Page 169 of Shade
Did you notice how I slipped some time? It’s for the better. Honestly. Because if you had been there during my recovery and those days following the surgery when I didn’t know the extent of my injuries and thought my career was over, you would have probably slapped me. And then I would have screamed because that would have hurt, given the whole broken neck thing.
Anyway, I skipped time because today is what matters. Well, later. I’ll get there. I have some explaining to do though.
If you want to be the best in freestyle, you can’t look at the danger of the sport. You have to live in the moment. The reality of it? It’s not a question of if you’re going to get hurt, it’s when and how bad. It comes with the territory.
Freestyle riders know pain. We know injuries and recovery time. We know what it’s like for time to slow down and face the facts that we’re not invincible. We can die and sometimes, it happens.
I’m clearly not because look at me, I’m sitting on a fucking couch. Do I look dead to you?
Take a good look. Arm in a sling, game controller in hand, no shirt, fading bruises and a neck brace holding my head still. Sure, I’m alive, but in other ways, something inside me isn’t.
I’m fucked up. Remember when I thought it’d be a good idea to pull a triple in Madrid?
Oh, wait, I neverthoughtit was a good idea. I just fucking did it because I wasn’t thinking clearly.
And now look at me. Broken neck and collarbone and laid up for the next three months.
With all this time on my hands, I think a lot about what Jaime said to me before the accident. I remember that, but not the accident or the entire day leading up to it.
Why is that? Why did my brain choosethatmemory to hold onto?
Do you remember the letter she wrote me?
I do. It’s in my hand. Did you think I threw it away?
Couldn’t. Should have but. . . didn’t.
I read it again. You should too.
Do you see it? Do you see the dirt on the edges? That’s when I left it at her grave, hoping to leave that part of my life in the dirt where it belonged.
Do you see the blood? That’s where I put my hand through a wall trying to ease the frustration after reading it for the first time.
So I read it once more and focus on a line.“I’m sick of losing you to the lies I let you believe.”
She could have told me a thousand lies and I believed them, but one matters.
One destroys.
One forgives.
Fuck you, Rhya. I was worth the truth.
Crumbling up the letter, I hand it to Reece who sits next to me, beer in hand. “What’s this?”
“Her excuse.”
He nods, knowing.
I haven’t talked to Reece since the fight with Jaime. Since he found out about Rhya and Jaime. But then again, maybe he already knew.
It’s hard to say.
“I know about Rhya and Jaime. . . .” Reece says, tucking the note into his pocket and then takes a drink of his beer, casually relaxing on the couch. “And it wasn’t right what he did because she was thirteen, regardless.”
“I know,” I mumble, my gaze on the television.
I’ve had a lot of time to think since the accident. Three weeks is plenty of time to process what Jaime said to me, my reaction, Scarlet. . . all of it, and I came to one conclusion. Rhya was a pathological liar, and I think I’m okay with not knowing. She lied so much she didn’t know the truth anymore. Her ability to decipher right from wrong wasn’t there.
