Epilogue
Parker
Sitting in an old barn in the middle of January was not my favorite thing in the world. Especially when the weather had barely hit above freezing for the past week. At least the barn had heat, which made it easier to handle.
As I sat alone in the stands, watching the two very distinct groups of skaters round the track, I couldn’t help but think maybe it wasn’t so bad. I got to watch a bunch of superhot people race around a track and beat the shit out of each other. It could definitely be worse.
I could be Taylor, who would be spending the rest of her life in prison for attempting to murder my son. Watching her try to plead out based on insanity had been the highlight of my year, honestly. The judge denied her request outright, and even her lawyer had to know it wouldn’t work. She’d confessed in a room full of law enforcement—the chief of police, the sheriff, and the district attorney, who I’d later found out had been at Birch Police Department too. Her trial lasted all of two days, and the jury only spent ten minutes in deliberation before coming back with a guilty verdict.
Giant heaters that looked like they could fit on the back of a jet engine pumped heat in each of the four corners of the barn. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a blur fly by and turned in time to check out Remy’s ass as the group skated around again.
Decked out in a tight-fitting pair of compression shorts and a tank top that showed off his tattoos, Remy wore a black helmet, fingerless gloves, and matching elbow and knee pads, with a pair of black roller skates, much like the other players. Actual roller skates and not roller blades. I wasn’t watching for his outfit; I watched for the women that were currently kicking the men’s asses.
I only knew the women held the lead because they were laughing and cheering between rounds. Remy, Linc, and Dom, on the other hand, shouted their frustration as they skated around the track. Cain, the friend I’d been introduced to as we arrived, played alongside the guys, guiding the women on what to do, how to change their form, and how to win. Honestly, I loved that he was instructing the women on how to win.
Apparently, Remy and Linc played during their enlistment in the military and after with Dom and Cain, but I never knew about it.
I snuck my phone out of my pocket and took a video right when one girl knocked into Linc and sent him sprawling, earning cheers from the women and groans from the men.
“Fucking brutal,” I muttered to myself as I sent the video to Kennedy.
Before and during Taylor’s trial, Kennedy practically moved in with us at Remy’s house. Nox had nightmares of being alone in a dark place, and either crawled into bed with me and Remy, or he crawled into Kennedy’s bed. Having her there was a blessing, but once she left, Nox missed the hell out of her. We all did, even if Remy didn’t admit it.
So, Nox had been absolutely thrilled when Auntie Kenny volunteered to keep him for the weekend, and sending her the video of Linc getting his ass kicked was my way of giving her something special as thanks. Maybe it would even be enough to get Kennedy to admit that she still wanted him. Especially since they’d been going back and forth for months now, refusing to talk about it with anyone or each other, and it had started to drive me absolutely batty.
“Well, hell, honey, did they just leave you sitting out here all by yourself on this hard concrete with no one to keep you company?” Forcing my eyes away from the people on the track was difficult, until I saw the absolute eighties bombshell standing there. Straight out of a magazine where a seventies soul rocker meets a punk rock goddess, an older woman with bleach-blond hair stood there with a smile on her face that hit me broadside, and an arched eyebrow demanding I answer her.
“Yeah, actually,” I told her. “They did. Remy, the guy with the tattoos and the ‘I’ll kill you’ look on his face told me that Cain needed someone to practice with the women he’s training for a derby exhibition.”
“Alright, we’re just gonna fix that right now.” The blonde held out her hand after dropping a purse the size of Texas off her shoulder. “I’m Patti. I own the bar in town, Banked Track.” When she moved, I saw the frizzy hair that reached the top of her shoulder sway, and I decided I needed to be her when I got older. She gave zero fucks and looked hard-core. Between the fitted jeans that hugged her legs, to the Pat Benatar t-shirt that was tucked into the front, all the way down to her Doc Martens, Patti definitely looked like someone who could chew a man up and spit him out without breaking a sweat.
“I wanna be you when I grow up,” I told her bluntly once she took her seat. “You’re just … a fucking badass.”
She laughed and then nodded to the people skating. “This is banked track derby. It’s rare on the East Coast. Skating the bank, honey. There’s nothing like flying around that track.”
Patti stared out at the people moving around the track, the banked track, and I didn’t think for a minute that she was talking about watching the guys play. She had a wistful gleam in her eyes as we watched the women move in a tight formation, working as a team. Clearly, she had a close connection to derby.
“I don’t know anything about this game.”
“We can fix that, too. Sport, honey. Derby is a sport. It's rougher, cruder, and so damn hard that you predominantly only see women doing it. Not to say men don't do hard sports. They do, but for big-ass paychecks. We pay good money to kick ass on the track.”
“It’s beyond savage,” I told her. “I love it.”
“You see that girl with the tattoos everywhere and the pink star on her helmet?”
All of the women were wearing matching hot-pink tank tops with black spandex on their legs. But I finally found the helmet with the star, catching the fierce expression on her face as she stared at Cain like she wanted his blood. Or his dick. One of the two.
“Yeah, I see her.”
“That’s Maisy Mayhem. She’s one of their jammers. The best if you ask me. It’s her job to break through the pack. If she gets through before their jammer, she’s the lead jammer and the only one who can score. But she only gets to score when she skates around the track and breaks through each and every one of them again.” Patti pointed to where Maisy was currently skating around the track with no one in front of her or directly behind her. “She’s going to come around that last corner right there and try to break through again. Every opponent she gets past is one point for her team.”
We watched, and I found myself completely transfixed on the scene in front of us. Maisy sailed by. I would never, in my entire life, move as fast or as intensely as she was while she sped around the track.
“Each jam only lasts a minute in banked track. She’s used to having up to two minutes because she usually plays flat track, so she has to move fast.” Patti spoke out of the corner of her mouth without taking her eyes off the players, like we were interrupting the chaos on the track. “Watch the way she gets through them. Your boy, the one with the tattoos, him and that blond boy are blockers. They’re supposed to stop her, but they won’t be able to.” Patti laughed throatily, and together we watched Maisy manipulate tiny openings in the track like she’d been doing it her entire life.