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.”
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.