Shredded (21 page)

“Well, fuck,” Ash says, pausing it right before I go over. “I take back all the shit I said. If she was yapping at me like that, I’d probably go off the side of a mountain, too.”

All three of us laugh, and then Ash hits play and we get to watch my trip down that mountain. It always feels a little surreal to me to watch footage from a chest cam—at least of myself and something I’ve done—but Ash and Luc don’t seem to have any problem with it.

They hoot and holler a little bit as the video rolls, and Luc curses when I hit that monster
drop, but other than that nobody says anything until we get to the end of the footage. And even then, Ash turns around and starts scrolling back so we can watch it all over again.

“Dude, how big was that drop?” Luc demands. “It went on for fucking ever.”

“It felt that way. When I was doing it, I thought it was probably two hundred feet, but once I was down and looking back up, it seemed more like two hundred and fifty feet or so.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s the only time on the whole run that I thought I might actually die. It felt like the ground was so far away.”

“It
was
so far away.” Ash shakes his head in awe. “Man, that is fucking
Art of Flight
shit,” he tells me, referencing the kick-ass snowboarding documentary that showed boarders doing a whole host of things that didn’t look like they were humanly possible.

“That’s right,” I agree. “Travis Rice ain’t got nothing on me.” Then I laugh, because the man’s a genius while I’m just a fuck-up. No doubt a lucky fuck-up yesterday, but still a fuck-up.

“No way, man. This is epic. Seriously epic. Do you know the longest drop ever landed is—”

“One hundred and seven meters. Three hundred and twenty-one feet,” Luc and I finish for him in stereo. Ash is a living, breathing snowboarding Wikipedia, and we’ve heard it all a million times before.

“Exactly. I bet you were close to that.”

“Nah.”

“I don’t know, man.” He brings the footage back to my drop, counts the seconds. “If you were dropping at a rate of—”

“Okay, okay, enough snowboarding geek stuff,” I tell him. I don’t know how far I dropped and I don’t care. For me it’s never been about that kind of stuff.

“All right, fine.” He continues scrolling until he gets to one of my tricks. “Is that really a triple—”

“Yeah.”

“And a 1440—”

“Yep.”

“Where have you been hiding this stuff?” Luc demands. “We board with you every day, and while you do some extreme shit, I have never seen you do a couple of those tricks before.”

I shrug. “We don’t always practice together.”

“No, of course not. Only like every day.”

“He did the 1440 the other day, while you and Cam were still sleeping,” Ash says. “It was totally front.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Luc shakes his head again. “Man, you are going to redefine the X Games
this year. No one is going to be able to touch you.”

“Forget the X Games. This is Olympic medal shit,” Ash tells him.

“Nah, man. The Olympics are your game. It’s all you this year. Well, you and that kid from Colorado,” I tell him.

“Yeah, right. Neither Luc nor I can do an inverted 1440.”

“Hell, most days it’s all I can do to hit 1080,” Luc agrees. “This is awesome, Z.”

“People are going to go apeshit for this footage,” Ash says. “I can’t wait to get it up.”

“About that …”

He already knows what I’m going to say. “Oh, no. No way. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want me to use it.”

“I was just thinking, maybe—”

“No! No! You’re too frickin’ modest all the time. You never want anyone to see what you can do, and usually I go along with it, but this is
amazing
. And it’s almost Olympic trials time. You totally need to get this out there.”

“I already told you, I’m not interested in the Olympics—”

“Yeah, well, we are,” Luc interjects. “This footage is going to get us a shitload of hits and attention on YouTube and the website. And once they’re there, maybe they’ll poke around for a while, see what else we’ve got. This is how you get the Olympic selection committee’s attention.”

“You get their attention by kicking ass at the trials. The Dew championship—”

“Bull. You know as well as I do that it’s as much about swagger as it is about your actual performance during those couple of weeks.”

“You don’t count. You’d agree with anything if it meant getting that footage on the website.”

