’d gotten us in way over our heads, and it was the only way to put it all back to the way it was—to fix the mistakes we’d made.”
“I’m not a goddamned mistake!” I screamed. Jesus, didn’t anyone want me for what I was? Just me. Only me.
“No, you’re the best choice I’ve ever made,” Landon swore fervently. “But I wasn’t your best choice.”
“Don’t believe him, Rachel,” Dad added.
My head snapped toward him. “Oh, no. I’m done listening to you. You bought me—” A self-deprecating laugh took hold, racking my shoulders. “Twice, I guess.”
“If you want to accuse someone of that, look at your boyfriend,” Dad snapped.
For fuck’s sake, I had whiplash.
“What are you talking about?” Landon asked.
“Oh, come on. You didn’t think I’d realize what you’d done? Wormed your way back in with my daughter while we’ve been in negotiations for our sponsorship of the Renegades for the X Games? Now that your thirty months are ending? How much is it going to cost me this time, Nova?”
“What?” Landon balked.
I laughed. “Of course.” I shrugged. “Of course this is what happens.” I looked at Dad. “You needed me to fix your marriage, and apparently I didn’t do that well enough.” Then I turned to Landon. “You needed me to secure your funding. When were you going to dump me, Landon? Tonight? Closer to the X Games? I’m so damned stupid.”
At that moment, I had the strangest longing for my broken wrist—for the pain that had semidistracted me from this heartbreak the first time. But this was a hundred times worse. This time I didn’t only feel like I’d been rejected, I felt like an utter fool who’d been played.
And everyone knew Nova was the ultimate player.
“Rachel—”
“Sweetheart—”
I threw out my hand and warded them both off.
“Fuck you both.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Landon
Los Angeles
My chest lost the ability to process oxygen, no matter how badly my brain willed it to breathe.
She looked at me from the other side of her car, and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to jump the hood of the car and force her to stay—force her to listen.
“Rachel, please,” I begged.
Everything that had softened about her hardened, from her posture to the now stone-cold set of her brown eyes. Fire, I could fight. Fire, I could arouse, ensnare, draw her out and fight back.
But apathy? I had no chance.
“You told me that we would always be what we decided. That our relationship wasn’t in anyone else’s hands.”
“I remember.” Memories of Fiji hit me, holding her, loving her, finally letting myself believe that we could be together what we’d never managed to be apart: happy. But the woman before me had changed. In seconds she had rebuilt her walls that had taken me months to break down, and once again it was me who’d sliced her to the quick.