Rebel (The Renegades)

by Rebecca Yarros

That flush of color deepened as she turned to me. “I’m learning a new trick today, and so is Zoe.”

  I’d signed off on FMX practice, so I wasn’t surprised. “Okay, but you need baby bikes for it?”

  Pax laughed and slapped her on the back lightly. “Oh God, this is too much fun.”

  “Shut up,” she muttered toward him. “Currently I’m one of the only women in the world who can backflip a motocross bike.”

  “Right.”

  “Zoe would like to learn. So we brought in a minibike because she’ll need to get the flip first before we can add in the weight of a full-sized bike. She’s been working out, her muscles are building, and this is the first step. We have a foam pit to start with, so she won’t come to any harm, and I’m the best person to teach her.”

  My eyes narrowed. “You’ve also been lifting weights and doing two-a-days, if I’m not mistaken. What exactly will you be doing that requires that kind of buildup?”

  She sucked in a breath and raised her chin. Never a good sign when it came to this woman. “I’ll be learning how to do a double backflip.”

  “A double backflip.”

  “Right.”

  This was when my lack of experience was glaringly obvious. Jump out of a plane? Got it. BASE jump? No problem. Anything with a parachute and I was golden, but motorcycles? Unless it involved driving it from point A to point B, I was pretty damn clueless. I’d simply trusted that this was their realm and given her the benefit of the doubt.

  Obviously I’d fucked up.

  “And how many women in the world have ever successfully completed a double backflip?” I asked.

  From my peripheral, Pax looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself, but I didn’t take my eyes off Penelope.

  “Well, I would be the first.”

  My jaw snapped closed so fast that my teeth clicked. I sucked in a deep breath and told myself to react as her advisor and not her boyfriend. The fact that this powerhouse of a woman carried my heart within her body couldn’t play into this right now. Later…well, that was later.

  “Why is it that a woman hasn’t completed this trick?”

  “Well, typically the bike is too heavy, and the girls can’t get enough height or build up enough strength to get the bike around twice before they land,” Nick answered, having appeared out of nowhere.

  Or I’d just been too focused on Penelope to notice.

  I looked up at the massive ramp and the foam pit that lay just beyond it. “And what happens if you can’t pull the bike around for the second rotation?”

  “She lands on her head and snaps her neck,” Nick said with a shrug.

  Holy fucking shit, I was going to be sick. I’d seen battle wounds, held one of my friends as he died, and still I’d never felt the gut-shaking nausea that gripped me when I pictured that happening to my Penelope.

  “That’s not going to happen,” she snapped at Nick. “Stop trying to scare him. Dr. Delgado?”

  I pulled my eyes from the ramp to hers, trying to remember that in this arena I had no claim on her, no right to shake the shit out of her or kiss the stupidity from her beautiful, brilliant head. “Miss Carstairs?” I said as formally as I could manage.

  She winced, but not big enough for anyone else to notice. “That’s why we have the minibikes. Strength won’t be an issue today. Just the motion of the flip, and we have the nets and the pit to make sure we’re okay. This is about as safe as we get.”

  “Today.”

  “That’s all I’m asking you to sign off on right now. Today. Once you see that I can handle it, I’ll bring you a proposal with the next step.”

  “What’s going on?” Leah asked, looping her arm around Pax’s waist.

  “Penna just told Doc about the trick,” Wilder answered.

  “Oh? Ooooooh.”

  If we’d been in private, I would have let her have it. Would have let her into my head, where she was about to test the very limits of my sanity. But we were in public, so the best I could do was send a subtle glare in her direction.

  “Right, so, if that’s all, I’ll go get warmed up,” Penna said with a forced smile.

  The others scattered, and, as Penelope passed me, I whispered, “This conversation is not over.”

  “I figured as much,” she responded, then looked up at me. “But you have to trust me enough to know that this is my job. I know my limits. My friends know my limits. And yeah, I push them, but this is a safe environment, I promise.”

