Spinning Out (The Blackhawk Boys, #1)

by Lexi Ryan

They’re arguing. Brogan’s drunk—not himself. Nic’s pissed—too much himself. “Nobody raises his hand to my sister.” Nic spits in Brogan’s face, and Brogan swings. Then the sickening sound of fists connecting with flesh. My brother’s fists. My boyfriend’s. They’re going to kill each other. “Stop!” I beg, my voice like breaking glass. “Nic, just take me home.”

“Get in the car,” Nic growls at me without taking his eyes from Brogan. It’s the third time he’s given the order, and I refused, as if my presence could keep them from hurting each other. This time I obey,

As if answering my mental plea, the clock ticks over, and I hear screeching tires. Black sky. Black clouds. Headlights. New moon. My mother always told us that change happens at the new moon. She was right.

April, three and a half months after the accident

“You couldn’t find any-fucking-body else to play mom to your baby?” No more whispering. Words directed like knives intended to hurt us both—her for being an unfit mother by hiring a nanny, me because he wants me to know how unwelcome I am.

I shift baby Katie in my arms and cross to the window. Between the slats of the wooden blinds, I watch Arrow. The sight of him climbing into his electric-blue Mustang GT steals my breath. The engine purrs, and he tears out of the driveway.

She looks every bit the part of the stereotypical trophy wife—from her blond hair and perfect body to the single-carat diamond studs in each ear. At twenty-six, Gwen is only six years older than me, five years older than her stepson. She married Arrow’s father a convenient eight months before she gave birth to Katie, making her husband a father to his second child at the age of sixty-five. I don’t judge her for marrying Mr. Woodison, a man nearly forty years her senior. We all have our reasons for taking paths for which the world will judge us.

If she asks me to leave, I don’t know what I’ll do. Get a job at Walmart, maybe? The pay cut would be a bitch, but it would be something. Of course, then there’d be no school next fall, and the fact that Mr. Woodison pays me enough that I’ll be able to afford my tuition at Blackhawk Hills U is definitely the sweetest part of this arrangement.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do about him,” Gwen says. “But if that’s a taste of what’s to come, it’s going to be a long six months.” She shakes her head and peers between the slats in the blinds. “I can’t say that I’m happy with him serving his sentence here, but it wasn’t my choice to make.” “He’s not that bad.” When she cuts her gaze to me, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. If I’m going to keep my job with the Woodisons while Arrow is home, I need Gwen as my ally.

“Whatever is wrong between you and Arrow. Fix it. Or I’ll have to find someone else to help me with Katie and the house.” My heart plummets, and I reach out and grab the edge of the crib. “I’ll talk to him.” Not that talking will help. The best thing I can do for Arrow is avoid him. He won’t be so angry about me being here if he doesn’t have to look at my face. “Between you and me,” Gwen says, her lips curling into a perfectly painted snarl, “I’m hoping he’ll slip up and start using again. I’d rather see his spoiled ass spend the next six months in jail than have him under my roof.” “Start using again.” I never thought those words would be connected to Arrow, and hearing them is a slap in the face. Because Gwen might be clueless, but everyone else in this town knows why Arrow’s life spun out of control this semester, and anyone who’s honest knows I’m to blame. I wasn’t driving the car. I wasn’t throwing the punches. But I was the catalyst. If I’d stayed home that night . . .

Tonight was my last night of freedom, and I spent it sitting in my car alone by the lake. Because apparently I’m a fucking masochist who wanted to wallow in his memories for a while. As if having her in the room next to mine for the next six months isn’t going to be reminder enough. I can’t decide if her nearness is a gift or a curse—if seeing her in the hall and catching her scent will be heaven or hell.

“Wrong door.” I spin around at the sound of her voice and find myself face to face with Mia Mendez, my stepmother’s goddamn nanny, my best friend’s girl, and a reminder of everything I regret.

Anger is so much easier to deal with than this soul-stealing desire. No. Desire would be easy. It’s basic. Practically juvenile compared to what I feel for Mia. This is something else. Something more.

Because this—the view of the caramel skin at the back of her thighs and the memory of how she whimpered when I rolled her onto her stomach and put my mouth there—this, without the gratification of seeing the curve at the bottom of her ass. This nightmare my life has become—having her so close and knowing she can’t ever be mine. This isn’t heaven or hell. It’s fucking purgatory.

