by Elle Casey
I grab it off my finger and hold it out for her. “Take it. I don’t want it.”
She removes the ring from my hand while staring me down. “All right. Tell me what’s going on in your little pea brain right now.”
“Nothing. I just don’t want the ring.”
“Maybe you don’t want the boyfriend either.” She’s staring me down as she says it.
“Whatever.” I can’t look at her, so I stare at the ceiling, then the wall, and finally the window.
“Listen … I get that you’re scared of commitment. Who wouldn’t be, especially after your track record?”
I forget the window and glare at her. “Are you serious? You’re coming in here giving me shit about my love life after I was nearly killed?”
She frowns for a few seconds before answering. “Maybe. Is that bad?”
I close my eyes and speak as calmly as I can. “Quin, I just need to rest, okay?” My voice goes a little trembly at the end, foiling my plan to get her to exit from the room. She sees any weakness and she knows she’s almost won. Now I’m doomed.
She takes my hand in hers and pats it. “Babe, I’m here for you. Talk to me. I can see you’re freaking out and trying to keep it all in. You don’t have to do that, you know. I’m your friend. I’ll never hurt you. Not on purpose, I mean. What I said today was a total dick move, I know that. I’m really, really sorry I said it. He was your dad and I know you cared about him even though he was not dad-of-the-year material.”
I can’t respond. I’m working too hard at holding back tears.
“Rebel is a seriously good guy. He really likes you, you know. And his brothers do too.”
A tear escapes and runs down my cheek. I can’t talk or I know I’ll crumble into a mess of emotions I’m not ready to deal with right now. It’s too much.
“Does that make you sad?”
She sounds so sweet and worried, I can’t stay silent any longer. “Yes, it makes me sad.” I finally open my eyes. “All of this makes me sad. Can you blame me?”
“No.”
My plan to say only the bare minimum to get her to leave flies out the window as words I didn’t even know I was harboring tumble out of my mouth.
“First my dad dies leaving me with nothing, then he sends me this fucking car that is some sort of giant clue that he’s died in the middle of exposing some bullshit at work, so now I get to sit here and worry that he didn’t die in his forties of a heart attack but maybe he was poisoned or some shit like that while some assturds are running around throwing me in cars and threatening to kill me. And on top of all that, I’m crushing on my boss and he tells me he’s into me and everything seems fine, but I can’t handle it!” I’m yelling by the end of my diatribe.
“I hear ya,” Quin says, nodding. “It’s a lot to deal with.”
“A lot to deal with? Talk about an understatement.”
“Yep. Understatement.” She’s still nodding.
“It’s fucking ridiculous is what it is!” I screech.
“Amen to that. Ridiculous. All the way.”
I yank my hand away from hers. “Would you quit agreeing with me like that?! I feel like I’m at a revival or something!”
She stands and slaps her hands on her hips. “Fine! You want me to stop agreeing? I’ll stop agreeing, then.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re wrong about Rebel. You can handle him. You can handle all of this.”
“Shut up.”
“No. You shut up, and for once in your life, listen to me. Here’s what has to happen: you have to call the cops. You have to tell them what happened, you have to give them that car USB drive, and you have to go after your step-mother and her brother with the fury of a thousand suns. They took your dad away, and you are not going to let them get away with it.” She holds up her hand to stop me from responding. “Even if they didn’t do something directly to end your dad’s life, they contributed to it by causing him to get a heart attack from the stress. You cannot let them get away with that. And if you think you can, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. I won’t let you back down.” She shrugs, letting her arms drop to her sides. “Done deal. No going back. This is happening.”
My mouth dropped open halfway through her lecture and now my bottom jaw is sliding to the right, disjointed by annoyance. I can’t think of what to say in response. I’m warring with myself over how to manage her.
What pisses me off most is the fact that she’s right. She’s one hundred percent right, at least about my father’s company and those a-holes that are behind those spreadsheets he sent me. The question is whether I’m the person who can or should do anything about it. To be that person, I have to face not only a lot of my past history that I’ve spent years avoiding but also a very uncertain but definitely complicated future.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, folding her arms again. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“It’s not up to you.”
“Please. I’m your best and only friend not to mention your family now too. If I say jump and I mean it, you have to say how high.”
“You’re on crack.”
“No.” She pulls the chair closer and sits in it, leaning over to stare at me like a lunatic. “I am your soul sister. I look out for you like you look out for me. Remember that time Chelsea McStevens said I was a skanky ho, and you got up in her face and told her all about herself?”
“Yes. How could I forget?” I can’t help but smile at the memory. I was a superhero that day.
“And remember how when Perry was telling everyone that you gave him a BJ in the laundry room? And I told everyone it wasn’t true, that you would never blow an asscar driver?”
My face screws up in disgust. “No! When did that happen?”
She waves my concern away with a flick of her hand. “Never mind. It happened. I was awesome. And you want to know why we do that? Why we stick up for each other?”
“Because we’re friends?”
“Yes. And because we are the kind of people who do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t let lies happen. We don’t let people get away with hurting us. United we stand, babe …” She holds up the palm of her hand.
