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.
She nodded once, businesslike. “Well, I’ve decided that we’re done. You obviously got what you wanted. You have your funding.” She looked over to her dad. “And I went to Dartmouth. And now I’m done being controlled by both of you.”
She slid into her car, her head held high, the perfect example of class and elegance, but the way she gunned it out of my driveway told me that under that cold exterior, my Rachel lurked.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” her dad said to me.
I clenched both my fists and reminded myself that I couldn’t afford an assault charge at the moment. “Me? Look what you did to her!”
“Rachel will bounce back, and she’ll be safe. Away from you and your reckless, girl-destroying ways. You don’t think I know your reputation, Casanova? You picked the wrong daughter to go after. I’ve spent my entire career around selfish assholes like you, and she’s entirely too good for you.”
“You’re right. She is, but I love her. If you don’t believe me, then that’s not my problem, it’s yours. I will get through to her. I will get her back. I might not be the best man for her, but there’s no one in this world who loves her like I do.”
“It will be interesting to see you try. But you need to realize that there’s nothing I won’t do to protect my daughter. You go near her, and I’ll withdraw your sponsorships. And maybe you can do without mine, but what about when the other sponsorships fall? All it takes is a simple phone call and a hint at scandal. Are you telling me there’s not one skeleton, one girl, that would come out of your closet?”
I stared at him in stunned silence. Gremlin was our biggest sponsor, but not our only one. If they pulled out, the others would question it, and us.
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “You’re not good enough for her. You never were. Just let her go. She’ll learn to be happy, and she deserves it. There will never be a day on your circuit where she’d not be confronted with some woman you’ve slept with, some mistake you made. Give her a chance to find a future with someone who didn’t ruin his with his past. Let her go, and I’ll make sure your sponsorships remain intact.”
Without another word, he turned and got into his car, taking the driveway out.
Ten minutes ago, I’d held her in my arms. She’d trusted me to hold her together when the rest of her world came apart. Ten minutes ago, my lips had brushed her forehead, and she’d clung to me, knowing that I would keep her safe.
Ten minutes ago, she’d loved me.
Just like the mudslide, the avalanche, the moments she’d broken down crying in Fiji, it happened so fast and altered everything.
Ten. Fucking. Minutes.
…
“Where is he?” I shouted as I walked in the front door of Paxton’s house in Aspen the next day. It had taken me all evening to explain to my parents why I was leaving, and when they wouldn’t stop arguing about how to stop me, I finally decided not to give a fuck and packed a bag.
“Who?” Alex asked, coming out of the kitchen, his mouth full of pizza.
“Wilder,” I snapped.
Alex’s eyes widened, and he pointed toward the rec room. I took the steps at a near run, finding the rec room inhabited by at least six of the Renegades. Pax put up his pool cue and turned to me with a giant smile.
The rage I’d kept carefully bottled exploded.
“Landon! To what do we owe this—”
I swung my fist and laid my best friend out on the ground.
Paxton rotated his jaw and looked up at me like I’d lost my mind.
Three of the guys rushed me, but Little John put up his hand and they all backed down, putting us in the center of a makeshift ring. Not that I cared. I was pissed off enough to kick all of their asses.
How could he do it? Hell, he’d gotten her there in the first place.
“What the fuck was that about?” Pax asked, getting to his feet.
“Did you know?” I asked. God help him if he did.
“You’re going to have to be a little bit clearer than that.”
“When you sat next to me on that airplane, telling me to come clean to her, to get everything in the open, did you know that the only way for me to secure our sponsors would be to give her up? Did you?”
“Landon, I have no clue what you’re asking me.”
“When you orchestrated everything, from getting her on board to doing everything you could to get us back together, did you do it for leverage?”
Pax put up his hands. “No. I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Rachel’s dad, Paxton. He’s pulling the strings at Gremlin, and not only did he out what happened two years ago, he’s going to cut all of our funding if I don’t walk away from her again. Why the fuck would you go back to Gremlin for sponsorship knowing he was there?”
Pax shook his head. “I didn’t.”
“What?” I barked.
“I did,” a voice called from the other side of the pool table. Nick wheeled around the table in his chair until he was right in front of me. “You’re not going to hit a guy in a wheelchair, are you?” he tried to joke.
“Don’t tempt me. I love you like a brother, but what the hell?”
“Pax put me in charge of the X Games shit while you guys are tooling around the globe,” he explained. “Gremlin was the natural choice—they’ve been our biggest sponsor. I had no clue you were back with Rachel. None. You never told me, even when you called to start arranging the Nepal shit. I get that you like to keep your personal life personal, but in this case, you bit yourself in the ass. In fact, when I checked in for info on how that was going, I was assured that you two didn’t have a chance in hell and weren’t even speaking.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Oops,” Zoe said, hopping down off the bar.
Every Renegade turned to look at her. “What the fuck do you mean, oops?” I snapped.
She shrugged. “You weren’t speaking at that time. Besides, Gremlin has sponsored us every year since you left Rachel. How was I supposed to know you’d actually get back together with her? By the time you two were…whatever it is that you are, I wasn’t about to call up Nick and let a piece of ass ruin our sponsorships. Team first, right?”
I ignored her, because if I didn’t she was going to find her ass out in the cold.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pax asked Nick.
“We were still in negotiations. I didn’t want to fuck up and count my chickens before they hatched. I’m so sorry, man.”
“Clear the room,” Pax ordered before turning to Nick and me. “You two stay.”
“But—” Zoe protested.
“Get the hell out, Zoe.”
She left with the others, but not without throwing a serious pout.
“What are we going to do about her?” I asked Pax.
“We? We’re not doing anything. You can figure out how to deal with Zoe, since we still have another five months on the Athena once we get back.”
“Are you shitting me?”
Pax shook his head. “Nope. She didn’t set out to sink the team, she pulled the move of a jealous ex-girlfriend. If she’s a monster, then she’s one that you created because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants the last two years. Zoe isn’t our problem: Gremlin is.”
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.”
