For fuck’s sake, my head hurt. I tried to compartmentalize and put Zoe way in the back of my priorities. “Fine. What are we going to do?”
Nick ran his hand over his short, buzzed hair. “I can make some calls, but if you pissed off Mr. Dawson, I don’t know. He’ll do the same thing he did a couple years ago and block us.”
My head spun. How the fuck was I going to get us out of this? Sure, my parents had money, but they’d never agreed with this lifestyle, and the minute I went pro, they stopped supporting me. All of my income now came from prizes at competitions and sponsorships. I couldn’t even touch my trust fund until I graduated college.
“Yeah, well, we’re not the newbie kids we were a couple years ago,” Pax argued. “Our name has some pull.”
“It does, but you haven’t been at a single competition this year. When it was time for your sponsors to re-up, you weren’t looking too pretty,” Nick replied. “I don’t want to ask, but I have to. Is Gremlin an op—”
“Fuck, no,” I spat. “I’m sorry, guys. I’ll quit the Renegades before I bow down to her father. I’m not walking that same path twice. She means too much to me for that shit.”
Paxton squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ve got your back. We’ll figure it out. I have no fucking clue how, but we’ll think of something.”
“We’ll think of something,” I repeated.
Paxton rubbed his forehead. “I miss Penna. We need to see what she thinks before we make any decisions.”
“She answering her phone?”
Paxton shook his head. “She’s been off the radar since yesterday. I figured she needed some space to get her shit straight. She’s been a mess since—” Pax cut himself off.
“Since my ex tried to kill you? Yeah. I know,” Nick bit out.
“So, I have almost no chance of getting Rachel to speak to me, we’ve almost certainly lost all of our sponsors for the year, and our fourth Original is in hiding from us,” I said.
“We’re fucking rocking it.” Paxton groaned. “What are we going to do?”
Maybe it was only eleven thousand feet—nowhere near twenty-one, but I needed all the practice I could get before leaving for Nepal in a few weeks. More importantly, I needed something, anything, to distract me from the way my heart was breaking, even if it was just for a few hours.
I took a deep breath. “Same thing we always do when life sucks. Strap up and ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rachel
Tahoe
“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked Penna as we sat in front of her giant fireplace in her giant house with my giant broken heart. It had been two days since I walked out on Landon. The first night I’d spent at Leah’s—the most logical place to go, but I knew if I stayed with her, Paxton would find out and tell Landon.
So we came up to the one place the other Renegades would never look for me—Penna’s lake house in Tahoe.
“Not as long as you pass me one of those,” she said, motioning to the bag of marshmallows in my pajama-clad lap. Best part of no boys? No makeup, hair up in knots, pajamas and slippers all around.
Leah passed the bag to her, taking one for herself, and we all roasted our fluffy white treats over the fire. It toasted, turning brown the longer I held it over the flames. Its once soft exterior hardened, forming a protective shell around what was becoming an overly tender center.
I dipped it lower with my skewer until the flames caught, catching the marshmallow on fire, then brought it out to watch the flames consume it. That was what happened when you got too close to the fire. It didn’t matter that you’d already hardened—if you touched the flames, you got burned.
“Rachel?” Leah prompted.
I quickly blew out the marshmallow the way I wished someone could do for me—I still felt like my heart was on fucking fire. I spun my skewer, looking at the marshmallow from every angle. Sure, the flames were gone, but all that was left was a charred mess. The weight became too much for the blackened mess, and it slid down the skewer toward my hand, leaving its gooey insides a sloppy mess along the metal rod.
I wondered when I’d get to that stage—when I’d no longer be able to keep my emotions safely locked away.
“So, are you going to eat that, or…?” Penna asked.
I glanced over and saw both of them staring at me with faces like they expected a psychotic break at any moment.
“Nope,” I said, wiping the marshmallow off with a paper towel. “It’s ruined.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Leah asked softly. “You’ve been a locked box since you showed up at my door two days ago.”
“Nope,” I answered, reaching for another marshmallow.
“Oh, no, we’re not going to help you torture harmless tasty treats,” Leah said, snatching the bag away. “It’s comfort food only.”
I sighed and stretched my legs out to the side, close enough to the fire to feel the intense heat, but not close enough to burn myself.
That’s what I should have done with Landon. Kept him just far enough away to keep the singe off me.
“Are you sure?” Penna asked, licking her fingers clean. “I’m a really good listener.”
“I’m good,” I promised.
“And I’ll never tell them—the boys,” she added.
“Seriously, I’m fine,” I lied. “I don’t need to talk about it. I just want to forget it all happened.”
“The stuff with your dad? Or Landon?” Leah asked, knowing the barest basics of why I’d run.
“I don’t want to talk about them,” I reiterated.
“Okay,” she said slowly.
I didn’t even want to think about it. That just stirred up the feelings—the ones that felt like they were choking me in their need to be expressed, while my brain was shoving them back inside to stay sane. Sanity was good. It was safe.
“I mean, what good is talking about it going to do?” I asked, staring into the fire. “It’s not going to take us back two years. It’s not going to stop Landon from taking money from my dad to walk away from me. It’s not going to change the fact that no matter what I do, I will never compare to the Renegades. I’ll never be enough to be his number-one priority. Talking about it won’t change the way it feels—like my soul is being shredded by a cheese grater.”
“So you don’t want to talk?” Penna asked.
“No!” I snapped, feeling the tightly reined tethers of my control slipping. “He took money for me! And what’s worse—my father paid him. Is this the Middle Ages? Am I worth more than a cow and two pigs?”
“Technically, those went to the husband for taking you—” Penna said.
“He threw me away—us away—so that he could have his sponsorship, his dream. But he was my dream. He was all I wanted, and I’d given up everything for him. And Dad watched me cry. He held me together and helped me pack up what I’d unboxed in the apartment. He helped me take care of breaking the lease and getting into Dartmouth. He saw how heartbroken I was and said nothing. Nothing! Just assumed he knew what was best for me and then manipulated Landon out of my life.”