  “Yeah. Still not over.”

  “Noted,” she said, and walked off to gear up.

  I sank into the chair next to Little John, who was under a shaded canopy. The weather was steady in the high seventies, but the sun could still be brutal. “She told you?”

  He shook his head and stared me down. “She told me enough for me to know that you shouldn’t be doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “You’re her teacher.”

  I looked around to make sure the cameras were nowhere near. Of course we were left alone. We were just the stagehands, and the cameras were on the stars. “I wasn’t that night we met. I was just a guy in a bar, and she…she’s Penelope.”

  “You should have come clean to the school, to the other Renegades the moment you both realized it.”

  Thank you, Jiminy Cricket.

  “Yep, but we didn’t, and now we’re here. I should have been stronger. I should have told her no, but like I said, she’s Penelope.” I watched my woman walk over to the bikes with Zoe, clad head to toe in protective gear. “And I am apparently a weak man. God, is she really going to be all right?”

  Little John looked back and forth between us for a second before sighing. “Today she’ll be fine. She’s mostly refreshing and working on the mini. Don’t stress. And as for being weak, well…I know what it’s like to tell that girl no, and if what she wanted was you—is you—then you never stood a chance. I’m not sure Gandhi could resist Penna when she wants something. But I’ve never in my life seen her want a guy, which is why I haven’t outed you to the others.”

  “Thank you,” I said, loathing almost every choice I’d made. I hated being on the wrong side of any ethical issue, let alone one this big, but when it came to Penelope, there was no line I wouldn’t cross, no evil I wouldn’t commit to keep her.

  Because I was in love with her.

  Fuuuuuck. When had I let that happen? When I’d made love to her in Chile? When we’d fought in the classroom? When my anger at her was overcome by my sheer respect for her fearlessness? Even earlier, when she’d done dishes with me at Grandma’s house? Maybe it was even before that, on her birthday when I’d realized I couldn’t stay away from her, that she was a magnet and I was a compass, my north facing wherever she moved to.

  Or maybe it was from the beginning, when I’d stepped out of that Ferris wheel. Little John was right: I’d never stood a chance.

  “But I’ll tell you this,” he drawled on, and I tuned back in to the conversation. “If you ever hurt her, you won’t have to worry about Pax and the boys, because I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” He cracked the top off a soda like he hadn’t just threatened my life and started to drink.

  “You won’t ever have to worry about that. I’d move heaven and earth to keep that woman safe if she’d just let me.”

  Little John laughed. “And welcome to life with the Renegades.”

  …

  The morning passed in white-knuckled nausea as I watched Penelope first take the ramp with her full-size bike she called Elizabeth. She performed trick after trick to the applause of her friends.

  Every time she went airborne, my stomach dipped. Logically, I knew she was good—the best in the world in all actuality—but my heart wouldn’t shut the hell up, screaming that she could kill herself at any moment.

  This wasn’t one stunt that had been meticulously planned and executed once. No, this was hours and hours of prolonged torture with a hundred opportunities f
or her to get hurt.

  When she landed the single back flip perfectly, I split into two sides. The first swelled with pride that she was so fucking spectacular. The second screamed inwardly that she took such needless risks.

  They moved the giant pit into place with the help of four forklifts as Penelope worked with Zoe.

  “Why Zoe?” I asked as Leah took the chair next to me, the text I’d assigned for history in her lap.

  “Because she asked,” Leah answered. “Penna knows what it’s like to be a woman in a sport that doesn’t make a lot of room for them. So she puts the personal shit aside and helps.”

  “Personal shit?”

  “Zoe ties her value to her vagina,” Rachel answered standing next to me. “Penna doesn’t put up with that, but she’s willing to help her out of the hole she dug herself, so that says more about Penna’s character than anything.”

  I slowly brought my gaze around to Rachel’s, my eyes wide.

  “What?” she shrugged. “That girl is a piece of work.”