“While that is true, I still stand by what Luc says. What you did on this video is too awesome to ignore. It’s going up.”

I start to argue with him some more, but I can tell by the look on his face that I’ll have to pry the camera from his cold, dead hand if I have any chance of keeping my ride off the Internet. And fuck it, in the grand scheme of things, what’s the big deal? I’ve got better stuff to do this morning than to stand around here wasting time with these two.

“Fine, whatever. Just don’t make a big deal of it, okay?”

“We’re not the ones who are going to be making a big deal,” Luc says.

I pull a face at him, then say, “I’ve got to go. Thanks for bringing my car up.”

“The footage more than makes up for it.” Ash tucks the camera in his truck, which is parked right next to my Range Rover. “Are you hitting the half-pipe with us?”

“Later. I’ve got some stuff to do.”

“Stuff that has to do with your busted-up knuckles?” Ash asks.

I glance down at my hands. Even though they still hurt a little, I’d pretty much forgotten about them. Otherwise I would have kept my gloves on.

“Maybe.”

“You need backup?”

I think of Ophelia tucked up in her bed. “Uh, no. I’ve got it.”

“I bet,” Luc says, shooting me a knowing look. “Oh, and speaking of bets, you better forget about snow bunnies and focus on getting with Ophelia or I’m going to be riding your Burton Landlord in the competition this weekend.”

Hell, I’d forgotten about the stupid bet. Now’s the perfect time to tell them I won, but I can’t get the words out. I don’t know what’s going on with Ophelia or me, or what’s going to happen from here. But what happened last night wasn’t about a bet, and if that means having to give up my favorite board, then I’m okay with it. Not happy, obviously, but okay. I never thought I’d say this about any girl, but Ophelia’s more important.

I finally ditch my friends a few minutes later. Which is perfect timing, because the resort’s restaurants just opened and I’ve got one more thing I have to do. I lock my sights onto the main breakfast place, then walk straight through the dining room to the door that leads to the main kitchen that serves the three different restaurants up here at the top of the mountain.

“Hey, Z, you’re not allowed to be back here.”

I pause for a moment as a brunette with big eyes and bigger boobs grabs onto my arm. I recognize her as a girl I spent a few hours with a couple of months back, but I’ll be damned if I can recall her name. Shit. Just more proof that I’m as big a dick as Luc and Cam say I am.

“I’m not staying,” I tell her with a quick smile. “I just need to talk to someone for a second.”

She rolls her eyes. “You can’t be trolling the kitchen for your next date, dude. If you disrupt service, there’ll be hell to pay. We’re just getting started on the breakfast rush.”

She grabs my arm, starts to propel me back toward the door that leads into the dining room, but I’m not ready to go yet. Not even close. Leaning down so that my lips are only a few centimeters from her ear, I say, “I won’t disrupt anything. I promise.”

“Yeah, like I believe that,” she says with a shiver. But she lets me go without complaint.

I drop a quick kiss on her cheek, then take the opportunity to dodge between two of the long stainless-steel tables that run down the center of the kitchen before she changes her mind.
The last thing I need is for her to cause a fuss and get me kicked out—at least not before I do what I came here for.

Since it feeds three busy restaurants, the kitchen is huge and hectic, with waitstaff, busboys, chefs, and management darting through and around every square inch of open space. Still, it doesn’t take me long to find who I’m looking for in his little alcove off to the side of the main action. He’s taller and bigger than most of the people in the kitchen, and though his back is to me, I’d recognize him anywhere. Of course, the fact that he’s moving like he’s a ninety-year-old arthritic helps me identify him.

Maybe I should feel guilty about all the pain I caused, but to be honest, all I feel is the icy burn of regret. I obviously didn’t do enough damage or the guy wouldn’t be able to stand, let alone load a dishwasher.