“I’m here to watch Katie. It’s not for you to like or not like. It’s my job.” Not bothering to look at me as she speaks, she takes a new item of clothing from the laundry basket. I snatch it from her hands. Red lace and spaghetti straps—there isn’t much to it. “Watch Katie?” I hold the garment by the straps for inspection. “Maybe you’re being more than the stand-in mom. Maybe you’re also the stand-in screw.” She swings, her open palm coming toward my face, and I don’t bother to duck. I let it land and relish the sting of her fingers connecting with my skin. I’ve been numb for months, but it’s no surprise that Mia’s the first to make me feel something.

“I’m the guy you fucked behind your boyfriend’s back.” I scrape my gaze down her body and back up before throwing the red lace nightie on the bed. “And probably the one you think about when you wear that piece of trash.” Her breath leaves her in a rush, and she bends at the waist as if I threw a punch to the gut. The words I’m sorry sit heavily at the back of my throat, choking me. I want to bury my face in her chest and whimper my apologies like a four-year-old, but she wouldn’t understand what I was apologizing for, and I don’t deserve her forgiveness. I’ll say whatever horrible things I must to make sure she never tries to give it to me. I leave her before she can reply and before I can say anything worse. Apologies won’t change what happened on New Year’s Eve. They won’t fix Brogan, and they won’t bring her brother back from the dead.

My job with the Woodisons goes beyond watching the couple’s infant daughter. That task isn’t nearly enough to warrant my generous paycheck. I also do the laundry, cook the meals, and keep the house clean. For two months, it’s been going just fine. I tend to Katie. I scrub the toilets. I cook dinner and make sure there are fresh flowers in the dining room. I should have made the extent of my duties clear to Arrow, but for some reason I couldn’t stomach him thinking of me as the maid. Uriah Woodison’s last maid was my mother, and I don’t want Arrow equating me with her. Not tonight, when his return still stings like a sticky bandage repeatedly ripped off a wound. Does he really think I’m fucking his father, or is he just trying to drive a bigger wedge between us?

No one but Arrow can understand how empty I’ve felt since the accident. No one but Arrow can understand the weight in my chest that is equal parts grief and anger. But I can’t blame him when I’m almost relieved to have animosity as a buffer between us. I’ve always had a soft spot for Arrow Woodison. Maybe that explains why I betrayed Brogan for one night in his arms.

I understand why Arrow spun out of control like he did. He wasn’t the type to drink to excess and never touched drugs. Then on New Year’s Eve, our worlds went to shit, and he lashed out.

The hardest day at the Woodisons’ is easier than the best at home. Of course, if my dad knew I was working here, he’d lose his shit, but I’ve made sure he won’t find out.

Dad jerks his head up and stops walking. “Where’s Nic? I need Nic to take me home. I need my son.” I’m waiting for the day that hurts less, but the words slice through me every time. “Nicholas is gone, Dad. Remember? We lost him.”

The night my brother died, he’d been clean for months. Not using. Not selling. But nobody cares. If your last name is Mendez, you don’t get a second chance. Not in this town.

All they see is how the accident hurt one of their own, Brogan Barrett. And in my brother’s death, all they see is a scapegoat, an easy way to answer the unsolved mystery of the hit-and-run. Even the local paper was happy to report the accident as “likely gang violence” without any real evidence to support such an assertion.

It was a dark SUV that flew over Deadman’s Curve and hit my brother and Brogan on New Year’s Eve, and every time I see one, my gut twists with too many emotions.

I’m going to have to make my peace with her working here. And I can. I will. Fuck. It just took me by surprise. I came home from rehab mentally prepared to serve my house-arrest sentence. The judge acted like he was doing me a favor by letting me serve time here. He obviously doesn’t know what it’s like to be Uriah Woodison’s fuck-up son. I thought I was prepared—for Dad’s disapproval, for his anger and disappointment—and then Gwen launched the curveball at me. Mia Mendez is living here while she helps with the baby. Mia Mendez is eating in my kitchen, sharing my shower. Mia Mendez is sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall in a cotton sleepshirt so thin it makes my hands itch to slide under it.

She’s not just helping with the baby. Dad has her doing his meal prep. As if she’s the Alice to his Brady Bunch or some shit. So fucking twisted. Count me out.

“My list starts with Arrow Woodison. And I put him as the number five instead of number one only because he hadn’t yet decided if he’d be entering the draft at the end of this year or playing his senior year at BHU. But even as a long shot, my boy Arrow is nothing short of a profound disappointment for any team who believed they might be able to pick him up this year or next.” “Fuck you, Craig,” I whisper. I made my decisions. I knew what I was doing every step of the way. No one forced me down the path that led to my house arrest. But when you idolize someone—whether it’s a parent or a football star—you want him to get you. You want him to understand that the terrible choice you made was the best you could do.

