“Merde,” Luc breathes out.
My body wants to flinch, but everything in me is wound too tight. With just one look at each of the guys stationed around me, I finally pull it together enough to glare at the trail like it owes me something.
Because it fucking does.
Finn stands and threads his fingers through mine like we’re not standing in public. I glance around, expecting eyes on us, but the others on the track walk are far away, lost in their own lines and team chatter.
I squeeze his hand back.
“You okay being here?” he asks, thumb brushing mine.
“I’ve been here a lot since then.” My voice comes out clipped, like I’ve rehearsed this lie so many times I’ve convinced myself it’s the truth. “It doesn’t faze me anymore.”
“Menteuse,” Luc murmurs. He comes to my other side and kisses my cheek like he’s soothing the ghosts away, and without looking, I know Mason has stepped closer, too, his warmth seeping into my battered spine.
It’s almosttoocomforting, so I let go of Finn, shake out my hands, even if that sends a jolt of pain threw my bandaged fingers, and force my lungs to fill.
“We’re here for track walk, right?” I step back from the edge and start walking down the track, right past the jump. “Finn, which line would you take?”
He smiles softly when he walks past me, then crouches near the ledge of the next section, brushing a finger over the moss-slick rock. “You see this angle here? I’d go in high, brake before the second root, then hop over the dip.”
I nod automatically, but my brain is half-idling because I know this trail like my own scars. I’ve ridden this track so many times in so many weather conditions, I could draw it from memory with a blunt stick and my eyes closed.
“Really?” Mason crouches beside him. “I would’ve thought the low line was faster. Better compression into the exit.”
“No, not when it’s this wet. You’ll drift.”
Mason shrugs, already reassessing. “Okay then.”
Gravel crunches behind us before I hearhisvoice.
“You don’t usually take no for an answer, Payne.” Raine’s voice is way too close to my back, smug and venom-laced.
My crash still echoes in the dirt like it just happened.
And nowhe’s here.
Motherfucker.
Then Isla’s perfume hits. It’s sweet, perhaps to distract her unsuspecting victims from the rot underneath.
Mason stiffens beside me, and Finn’s head snaps up, his whole body on alert.
He’s the reason I shattered, and he has the fucking nerve to show up here atmy graveyard.
When I finally turn toward him, Isaac is grinning like he didn’t just spit poison in public, and we’re too scared, too civil to fight back.
You thought wrong, asshole.
Luc barrels toward him with the kind of anger that getspeople arrested, so I throw my arm out, catching him hard in the chest.
“Back.”
Isaac smirks, but then I pull my fist back before I punch him square in the fucking mouth.
No grace. None of the form Mason tried so hard to teach me. Just bone, rage, and seven years of fury.
His lip splits with a wet crack, blood blooming as fast as the pain in my knuckles.
