The Mysterious Benefactor

By Lydia Westing

Leather and Lace is a collection of romantic short stories from Bryant Street Shorts. We recommend starting with "The New Girl," the first story in this series, and then reading the rest in order. To find more stories in this series, simply scroll to “Titles In This Series,” located just below this description.

About Leather and Lace

The Ruby City Roller Girls are a small Midwestern roller derby team previously ranked 250 in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, but a new coach and a fresh batch of players gives the team the opportunity to go all the way to playoffs. Will the small team achieve big things this season? Or will they get too distracted by all of the fun, flings, and real romances they experience along the way?

Grace was kicked out of her extremely religious family when she decided to flee her loveless engagement to go to college. Isolated from her large family by her parent’s anger, she found herself drawn into a new sisterhood, The Ruby City Rollers. On the day she officially makes the team, she also finds herself drawn through circumstance closer to the cute ref she’s had a crush on forever.

About Bryant Street Shorts

Bryant Street Shorts is a new publisher specializing in exciting short-form fiction from talented and emerging writers. We’re passionate about creating immersive works that represent our readers and celebrate what matters to them, which is why our catalog of stories reflects a wide range of experiences and voices.

Many Bryant Street Shorts are collections of stories that follow ensembles of characters across multiple storylines. We suggest reading these stories in order to get the most out of your experience. Simply scroll down to “Titles In This Series,” located just below the description of every Bryant Street Short, to find the stories in their correct order.

To find more short stories and novellas on Scribd, simply search for “Bryant Street Shorts."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094409023

Lydia Westing

Lydia Westing is usually a comedy and pop-culture writer for websites like Reductress, Bunny Ears, Cracked, and The Modern Rogue. She has a small dog and a large husband, and they all live together in Nashville, Tennessee. She played roller derby for several different teams on and off for over five years. She’s much better at writing than she ever was at roller derby.

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The Mysterious Benefactor

It’s rare for a woman to look in the mirror and like what she sees. We’re trained to pick up on the most minor flaws and imperfections and, like a heat-seeking missile, search out the correct cream or mask or pill to correct them. Allana had lived like that for a long time, but then she became Xblox. Her body became a weapon. Her big hips and wide ass brushed problems off the track like they were nothing.

Xblox was fearless. And after a few years of playing as Xblox, Allana became pretty fearless too.

She’d always been an outcast; whether it was because of her plus-size frame, her Korean heritage, her bisexuality, or her reputation as a Gamer Girl, people seemed to be able to find an abundance of reasons to exclude her. It had made her kind of a prickly person. She knew she wasn’t always the easiest to be around.

Allana had never found a place where she fit in perfectly, but the derby community was the closest she’d come so far. There were plenty of big girls in derby, and their bodies were an asset. She’d been skating with Ruby City for five years now and had gained a modicum