I’m doing all I can for my father. At Nic’s funeral, Mom tried to talk me into going back to Arizona with her. In the years since she left, she’s gotten a teaching degree and now has a good job teaching Spanish at a high school out there. She told me I could live with her and go to college there. She practically begged me, and I declined—not just because my relationship with her is screwed up, or because I didn’t want to be that far from Brogan. Part of me relished the idea of running away after that horrible night, but I could never leave my dad alone. No, I don’t need a guilt trip. Guilt is a constant for me.

“I’ve spoken with Woodison’s coach,” the announcer says. “He’s known Arrow since the young player’s elementary-school days. This kid was the kind you never had to worry about. He wasn’t one to party or drink or mouth off on the field. He was one of those rare finds—humble, hardworking, with a coachable attitude and the drive to be his best on and off the field. He knew what he wanted, and he was going to make it happen in all the right ways. But then his best friend, also a BHU player, was injured, and Woodison did a one-eighty.” “It’s heartbreaking,” the co-host says. “And I wonder if it doesn’t speak to some weaknesses in our sport on the collegiate level. Do we talk enough about depression? What are we doing for players who have mental health concerns? Woodison was the last player you expected to see tangled up in hard drugs.” “I agree, but whether we expected it or not, it happened. And now instead of preparing for training camp with an NFL team or for his senior year with BHU, he’s just been released from rehab and is going to spend the next six months on house arrest.” “Any word from Woodison about his choices this last semester?”

I don’t know this man, this angry and hateful version of the boy who once held me while we watched the sunrise.

I’m not okay. I’m so fucking tired, I just want to close my eyes and be done with this shit. But I don’t have the courage for sleep. There are too many demons lurking there. Too many questions and never any answers.

I open the bottle, tap a sleeping pill into my hand, and stare at it. On good nights, I take it and everything goes black until morning. I crawl into bed and am out like the dead, and if I have dreams, I don’t remember them. On bad nights, I slip into the same familiar nightmares, and sleep pins me down, holding me in my own personal hell until the meds wear off. The dreams are variations on a theme. I’m yelling at Brogan, shoving him against the wall, telling him he’s a fuck-up, threatening to tell Mia the truth. Then I’m at Coach Wright’s house, and he’s sitting in front of the TV with blood on his hands and tears in his eyes. Sometimes, I try to talk to him but I can’t open my mouth. It’s as if my lips are super-glued together. Other times, I open my mouth to scream, and the Sahara desert pours out onto his living room floor and Coach is drowning in it, fighting his way to the top for air. I reach for him, shovel sand away, but everything I do to help pushes him deeper. Sometimes, it’s the deer that haunts me. Its big, glassy eyes watch as I scrub the garage floor with bleach rags. Then I’m scrubbing at Mia’s tears—a flood of bloodstained water surging up to drown me as I hear the message she left on my voicemail. “Brogan. My br-br-br— We’re at the hospital. So sorry. So, so sorry.”

She looks so damn beautiful that I expect that old sparkle to be back in her eyes, but when she meets my gaze, I realize I’m only anticipating what I hope to see. Her stare is vacant and cold. The old Mia still sleeps somewhere, not facing a world without her brother, not accepting a world that would do this to Brogan.

I’ve been home a week and I don’t know how to talk to Mia. Don’t know how to live with her so close to me. The last four months have been a haze of apathy and numbness, and I don’t know what to do with everything I’ve felt since I came home.

She turns away, and it feels like someone has sliced off a piece of my heart. “Christ,” Chris mutters. “You can’t look at her like that and expect assholes like Keegan to keep their mouths shut.”

“There’s a rumor about it?” I tell myself I don’t care, but my stomach’s sudden summersaults say otherwise. “I had no idea my employment status was fodder for gossip.” “It’s not like that. Just with Brogan, we all . . .” He shrugs. “We all worry about you.” Sure they do. They worried enough to show up to my brother’s funeral—an endless line of broad shoulders in black waiting to shake my hand and avoid my eyes. And after that? Nothing. “You could visit him, you know.” Chris flinches and averts his eyes. “It’s just . . . hard.”

“Come to the party,” Arrow says, his voice low. “I’m working.” I keep my head down. I can’t look at him. For the first time since I took this job, I feel shame for being the hired help. Which is bullshit. I work hard and pay my own way. Always have. Always will. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. “You’re the nanny, not the maid.”