After a few seconds of useless resistance, I put mine against hers. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, about to jump. “Divided we fall,” I say, smiling nervously through my pain and fear and general unease with this whole situation.
She grips my hand with her fingers and shakes it around a little. “See? That wasn’t too hard was it?”
“That was the easy part,” I say, pulling my hand back. The needle in my vein is annoying me and all I want to do right now it rip it out. Lying here doing nothing suddenly feels like a really bad idea.
She hands me her phone. “Call the cops. Just dial nine-one-one and we’ll get this party started.”
The door to the room opens and Rebel sticks his head in. “Cops are here to talk to you.”
I try to use my expression to apologize for being rude to him, but he’s gone too fast to see it. I turn my head to look at Quin.
Her eyes are bugging out of her head. “Whoa. Your destiny is calling.”
“What?”
She grins. “Cops are here and we didn’t even have to call them first. That means you’re doing the right thing. Destiny, right path, meant to be, all that jazzle.”
I roll my eyes. “No, it means that the doctor or nurses called them because I told them I got hurt while being kidnapped.”
“Whatever.” Quin stands. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
She’s almost out of the room before I stop her. “Quin?”
“Yeah?” She looks over her shoulder at me.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.” She grins and it lights up the whole room.
“And …” My face turns red with embarrassment and possibly fear.
“Yes?”
“If Rebel … if he wants to … can you ask him …�
��
“You want him in here?” she asks, her eyes going soft.
“Only if he wants to be.”
She leaves and two police officers come in.
Over the next hour, I tell them my story five times without tears, even though inside I’m crumbling into pieces over the pain of knowing that Rebel has chosen not to be with me when I need his support most.
When the cops finally leave the room, I fall asleep in exhaustion, welcoming the nightmares that wait with open arms.
This is my life.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I WAS HOPING THE DOCTORS would say I have to stay for a week, but no such luck. Twenty-four hours and I’m being booted out. Not having any insurance probably isn’t helping my diagnosis of a mild concussion. The bitter part of me is convinced that if I had insurance I’d suddenly have a fractured skull showing up on my x-rays.
Quin is waiting for me just outside my door and follows the nurse down to the front of the hospital as I’m escorted out in a wheelchair. Lord knows they wouldn’t want me passing out in the hallway and getting more hurt on their property on their dime.
I scowl the entire way until I see the car waiting for me in the valet area. Quin is grinning like a mad woman as the nurse bends down to put the brakes on my wheels.
“Rebel’s here,” I say softly, standing in front of my wheelchair. My heart does a triple flip and my face is burning over just seeing the shiny black paint job of his car. Overnight I’d convinced myself that I’d imagined our love affair, that it was very possibly some weird hallucination brought on by my cranial trauma. But seeing him here brings back a wave of emotions that can’t possibly be fake or imagined. He owns me, heart and soul. I’m so afraid he’s going to crush me.
When he gets out of the car and stands, it makes me want to run. I’m not sure exactly which direction though - either into his arms or back into the hospital. I stand still, waiting for him to come to me.
As he steps up, Quin fades into the background.
“Hey,” he says, stopping in front of me.
“Hey,” I say back, pressing my lips together. They tremble with my efforts to stay cool.
“Can I give you a lift?”
My lower jaw juts out. “I don’t know.”
“I’d like to.” His gaze remains steady, his steel blue eyes penetrating my cold exterior.
I try to hold onto my stubbornness. I want him to have an out if that’s what he wants. “Are you sure? Because I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
He steps up closer and looks down at me, raising his hands and pressing them gently against my cheeks. “Taking care of you could never be an obligation. It’s a privilege. I’d like to take you home.”
And just like that, he breaks down my walls. Tears well up and spill over onto his hands. “I don’t have a home.”
“Bullshit. Come on.” He bends down and kisses me once on the lips before letting me go. His hand slides down to my lower back as he guides me over to the passenger side of the car.
“GTO,” I say as he opens the door, proud that I can recognize a nice muscle car by model name now.
“You know it, babe.”
I get in, careful not to jiggle my head around too much. Resting it against the seat as he buckles me in and shuts the door, I contemplate my near future.
Rebel didn’t abandon me. And me being a bitch hasn’t put him off being my boyfriend either. And now, besides all that, he’s offering me a place to live. Maybe.
I take in a deep breath and let it out really slowly, trying to center myself. One day at a time, Teagan. Take it easy. Life doesn’t have to suck. It can be good sometimes too.
“You okay, babe?” Quin’s face is in my window. Her voice is muffled by the glass between us.
I nod a tiny bit. “Yeah.”
“I’m going to leave you with Rebel. I’ll come over tomorrow to check on you, okay?”
“Okay.” I close my eyes, gritting my teeth against the pain of Rebel getting in and rocking the car by slamming his door shut.
His hand closes over mine as he starts the car and drives off.
I listen to the deep rumbling of the car’s engine, letting it put me partially to sleep on the way back to Rebel Wheels. For once I’m glad Rebel is a man of few words. By the time we pull into the parking lot, I’ve got my heart beating nice and even and the headache is just a dull ache in the back of my brain.
