He grew more baffled as they headed into an arena. Chelsea entered through a back door, nodding at a guard posted there. Instead of following them, Sebastian headed around to the front of the building, following the crowd that was slowly moving inside.

There were flyers and T-shirt stands and he stopped to browse through the contents, not entirely sure what he was looking at. A lot of it was tough-looking girls on roller skates. He picked up a flyer, curious.

“You got a ticket for tonight’s bout?”

Sebastian looked up. The woman in the booth was covered in tattoos and piercings, but her smile was friendly.

“I’m looking for a friend, actually.”

“She play?” The woman gestured at a table full of oversized trading cards.

“No, I don’t think she does,” he said, eying the pictures of the women. Some of them were larger, heavyset, and muscular. Some were dainty, posing flexing their arms. Some had a star on their helmet and some were covered in tattoos. A few looked all business while there were a couple in heavy makeup, their track uniforms altered to be sexier and more provocative. He scanned the faces on the cards, gravitating towards the purple- and pink-bordered cards. Chelsea’s bag was purple and pink.

Sure enough, posing with a vicious looking snarl, was his new wife, her hair in pigtails. She was one of the ones in a more provocative costume, the neckline gathered at the breasts, her skirt a lot shorter and pleated. She wore stripy knee-high socks and held up a fist as if she’d like to smash it into someone’s face.

She looked incredibly fucking sexy.

Chesty LaRude, number 34DD. Broadway Rag Queens.

“I want this card, please,” he said, and pulled out some cash.

Ten minutes later, he was inside the small stadium with a beer in hand and a lot of damn questions. He sat down in the bleachers near the top, glancing around. The floor was overlaid with some sort of strange blue flooring, the lines of the flat track marked in pink. Chairs were set up in the center of the room, and girls skated around, warming up. He didn’t see Chelsea, but the uniforms were the wrong color. So he kept watching and waiting, sipping his beer.

Roller derby. It didn’t make sense, and yet it did. His cheery, happy Chelsea who had a smile for everyone, got along with him like peas and onions (he really had to work on his similes), who sold fruity soaps . . . she played with these rough and tumble women? She didn’t seem the type. As a bruiser of a girl with a Mohawk and huge biceps rolled past, he wondered at the constant sets of bruises Chelsea had on her body.

A woman sat next to him, beer in hand, her hair in a blue buzz cut. She nodded at him. “Derby virgin?”

“Huh?”

“Are you a derby virgin?” She grinned at him. “You don’t look the type.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s my first game.”

“That’s adorable,” she said. “And it’s a bout. Not a game. Like boxing.”

“Boxing with roller skates. Got it.” He held his hand out. “Sebastian.”

“I know,” she said with an evil grin. “I watch your mom on that show. She’s fucking crazy, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’m Diane.” She gestured out at the floor. “My wife’s Morning Whorey, number sixty-nine for the Rag Queens.”

“My wife’s this one,” he said, holding up his playing card of Chelsea.

“Oh, shit, did Chesty get married? Fuck, that’s awesome. Congrats!” Diane looked thrilled. “She’s fun to watch on the track. Downright nasty and swears a mean streak. Gets a lot of penalties when she’s in a bad mood.”

That . . . did not sound like the Chelsea he knew. But then again, it sounded like he didn’t know her all that well after all. He nodded at the track. “So how does the game work?”

“Bout, buddy, bout,” she corrected. “Like you’re about to wear my beer if you don’t start calling it a bout.”

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“S’okay. I’ll remember that you’re a virgin.” She took a sip of her beer and gestured down at the track. “I’ll try and make the rules simple for you. When the whistle goes off, everyone starts skating, okay? There’s four girls in a pack. One of them’s a pivot but I won’t go into that just yet, because it’ll confuse you. See the second line on the track down there? The fifth girl for each team skates from there and they have a star on their helmet. Those are the jammers. If they make it through the pack, they have to skate around the track again and try to pass the pack a second time. If they do, they score a point for each person of the opposite team they pass. Got it?”

“I think so,” he said, glancing down at the card in his hand. “So the jammer has to be the small, fast one, right? Is that what Chelsea plays?”

“Chesty?” Diane grinned. “Oh, hell no. She’s in the pack playing a blocker, and she’s a vicious one. You watch and see.”

A few minutes later, music started and the announcer got on the microphone. “Let’s bring out our first team for tonight’s bout . . . the Broadway Rag Queens!”

Music started, and the thumping beat of Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious” filled the stadium. The track was suddenly filled with girls in purple and pink, skating in circles and vamping for the audience. They wore helmets and moved so fast that he craned his neck to see if he could find Chelsea among the team.

The announcer began to call out names.

Good Whip Lollipop.

Morning Whorey.

Drool Whip.

Lady ChaCha.

Kid Vicious.

Sandra Flea.

Tail Her Swift.

Sebastian laughed at the names. They were clever and badass all at once. As each girl’s name was called out, the others pointed at her, and she posed for the crowd.

Chesty LaRude.

Chelsea did a little hop and jiggled her breasts at the crowd, which made them roar. Then she licked her thumb and pressed it on her arm, pretending that she was sizzling.

Damn. He laughed again, clapping a hand against his beer. Why had she kept this from him? He didn’t know anything about the sport, but seeing her vamping it up on the track with the other girls? That was awesome. It was so incredibly not what he expected, but seeing her out there in the derby uniform he’d thought was nothing more than a Halloween costume?

She fit. She totally fit.

The other team was called out, and the skaters were announced one by one as their team’s music played.

“Bout’s gonna start,” Diane said at his side a few minutes later. “Get ready to watch some moves.”

The teams lined up in position, and he saw Chelsea was playing in the first round. Bout. Tussle. Jam. Whatever. The women readied, and Sebastian got on the edge of his seat.

The whistle blew.

The women began to skate forward, and immediately Chelsea snarled, displaying a bright pink mouth guard. She flung herself bodily at the woman next to her, knocking them both down. The girl with the star on her helmet—the jammer—jumped over their fallen bodies and skated ahead.

“Damn,” Diane said at his side. “Chesty’s not wasting any time tonight!”

He watched, mouth dry, as Chelsea pulled herself up off the track and began to skate back after the pack again, then rejoined them. For the rest of the jam, she flung herself into the pack with abandon, body-checking and skating in front of others to block them. She got pushed. She got knocked around. She went down. She caught an elbow to the face and shook it off.

Then the jammer tapped her hands on her hips, and the whistle blew.

“End of the jam,” Diane told him. “They scored four points. Good one.”

For the first half of the “bout,” he watched as Chelsea endured more hits than a football player, more falls than a beginner ice skater, and kept getting back up to throw herself into the game. She was brutal. Utterly brutal. She didn’t use her elbows, but she was downright cruel on the track, getting in other girls’ faces and yelling at them, pushing them aside for her own jammer, and doing whatever she could—at whatever cost—to get her jammer through.