Slashed (Extreme Risk 3)

Most days, I count it a win if my socks match.

I’m drawn out of my head and back into the conversation when she continues, “Darling, I know this is a shock. I understand that you’re angry with me. You have every right to be. But I’d really like a chance for us to talk, to clear the air.”

Darling? She’s calling me darling now?

“Clear the air?” I sneer. “Unless you’ve got definitive proof that you were abducted by aliens all those years ago, I’m not really interested in clearing anything.”

“Cameron, honey—”

“Cam,” I all but spit at her. “My name is Cam. Not that I’d expect you to know that.”

“That’s enough!” my dad shouts. “You will not treat your mother like this in my house. Not for one more second. If you’re going to live under my roof, you’re going to show your mother some respect.”

“Whatever,” I tell him, scooping up my backpack and my running shoes from where I dropped them when I came in. “I’m out of here.”

“Maybe it’s best for you to take some time and cool off. When you come back tonight—”

“I’m not coming back tonight.”

He sighs, rubs his eyes like dealing with me is a huge trial. “Fine, Cam. If that’s what you want. But you’re going to have to come back here eventually—”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. I’m twenty-one and the only reason I’m still living in this house is because I didn’t want you to be here all alone after the boys moved out. After everything you’ve done for me, I figured I owed you that much. But since I don’t have to worry about you being alone anymore”—I shoot a pointed look at Lily—“I’ll get out of your hair, and you two can go back to what you were doing before I so rudely interrupted.”

Refusing to think about just what that was—I already feel like I need to scrub my brain with bleach even without reliving the nightmare—I grab my shoes and sling my bag over my shoulder before letting myself out the front door. As I limp to my car, I try to ignore the fact that my dad is standing there watching me go.

It doesn’t work, especially when he yells, “You’re acting like a child, Cameron!”

It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to come back with at least I’m not acting like a fool.

At least I didn’t fall for whatever bullshit sob story that woman is handing out after seventeen years.

At least I didn’t let what amounts to a total stranger in the house because I’m thinking with the wrong head.

I toss a half-hearted wave over my shoulder instead—one that is more fuck you than have a nice day—before climbing into the brand new Jeep I got as part of my latest sponsorship deal.

As I put it in reverse and pull out of the driveway, I refuse to look back.

Chapter 4

Luc

A date is the absolute last thing I’m in the mood for tonight. After spending a large part of the day at the lake, trying—and failing—to keep my hands off of Cam, there isn’t a part of

me that isn’t throbbing. Including my pride. Especially my pride. How can it not when Cam and Ash have so little faith in my abilities that they’re conspiring to find ways to skip one of the biggest, most important snowboarding tourneys in the world.

I mean, yeah, I biffed it the last time we were there, put my teeth through my lip on a landing and needed over a hundred stitches. But that’s the nature of the sport. Shit happens. I just turned twenty-two and I’ve already broken something like seventeen bones. Cam’s broken twelve, while Ash and Z have each broken nine. And for the most part, we’re actually ahead of the curve. Some of the guys I know have broken twenty or thirty bones by now, easy. And that’s not even mentioning the concussions.

It’s never stopped any of us from competing somewhere before. So what’s different now? What’s got her so convinced that I can’t compete? That I’m not good enough?

Just the thought pisses me off—almost as much as it hurts me. I feel like a little bitch admitting that, but come on? To have the girl I—

I stop myself in mid-thought, refusing to go there. To have Cam doubt me so much after everything we’ve been through together? Everything we’ve been to each other? It fucking sucks.

And it’s not that I’m sexist. I’m not upset because she can board better than me. Fuck, I think it’s totally broadway the way she owns the half-pipe. The way she’s the best at what she does. Watching her catch that kind of air, pull down tricks usually only the top guys can do, is the best part of my day. And if I didn’t feel like a fucking gaper next to the rest of them, things would be great. But I do feel like that. Or worse, like a hanger-on they only put up with because we’ve been friends pretty much forever.

How else am I supposed to feel after she pulls something like she did today? And after Ash—fucking Ash—goes along with it? I’m just glad Z was so wrapped up in Ophelia that he wasn’t a part of the conversation. If he’d agreed with Cam, too, I’d lose my fucking mind. I already have to deal with the looks the three of them exchange when they stomp a run and I barely make it through. Or the way Cam always has just a little bit of pity in her eyes after I pick myself up from the bottom of the half-pipe for the millionth or so time. Dealing with the rest of this shit…it makes me want to put my fist through the fucking wall. I don’t want anyone’s pity and I sure as hell don’t want hers.

My mood’s getting worse by the second, which just won’t do considering my date should be picking me up in about twenty minutes—at her insistence—and the last thing she’ll want to deal with is me with my head up my own ass because my friends hurt my feelings.