She was right, he realized with a sinking heart.

To get justice for Chelsea, he was going to have to let her continue to believe the worst.

Chapter Twenty-five

Ten Days Later

“I love you, girl, but if you bring that sad face to my bout tonight, I’m gonna give you a flying-elbow from the track-side,” Pisa commented as she ran around her apartment, getting her derby gear together. She lifted one of her elbow pads and sniffed it. “Does this smell like B.O. to you?”

“If you have to ask, then, yes, it does,” Chelsea said. “And I’m fine. Really.” Sure, she was on her fourth bag of chocolate-covered pretzels today, but fuck it. So what if she’d gained five pounds in the last week by eating ice cream and chocolate by the bucket? It didn’t matter.

Stuffing her face beat crying all the time, at any rate.

“Well, this is my first game on the banked track, so don’t bring me down, okay?” Pisa squirted her pads with Febreze, sniffed them, and then squirted again. One of the Austin banked-track derby teams had a bad run with players and pregnancies, and Pisa had ended up an alternate. Tonight, she was going to play.

She deserved it after dealing with Chelsea’s shit all week. She knew she’d been a terrible guest to have around. After showing up on Pisa’s doorstep and sobbing for three days, she’d finally started to crawl out of her shell and start thinking about a new life in Austin. She could start her soap business over. Join derby down here. Begin again.

The thought made her want to vomit.

It wasn’t just that she was going to miss the Rag Queens and Gretchen and New York. It wasn’t just that she ached for Sebastian with every fiber of her being.

Somewhere in the last month, both she and Pisa had moved on, and it was weird.

Pisa had a boyfriend now, an Austin hipster who was into derby and had a long, thick beard and wore plaid shirts. His name was Drew and he was nice, and Pisa seemed happy. Actually, she seemed happier in Austin than she had in a long, long time. It wasn’t just the change of derby (from flat track to banked track) and the boyfriend. She loved her new job and her new city.

And Chelsea hated all of it, because she just wanted to be home with Sebastian. It had been so much easier to be miserable and lonely when they’d both been miserable and lonely.

And that made her a bad friend.

Chelsea stuffed another chocolate-covered pretzel into her mouth and thought about Sebastian. She blinked rapidly, determined not to cry again. Her eyes felt permanently puffy and hot thanks to all the weeping she’d been doing. He probably felt so betrayed. Was he sketching out his emotions? Or was he keeping them all bottled up inside, utterly furious with her?

Worse yet, was he seeking comfort with Lisa? She knew that Lisa would be all too ready to jump into Sebastian’s bed. The thought made her shove another pretzel into her mouth.

It all just hurt so much. She could have dealt with it, she figured, if she had Sebastian to pet her and hold her and make her feel better about the video. But losing Sebastian when she needed him the most?

That made her feel hopeless and hollow.

She knew it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t shaming herself. It was just . . . a difficult burden to shoulder all alone. And Pisa tried to help, she really did, but when Chelsea was reeling from both the loss of the man she loved and the discovery of the video? It was hard not to just shut down entirely. To surround herself with comfort foods, wear sweatpants, and not leave the sofa for months.

But Pisa was excited about tonight’s bout. And Chelsea had to admit that however mopey and miserable she was, she wanted to support her friend. She’d been there for Chelsea, and it would mean a lot to her if Chelsea went to her bout.

So she’d promised to go.

“What time do you need to head out for the bout?” Chelsea asked, forcing herself to get up off the couch.

Pisa raced past her, no doubt looking for more scattered gear. “Drew’s picking us up in a half hour and we’re going to eat something, then I need to head in for warm-ups. You coming or are you going to stay here?”

“How could I possibly miss seeing your first banked-track bout?”

Pisa gave a happy squeal and flew into Chelsea’s arms, hugging her. “You are the best friend!”

Chelsea hugged her back, wishing she could feel quite as happy.

She’d get past this. She would. She’d been through hell before and come out the other side. She could do it again.

*   *   *

Chelsea and Drew picked seats in the stands that would give them a great view of the track. The stadium here was very different than the one Chelsea was used to skating in. It had more of an eclectic warehouse sort of vibe, and the crowd was rowdier than up in NYC. On the track, two girls mock-pillow-fought on skates, and loud music blared overhead. It was fun, but it wasn’t home, and she was hit with a pang of regret for having to leave New York. She wondered how the Rag Queens were faring at practice, and who’d be skating in her spot in the next bout. With a small, unhappy sigh, she sipped her soda.

“You want a beer?” Drew asked. “I’m going to go grab one.”

“No, thank you.” She held her takeout cup up. “I’m good.”

“Be right back,” he said, and headed down to concessions. As he did, her phone vibrated with an incoming call. She saw Sebastian’s name and sent it straight to voice mail, her heart doing an unhappy little flip.

He’d been calling her constantly over the last ten days, and she’d refused to answer. It was too hard. Hearing his voice would destroy her. So she was a coward and avoided him. So what? She was trying to close that part out of her mind and move forward. She couldn’t move forward if she was constantly weeping over Sebastian and the ruin her life had become, and how she’d lost the man she loved.

So she ignored, because it hurt less.

She suspected he was texting her, too. That’s what she would have done. Of course, she’d anticipated this and adjusted the settings on her phone to where it wouldn’t show her incoming texts. She ignored all of them until she was ready to look.

She might never be ready. The feelings of loss and the ache of being without Sebastian hadn’t subsided one bit in the last ten days.

A stranger sat down nearby and gave her an appraising look. Ugh. She gave him a polite smile and then pretended to look something up on her phone, wishing Drew were back already. The weather app could only be stared at for so long, so she switched over to a news website.

And sucked in a breath.

Cabrals Under Siege: The Video That Rocked a Family.

Her skin prickled with dread. Oh, no. No, no no. Her stomach churned sickeningly, and she stared at the headline. Please, no. Wasn’t this why she’d left? To protect Sebastian from her awful past? She didn’t want to look, but she had to. She clicked on the article and skimmed it, wanting to puke.

In a statement exclusively to Media Weekly, Lisa Pinder-Schloss, of the reality television show The Cabral Empire, has revealed that an ex-boyfriend of hers has a sex tape of the two of them and is threatening to auction it to the highest bidder. The video was allegedly made several years ago when Pinder-Schloss was in a relationship with freestyle motocross star Dirk Zayven.

Pinder-Schloss made a statement via her lawyer. “This tape was made for a private moment between a man and a woman in a relationship. Now that the relationship is over, it does not mean that what was once private should now be put on display, and it is utterly sickening that someone would try to turn around and make it public. My lawyers intend to pursue this to the fullest extent possible. We will fight the release of this. It will not be allowed.”