Free Just Physical by Jae Page B

tingle all over—a tingling very unlike that in her left leg. Snap out of it. She cleared her throat. “Don’t try to distract me. Your real name.” She waved her fingers at Crash. “Tell me.”
    â€œOkay.” Crash put down her plastic fork and sat up straight. “Ready?”
    Jill nodded.
    â€œMy real name is Edna Myrtle Patterson.”
    â€œUh…” Jill eyed her warily, not wanting to say anything wrong in case Crash wasn’t joking. “Really?”
    â€œWhat? It’s a perfectly good name for a nice girl from Texas,” Crash drawled. Then she couldn’t keep up her serious facade any longer and burst out laughing.
    Jill socked her in the shoulder. “Liar. Your name isn’t really Edna Myrtle…is it?”
    â€œNo. My parents are not that cruel.”
    â€œSo, what is it? Come on!” Jill wriggled her fingers in a gimme motion.
    â€œKristine No-Middle-Name Patterson.”
    â€œKristine,” Jill repeated, testing out the sound of the name. She decided she liked it. With a glance at Crash’s athletic frame and her strong jawline, she asked, “Do you go by Kris?”
    Crash energetically shook her head. “Nope. I’ve got enough of the lesbian stereotype going on, thank you very much.” She ruffled her short, wind-blown hair. “It’s Kristine.”
    â€œNo middle name?”
    â€œNo middle name,” Crash confirmed. “After having four boys, my parents had given up hope of ever getting a daughter, so they hadn’t picked out a first name, much less a middle name for a girl. I was lucky they didn’t name me Christopher, which was the name they had picked out for child number five.”
    Jill laughed. “So you have four brothers?”
    â€œFive,” Crash said with an affectionate smile. “My little brother, Cody, is a year younger than me.”
    â€œWow. Five brothers.” Jill shook her head. She couldn’t imagine growing up like that. “I suddenly feel like saying ‘I’m sorry.’ Having one brother is more than enough for me.”
    â€œNah. It wasn’t that bad,” Crash said. “Raising five boys prepared my mother for having a daughter like me… Although she would probably say that there is no way to prepare for that, other than having good insurance.”
    â€œSo maybe Crash is a fitting name for you after all,” Jill said with a smile. “Even if it doesn’t seem to be the best nickname for a stuntwoman. I mean, who wants to be known for crashing?”
    Crash shook her head. “That’s not how I got my nickname. When I first started out in the stunt business, I did a lot of driving gags. I kind of specialized in crashing cars—on purpose, mind you.”
    Jill tried to imagine having a job like that, but she couldn’t wrap her head around it. Why would a reasonably sane person voluntarily risk life and limb every single day? Jill would have given anything to be healthy again, while Crash readily accepted being hurt, maybe even ending up in a wheelchair or possibly dying, every time she went to work. “How did you get into stunts?”
    â€œYou realize that’s a second question, don’t you? Does that mean I’ll get to ask you a second one too?”
    Shit. Jill’s mother had always told her that her curiosity would be her downfall one day. It seemed she’d been right after all. Or maybe not, because Jill’s biggest flaw wasn’t her curiosity—it was her inability to back down. She sighed. “All right.”
    â€œI’ve always been very athletic,” Crash said. “In my family, everything revolved around sports. My father is a football coach, and my mother used to be a gymnast. I started taking Taekwondo classes when I was seven; I was into horses, and I took pretty much every sport you can think of in high school. Everyone always thought I’d either