Page 28 of Racing Hearts

Ellie yawned. Just the thought of sitting in a restaurant made her tired. “Can we order in tonight? I’m exhausted.”

“Of course. Whatever you want.”

Ellie had gotten so lucky that the first track meet was at East Pine University, which happened to be less than twenty minutes from her house, making the drive home a quick one. The only problem was that her car was still at school so she wouldn’t have it for break, but she was sure her moms would let her borrow one of their cars whenever she wanted, especially since they worked at the same place.

As soon as she walked into her house, she headed straight for the family room and threw herself onto the couch. “I hope you don’t mind that I don’t plan on moving from this spot until the end of break,” she told her parents.

Ellie’s mama lifted Ellie’s feet and placed them on her lap as she joined her on the couch. “That’s fine as long as you get up to use the bathroom.”

“I’ll think about it,” Ellie said with a laugh. “Can weat leastspend all day tomorrow like this?”

Ellie’s mom nodded. “As long as I don’t have to go into the office for something, I’m down.”

Even when she wasn’t working, Ellie’s mom had a cell phone that was reserved for patients to call after hours. Most people were nice enough not to use the number unless they didn’t have any other options, but it still happened once in a while since her mom was by far the best doctor in town.

“If you get called in, I’ll go with you.” Ellie was sure her mama would go in too, and even though she was too cool to admit this out loud, she wanted to spend as much time with her parents as possible. She really missed them when she was away at school and wanted to take advantage of her time at home.

Not that it really mattered. She highly doubted her mom would end up going in to work.

Chapter 14

Sierra

Sierra slowly opened up her eyes and looked around the hotel room she was sharing with her sister. Since it was apparently winter graduation weekend at East Pine, the closest hotel they could get was about twenty-five minutes away. Sierra had fallen asleep just a few minutes into the drive and woke up only long enough to go into the hotel and eat a few bites of a sandwich before passing out again.

It was now morning, and the room seemed much brighter than it should be. She had just realized her sister wasn’t in the room when she burst through the hotel door as if Sierra had summoned her with her thoughts. “Oh, thank god you’re up. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible. Mom and Mama are freaking out, because the weather report wasn’t wrong. It’s already snowing like crazy. It has been for at least an hour.”

Sienna pointed toward the window and Sierra turned to find large snowflakes falling from the sky. She forced herself out of bed and walked to the window to find her sister wasn’t lying. There had to be at least an inch of snow on the ground already. “Shit. I just need to go to the bathroom fast and then I’ll be good to go.”

Sienna shook her head. “Please shower first. I’m not sitting beside you for this whole long ass car ride when you smell like that.”

“Fine.”

Sierra went into the bathroom and took the world’s quickest shower, then pulled her hair into a ponytail and put on sweats. Sienna told her their moms were already out at the cargetting the snow cleared off, so the two of them grabbed their bags and headed down together.

As soon as they walked outside, Sierra’s feet started to slide around on the frosty sidewalk. She walked extra slowly because the last thing she wanted was to get hurt when track season had barely started. Her sister clearly didn’t have the same reservations and didn’t even look as she stepped off of the sidewalk, onto the snow-covered blacktop of the parking lot.

Sierra felt like she was watching the scene in slow motion as her sister’s feet went out from under her and she landed on the ground with a loud thud. Sierra walked quickly, yet carefully, to get to her sister and prayed she would find her lying on the ground laughing. The last thing they needed with a big snowstorm coming was her sister getting injured. Unfortunately, Sienna wasnotlaughing. In fact, by the time Sierra got to her, she was grabbing onto her ankle as tears rushed down her face.

“Shit, Sienna, are you okay?” Sierra asked dumbly. Of course, she wasn’t okay.

“Oh yeah, just peachy.” Sienna laughed through her tears, but there was no question how much pain she was in.

“Do you think you can stand up? If you can get up, I should be able to help you over to the car.”

“I can try.” Sienna winced as she tried to push herself up off of the ground. “Maybe not.”

Sierra tried to lift her, but it was impossible with the slippery conditions. Instead of getting Sienna any closer to being on her feet, Sierra had almost fallen down with her multiple times.

“Mom! Mama!” she shouted across the parking lot. The snow was coming down so strong that she couldn’t see well enough to decipher where they were and if they were even close enough to hear her.

After shouting their names again, both of her parents appeared a few feet in front of them.

“Oh my god, what happened?” her mom asked, not at all trying to hide the panic in her voice.

“Don’t worry, it’s the lazy twin. Not your star athlete,” Sienna joked.

“Stop being a jackass,” her mama said in response to her sister. “We obviously don’t want either of you to be hurt.” She bent down beside Sienna and put a hand on her ankle which caused her to wince again. “Can you move it?”

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