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Chapter One
Malcolm
Dropping off the ledge and into the vert ramp is like standing on the edge of a cliff—knowing I could soar, or I could be in a boneless heap at the bottom in ten seconds.
I don’t dwell on the latter.
Pain, physical pain, comes and goes. Broken bones heal, and then they break again. I’m no stranger to physical pain—I grew up with a dad who would rather use his fists than his words, and a mother who let him, so long as he left her and my sister alone. In my early years, before I was big enough to defend myself, I learned the shocking burn of a punch or backhand was fleeting, no matter how severe it might have felt in that moment.
Unlike the pain one feels inside—way down deep, where scars are incurable, and left to fester until they threaten to steal our breath and consume us.
This is the kind of pain that can end a man if he’s not careful. This is the kind of pain that comes when he falls in love with the girl next door before he knows what love really is—the pain that comes when he looks at her and sees his entire world, the world that now revolves around her and her happiness.
The pain that comes because loving her like that means knowing he isn’t good enough—that he comes from darkness and she is the sunshine. So he walks away and makes sure she hates him, saving her from the danger and hurt that would come from loving him.
Only, he can’t save himself from that same fate. She owned his heart the minute she ran out of the water at twelve years old. An ankle strap held her to a surfboard that should have been two times too big for her, her mass of curling blond hair in a wet braid over her shoulder, and a laugh kissing her lips. That sight, that sound… made his fourteen-year-old heart beat in something other than terror and anger for the first time in years, and from that moment on, it beat for her.
It still beats for her—even now, five years after I walked away and broke my own heart. I ensured that the pain was so deep, so real, it would never disappear, but instead sits like a lingering ache inside of me, reminding me every day that I’m not whole, and may never be again. It’s times like right now, when I’m standing on the edge of a very real fall, that I remember the first fall I took, and how much it hurt.
It doesn’t take a shrink to understand why I seek a greater one—a physical fall and all of the pain that accompanies it—just so I can focus on something other than that hurt of leaving her.
Every day I push harder, further, asking more of my run, my jump, my body, hoping I can outrun the hurt this time. People call me crazy; they might be right, especially now when I step on my board and pitch myself over the side, allowing the speed and force to blur my vision, wishing it could work on my mind as well.
The sides of the vert ramp are fourteen feet high. The last two feet are straight up, making it the official vert ramp instead of a half pipe. The jumps are bigger with that kind of angle, ensuring time in the air to apply any trick I can. It also means that if I miss the trick, the fall is much greater. I’ve fallen a lot in my almost seven years as a professional skater—I’ve broken a lot of bones, injured a lot of ligaments, and still, nothing compares to the fall I took for Nala Jansen.
She’s at the front of my mind when I finally drop in and take my run, the last of this competition. It’s dangerous—not just the drop in, but thinking of anything but where I’m at, where my feet are positioned, and how my weight is distributed—because it means that I’m not one hundred percent ready to make corrections if I need to.
I haven’t won a major skating event in almost three years. I’ve been close; I’ve seen the podium, but I haven’t stood at the top since I was twenty. People say it’s because I’m going too hard, that I want it too much. Again—they’re right. I do want too much. Nala flashes through my mind as I head into my first jump, a nine hundred. I’m looking to get more air, more speed when I drop back in and head up the other side for my next combination.
I want her to be mine the way I’m hers. I want her to see me as the man who had to walk away, not the man who broke her heart. And I want her to know that in five years, she’s consumed me—mind, body, soul—until there isn’t a second of the day where I can put her out of my head anymore. Mostly, I want her to know that I need her to be mine if I have a chance in hell of surviving this world.
I hit my next combo—an overinflated backside varial that leaves me a little unsteady when I land. Instead of going for a solid trick I can stick next, one that might put me on my feet again, I go for gold and throw the fakie seven-twenty.
I know it’s wrong the minute I’m in the air. I’ve over rotated, and though I try to slow down—wondering if I can push hard enough, move my body well enough to land it—in my head, I know I can’t. I’m near-parallel to the side of the vert ramp when I should be vertical, missing my catch on the board and slamming the ledge; my leg takes the brunt of my weight on the weird landing.
The snap is audible, but I barely register it as the rest of my body pitches forward and falls down the ramp. I move to cover my head, instincts from every fall I’ve ever taken roaring back to life.
Don’t try and catch yourself.
Tuck.
Let the pads protect you.
Still, my head slams back, the force enough to make me see stars despite the helmet. And then it’s noise and screams and a slow slide to the bottom.
My body throbs, the pain white hot and sickening, and when I tell myself to move, nothing happens. So I lay there, listening while people scramble around me, noting first that it’s Jacks who is next to me, eyes concerned, mouth grim.
“Mal—can you hear me?”
I nod at him, and even that small movement has my belly rolling and my vision swimming. Closing my eyes, I block out sound and noise, ignoring the voices and press of hands when someone else comes over. I focus on Nala’s face in my mind while they go to work on my body.