  “Dr. Delgado, may I ask you a question?” Leah opened her book.

  “Sure,” I answered, my stomach clenching in paranoia. Had I looked at Penelope too long? Smiled too wide? Had Leah put it all together?

  “Do you think that Eva Peron made Juan, or that it was more of a mutual rise?” Leah asked. “Sorry, I know it’s not office hours, I was just wondering.”

  Relief flooded me. School questions, I could handle. I almost laughed at how these two women could not be any different, yet they were two of Penna’s closest friends.

  “Okay, first,” I said to Rachel, “What? She’s maybe a little flirty, but—”

  “Rachel’s just pissed that Zoe shacked up with Landon while they were broken up for a couple years. Give her a break, Rach. You won. She lost.”

  Holy shit, it was like I was back in college, except I’d gone to college through night classes and online courses while I was in the military full-time, so I’d never had this level of drama to contend with.

  Completely ignoring everything that had just been said, I turned back to Leah. “Second, Eva Peron was a force of nature who I believe would have helped propel any man she wanted into office, but when coupled with Juan Peron’s military experience and general charisma, they were pretty much the power couple of Argentinian politics.” I looked back to where the woman I loved used her hands to explain something to Zoe as the three guys looked on. “But I will say that I don’t think Juan would have had a chance without her. He was the lucky one in that relationship.”

  I folded my hands in my lap and bit my tongue, choking back the bile as Penna began to work with the minibike, under-rotating the flip again and again into the foam pit, only to be pulled out by the crane they’d brought over.

  Leah looked up and glanced between where Penna failed another attempt and I held my face in my hands. “Don’t worry. She’ll get it. As for Zoe…” She sighed as Zoe landed on her back in the pit, the small bike on top of her. “She’s never had the same dedication as Penna, and these tricks are all about commitment once you’re in the air.”

  As the clock hit about three p.m., Penelope landed the first double rotation, hitting her tires into the pit. She came up with her fist raised, and the Originals rushed toward her, hugging and jumping.

  She looked over at me, and I wanted nothing more than to do the same, to wrap her in my arms and tell her how very proud of her I was even though she continually scared the shit out of me.

  The look that passed between us felt too intimate for public viewing, but I didn’t break eye contact until she did, our smiles soft and saying what we couldn’t.

  Rachel noticed, lifting an eyebrow at me but saying nothing as she walked off.

  Little John knew, and Rachel had suspected since the night of Penna’s birthday. We had to be more careful. We had only six weeks left until we docked, and I couldn’t afford to mess up now.

  Elisa couldn’t afford it.

  …

  “You haven’t said a thing to me since this morning,” Penelope said as she tossed her bag on the canopied bed of our beachfront bungalow.

  We were thirty miles outside the city in the quietest, most exclusive resort I could find. Things needed to be said, and we couldn’t chance ears or eyes. Plus, I wanted to hear her scream my name again.

  Private bungalow it was.

  “It’s because there’s so much to say that I really don’t know where I could possibly start,” I answered, dropping my bag next to my side of the bed.

  “You’re pissed about the trick.” She crossed her arms under her magnificent breasts, making them rise above the neckline of her pink sundress. Her hair was loose down her back, and, if I didn’t know that had been her under all that gear on the bike, I never would have guessed that Rebel was my Penelope.

  But she was.

  “I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me. That you let me walk in blind like an asshole.”

  “You signed off on practice. You never asked what tricks we’d be doing.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s true. And you know what else? If you were just my advisor, you wouldn’t be half as pissed. You’re not pissed at Rebel for not telling you, you’re mad at your girlfriend, and that’s what’s unfair.”

  “Hell yes, I’m pissed!” I growled, trying to keep my voice down. “How long have you been planning that?”

  “About three weeks,” she admitted, dropping my gaze.

  “And in those three weeks, in any of our time together, it never occurred to you to say, ‘hey, babe, I’m going to attempt something that might get me killed?’ Or did that just slip your mind for twenty-one days?”