I’m not allowed to have parties. But the judge encouraged me to “keep company” with people he deems a good influence. Namely, the guys from the team. The ones I let down. I don’t even know how to be around people without being trashed anymore. House arrest comes with those fun little piss tests, though, so my using days are behind me. Drugs and booze never offered the oblivion I was looking for anyway. Some demons can’t be escaped.

“Lemme stay,” Trish says now in a drunken slur. She smells like whiskey and is dressed in a skimpy bikini top and a pair of jean shorts that show more ass than they cover. She’s always tried a little too hard around Brogan, but it’s like I’m her substitute now, and lately she uses any excuse she can to get close. Like tonight when she tagged along with Keegan, making him think it was a date until they arrived and she changed her tune. “Not a good idea,” I say, taking a half step back.

She lifts onto her toes and presses her mouth to my neck, and I want so badly to feel something, anything, that I knot my hand in her hair and yank her head back so I can press my mouth to hers.

The kiss is sloppy and reminds me of New Year’s Eve in a flash that brings on a wave of nausea I stomp down out of sheer determination. “Woodison!” Chris barks. I tear my mouth away from Trish’s just in time to see Mia at the foot of the stairs, hurt all over her face. It’s not there long. She lifts her chin and covers her face in a mask of disinterest. But I saw it, and I’m the world’s biggest asshole. I thought she’d gone to bed. Fuck. Because it wasn’t just any girl I kissed. It was Trish. Worst fucking choice possible. And it shouldn’t matter, but it does. What Mia thinks of me and how I make her feel will always matter.

“What do you want from me, Arrow?” I want the hope I feel when I look in your eyes. The feel of you in my arms. The forgiveness I don’t deserve. I want to go back to the day we met and kiss you—claim you before he can. Everything. I want everything. “Nothing. Go to bed. I’ll clean up the rest.”

October, Fifteen Months Before the Accident

“I don’t really have anything going on with Brogan. He found my number on a note I left for Bailey, and we texted a few times. Honestly, I’m embarrassed because when I met you, I assumed you were the guy I’d been texting. And to be fair, I may have read you a little differently if I hadn’t been thinking his words were yours.” “You liked him?” She lifts a freckled shoulder, and the side of her mouth quirks up in a crooked smile. “He’s sweet. He made me laugh.” The words are a punch to the gut and they fill me with an emotion I’ve never felt toward Brogan. Jealousy.

“I was with my last girlfriend for five months before I found out Brogan had a thing for her. He’d asked her out before we started dating, but I’d been clueless. He never told me because he thought she was special, and he didn’t want to get in the way of me being with someone like that. He’s that kind of guy.” It sucks by way of an apology, but when she lifts her eyes to mine, I know she understands. “So you see, this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you to give him a chance. I want to be the guy who’s good enough to give you that speech.” She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth. “But that’s not why you’re here.” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Brogan’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother. I’d never pick a girl over him,

Something changes in her expression. Her eyes seem to harden, and she leans back in her chair as she stiffens. “You’re a Woodison? As in Woodison Pork. Woodison Farms?” Figures. She doesn’t recognize me as the star football player, but she knows of my dad. “Guilty.” That’s the worst part about going to college here. Everyone knows my dad’s business, or at least knows of it. You can’t miss an empire that powerful in a place as small as Blackhawk Valley.

She starts to walk away, and I stop her with a hand on her shoulder. “What just happened?” She shrugs. “I won’t be choosing between you and Brogan. I don’t want anyone. I don’t have time for that in my life right now.”

May, four months after the accident

Mrs. Barrett and I don’t talk about the past. We don’t talk about the fact that before the accident, she wouldn’t acknowledge me as Brogan’s girlfriend—that she objected to his dating someone she deemed so beneath him, and regularly thwarted his attempts to be with me. We don’t talk about the nasty things she once said to me. We’re bonded by this tragedy and our love of Brogan. If she blames me for being there that night, she’s never said so. And if she doesn’t blame me . . . well, I’m sure she’d be the only one. She opens the doors to the three-season room and motions me toward the big, sunny space where Brogan sits during the day. He’s strapped into his wheelchair, eyes at half-mast, mouth hanging open.

Seeing Brogan doesn’t normally make me cry, but now that Arrow’s back, I feel like someone who’s never known she was blind and was suddenly given sight. Seeing Arrow makes the world too bright and loud and painful. All I want is for the dark numbness to return. It’s easier that way.