I walk up behind him, clap a hand onto his shoulder, and start to squeeze. “Hey, Harvey. How you doing?” Though the words are perfectly polite, the tone I say them in isn’t. He jolts, tries to take off. But there’s nowhere for him to go. With the counter behind him and me in front of him, he’s trapped. Vulnerable. Exposed—exactly as Ophelia was when he decided to get rough with her.

“Leave me alone, Z. I’m working.” His voice is loud, panicked.

“I can see that.” I lean closer, keeping my voice low and calm in direct contrast to his. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to take up much of your time.”

“If you hit me again, I’m calling the police.” He reaches for a pan, holds it out in front of him like a weapon.

“Is that supposed to scare me?” I ask with a sneer. “You’re the one who tried to rape a girl yesterday. All I did was put a stop to it.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her—”

“News flash, dickwad. You did hurt her.” I grab his shirt. Yank him forward so that we’re eye to eye, nose to nose. “You put bruises on her that are going to take weeks to fade. I’m not okay with that.”

“How was I supposed to know?” he whines. “She seemed interested. She was trying to get—”

“What she was trying to do was get away from you. I was four or five hundred yards away and even I could see that.”

“That’s not true—”

“Oh, it is.” I stomp the heel of my boot down on his tennis-shoe-clad foot even as I body check him, slamming him into the metal countertop at his back. “And you want to know what else is true?”

“No.” He watches me warily.

“Well, that sucks for you, since I’m going to tell you anyway.” I glance behind me, just to make sure no one’s paying attention. They aren’t. We’re in our own little piece of the kitchen over here, blocked from view by a half wall and a couple of tall shelves filled with kitchen equipment. Which means that as long as I’m quiet, I can do whatever the hell I want to this piece of shit and no one will be the wiser.

The thought is tempting—too tempting—and my fingers tighten on his collar. His face starts to turn red as he finally gets it. I could strangle him, right here in his little dishwashing area, and no one would give a shit. At least not until the dishes started piling up.

“I’m going to say this one time and you’re going to listen really well. Understand?”

He nods frantically.

“Good.” I loosen my grip a little—a very little—before continuing. “Ophelia’s a friend of mine. A
good
friend of mine. Now, if you know anything about me at all, you know that I don’t like people messing with my friends. So this is what you’re going to do.”

I tighten my grip again, pull him in closer. His eyes are wide, his pupils dilated with the same fear that’s making sweaty patches pop up all over his shirt, but he doesn’t even try to fight me despite the fact that he outweighs me by a good fifty pounds. Instead, he just clutches at his shirt, tries to rip it from my hands as he whimpers like the little bitch he is.

“You’re going to stay away from Ophelia. You’re not going to talk to her. You’re not going to look at her. You’re not going to think about her. You’re not even going to think about thinking about her. ’Cuz if you do, if you so much as say her name, I’m going to come back. And I’m going to end you. Do you get me?”

He nods, and I loosen up on his collar a little more, let him take his first real breath since I grabbed him.

He gasps, drags in huge gulps of air. He’s shaking so bad that he drops the pot he grabbed for self-defense. It falls to the mat beneath him with a thud.

“Now, I want to hear you say it. Acknowledge that you understand what I’m telling you.”

“I get it, Z. Jesus, I get it. I didn’t know she was yours.”

Rage, white-hot and ugly, rips through me all over again. “It shouldn’t matter if she’s mine or not, fucktard. You don’t touch women who don’t want to be touched. They deserve better than that. Ophelia sure as hell deserves better than to be raped by some loser who can’t get it up if he’s not hurting her. Understand?”

He doesn’t answer.

I tighten the shirt again. “I’m going to need an answer now, Harvey, or I’m going to drag your ass out back and beat you till you give me the one I want. Do. You. Understand?”

“I got it,” he finally says. He’s bitter, resentful, but smart enough to know I’m not joking.

I let him go, but at the same time I give him a little shove that sends him careening
against the sink behind him. Water sloshes onto the counters, drips onto the cabinets, the floors, his apron. There’s a big wet spot over his pelvis now, one that makes it look like he wet himself.