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said softly.

  “I don’t really care. If this is the only time we have together to work this out, then we’re going to stand here and fight it out.”

  She bit her lip, and damn I wanted to kiss it free. All day I’d been fighting every instinct in my body that screamed to get my hands on her. I needed to feel her heartbeat, hear her breathing, see her come apart, know that she was really unharmed. Was I going to feel like this after every freestyle session she had? Fuck my life. I’d never survive it.

  “You cannot hide this shit from me,” I said, trying to maintain some semblance of calm. “Not as your advisor, not as your boyfriend. I’m not going to like everything you do, but you can’t blindside me like that.”

  “I’m sorry, but you don’t get a say.” She shook her head to emphasize her point.

  “I don’t what?”

  “You. Do. Not. Get. A. Say. You can approve our stunts because of some stupid-ass legal deal, but you don’t get a say in what I do with my body. That is my job, Cruz. That is what I’ve loved to do since I was seven years old, and you don’t get to bust into my life and suddenly decide that you are ruler supreme or get mad when I’m doing exactly what I did before you showed up.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Penelope! I’m not just mad, I’m terrified! How hard is that for you to understand? Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch someone you love pull the shit that you do? To know that they are more than aware of the danger and that’s why they didn’t tell you? That’s not partnership, that’s treating me like I’m inferior. At least if I’d known what you were going to do, I could have resigned myself to it more than five minutes before you put on the gear.”

  “What did you say?” her voice was soft, incredulous.

  I raked my hands through my hair, tugging in frustration. “I said that you scare the ever-loving shit out of me, and you can’t seem to understand that I’m having a hard time processing that.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “No, after that.”

  “That you don’t trust me enough to tell me what the hell you’re up to?” I flinched. Shit. I was the pot calling the kettle black here. I hadn’t told her anything about Elisa. Not in all the time we’d had together.

  Who had two thumbs and was a huge hypocr
ite? This guy.

  But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that. Telling her may have opened my careful plan up to mistakes, and the bottom line was that it put Penelope in real danger, and I wasn’t willing to risk it. Even for Elisa.

  “You know what? I’m going to step outside for a moment. I honestly think this argument has made its point. I’m pissed you didn’t tell me. You don’t think I have a say, and maybe you’re right. We’re kind of at an impasse, so let’s just cool off.”

  I turned, kicked off my shoes and socks, and walked out of our bungalow through the sliding glass door. The area just outside was shaded by tropical trees, but once I stepped onto our private section of beach, the sand was perfectly warm between my toes. I walked a few yards away to a cave-like grouping of boulders and leaned against the sun-warmed stone.

  I had to tell her about Elisa. I couldn’t keep it from her anymore, but the risk…all of it was on me. I was the one who would get fired if we were caught. I was the one whose sister wouldn’t get to college if I failed, or worse if my father found out what we were up to. I was the one who was in love with Penelope, not the other way around.

  When it came to risk in life, Penna might be the one on the ramp, but I was the one without the helmet.

  I watched the waves from the Atlantic Ocean come ashore in gentle pulses. The sound was soothing when my brain was such a fucked-up place to be. Closing my eyes, I let the rhythmic crash of the water fill my head, washing away everything else. When I opened them, Penelope stood in front of me.

  “Hey.” No matter how mad or how scared I’d been, I was ass over head in love with this woman.

  “You love me?” she asked quietly, a slight lift to her voice at the end.

  Had she just been in my head? “What?”

  She licked her lips nervously and then raised her chin. “Inside, you said that I didn’t know what it was like to watch someone I love pull the shit that I do. Did you mean it? Do you love me?”

  Well, guess I let that slip. Smooth, Cruz. Real romantic right there.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’m in love with you, Penelope. How could I not be? Look at you. You are everything. Beautiful, bold, brilliant, kind. Everything I’ve ever wanted.”