“Wait here,” he says.
I watch him get out of the car and jog around to my side, opening my door. It’s the most hurried pace I’ve ever seen him use, and it makes me go all funny inside knowing he’s so worried about me. I feel special, and I cannot remember the last time I felt that way.
He scoops me up and carries me to the door.
It opens from the inside, and Colin is there waiting for us. “Need help?” he asks, looking first at his brother and then at me.
“Get the door,” Rebel says, gesturing with his chin.
Colin goes ahead of us, opening and closing doors behind us as Rebel carries me up to his apartment.
“You don’t have to baby me,” I say, feeling a little silly about being carried up the stairs.
“Yes, he does,” says Colin, holding the apartment door open for us. “You’re his girl.”
I don’t know what to say to that, but it doesn’t matter, because even if I did, the words probably wouldn’t come out anyway. My heart is swollen with joy to twice its normal size. Rebel didn’t argue with his brother. I pray that it means he agrees. As corny as it sounds, I really want to be Rebel’s girl.
Mick is inside the apartment, placing a blanket down over the couch cushions. “Hey,” he says, dropping it and coming over. “Teagan, how’re you feeling?”
Rebel stands still, allowing his brothers to gather around me as I rest in his arms.
“I’m fine.” I look at each of their faces, taking in the concern there and their protective stances. I feel like I have a wall of muscle and care surrounding me. “Geez, you guys. Let a girl breathe.” I giggle a little awkwardly, not knowing how to handle all the attention.
Mick backs up a little and so does Colin, but neither of them stops staring.
Rebel lowers my legs but keeps his arm on my back. “Come on. Lie down on the couch.”
“I’ll get you some water,” says Mick, skipping out of the room.
“How about a wash cloth?” asks Colin, disappearing into the bathroom.
Rebel places me gently on the couch and sits down opposite me on the coffee table. He brushes my hair off my face as he stares into my eyes.
“What is wrong with you guys?” I ask, partially laughing, but also mystified with their reactions to my homecoming.
He gives me a kind of sad half-smile. “I think we’re all traveling down memory lane together right now.”
“What happened?” I swallow with difficulty, a lump appearing in my throat out of nowhere. I have a very strong feeling this isn’t going to be good.
“We had a sister. It was a long time ago, when we were all teenagers.”
“What happened to her?” I ask. I haven’t seen any pictures of her in the apartment that I can remember.
Rebel lifts his gaze to the windows behind the couch. A tortured expression crosses his face. “She got beat up once.”
“Once? Was it bad?”
He nods absently. Then he drops his gaze to me again. “She didn’t make it.”
I reach my hand out and touch his arm. “I’m so sorry.” I cry because I can’t help it. He looks miserable, and even though I have no idea who this girl was or what she looked like, I can just picture the three of them crying over a young girl’s grave, feeling powerless.
For guys like them, it can’t have been easy. It explains a lot, actually - the anger, the silence, the getting into trouble for no reason. They’re all hurting, and it makes me want to be stronger for them. I think it’s in that moment that my mother-instinct wakes up and becomes a permanent part of me.
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br /> He grits his teeth and his jaw muscle tenses over and over as he stares out the window.
When Mick comes out with a glass of water, Rebel finally speaks. “It was a long time ago, but none of us will ever get over it.”
“Never,” says Mick, holding the glass out for me.
I sit up and take it from him because there’s no way in hell I’m not going to respond to the pain I sense coming from all of them. To reject Mick’s water would be like ignoring what happened to them, acting like it doesn’t matter anymore.
I gulp the liquid down, knowing that somehow I’ve tripped into a whole other world, a whole other life. It scares me, but at the same time I feel like I belong here. I’m not their sister or the girl who they lost a long time ago, but I matter. I’m not just a nobody anymore, and maybe they actually need me here. Maybe I can make their lives a tiny bit better.
As I lie back down, Colin comes over and places a folded-up wet washcloth on my head.
“Thanks, guys,” I say, giving them a watery smile. “I feel much better already.”
“What else can we do?” Mick asks.
“Yeah, say the word,” Colin adds. “Anything.”
“You can clean the hallway up,” says Rebel, staring at me for a second and then at Mick.
“Aw, man. I knew I was going to get stuck with that shit.”
“You want her to do it?” Rebel asks, his tone strong.
Mick throws his hands up. “No. Geez, lighten up, man. Try decaf.” He leaves the room, but not before flashing me a devious grin. He knows exactly what he’s doing with his older brother. I’m so going to love baiting Rebel with him later when I don’t have a headache anymore.
“I told Dickson I’d go over to the station and give them a statement,” says Colin.
“Good, you do that,” Rebel says, bumping knuckles with Colin as he walks towards the door.
When we’re finally alone, Rebel shifts over to sit on the couch at my side. After re-adjusting the washcloth on my forehead he leans down and kisses me softly on the lips. I reach up to hold him around the neck but he resists me, sitting up.