Rebel (The Renegades)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “You can tell me.”

  There it was. Pax, Landon, Leah, Rachel…they all belonged to one another. Coupled off, but still part of the whole. Cruz was mine only. His loyalty was to me, and not to the Renegades. It was mind-blowing to be someone’s priority.

  “She won’t even talk to me,” I whispered. “My best friend. I keep making all these excuses for her—for my parents letting her hide behind those walls like I’m some kind of threat to her recovery. I’m the one she nearly killed. I’m the one who spent months in that cast, and yet I’m the danger. I’m the outcast because I drove her to what she did.”

  He lay next to me and reached for my hand. “You didn’t.”

  “Didn’t I? I’m the one who met Pax and Landon, eventually introduced her to Nick…and then Patrick. She should have been at ballet, or football games, or anywhere else. Instead she was at a skate park with me, or at Renegade Ranch.”

  “All her choices.”

  “Should I have left? When everything happened in Dubai? Should I have gone home? Helped her? Yelled at her? Maybe, but all I could think was that I wanted to be around family, and for me…they’re all here.”

  “You made the choice that was right for you at the time, and doubting it now doesn’t change the fact that it was right when you made it. You needed these guys.”

  “But I needed her, too,” I whispered. My eyes blurred as a tear escaped, tracking to the pillow as I rolled to look at Cruz. “I couldn’t tell them that, not after everything she’d done. Even after I almost died, after what happened to Pax, to Leah…I still miss her every day.”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “She betrayed me. Betrayed us all.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you don’t still love her. You’re allowed to love her, Penelope. It’s one of the things I love most about you—your capacity for acceptance and forgiveness.”

  “But I don’t forgive her.” I whispered my darkest secret. “I love her. I miss her, but I don’t forgive her. How can I when I don’t understand, when she won’t tell me?”

  “That’s a choice you’re going to have to make now. That’s what this all is: a sequence of choices. You have to step back and decide if you’re going to let what your sister did change you—take away this sport you love so much.”

  “What if it already did?”

  His smile was beautiful. “It didn’t. I saw you up there. The drive. The determination. The process of it all. You are a Renegade through and through. That need for adrenaline, to prove yourself, to be the best—it’s all still there under that layer of doubt that you let Brooke put there, and that’s your choice. Just like you decide right now if you’ll let this incident with Zoe put another layer on, or if you’ll see it for what it was—a stupid choice by an overly ambitious girl. Neither of their choices change who you are unless you let them, and you are still Rebel.”

  “How can you be so sure when I’m not?”

  “That’s why you have me—to show you the parts of yourself that you can no longer see.”

  God, I loved him. Wholehearted, full-soul, forever kind of love. I was completely wrong for him, not just in our five-year age difference but in my profession. Cruz was built to protect, to stand between his woman and any danger that might find her. I was the girl who frequently called danger to the playground and challenged it to a game of chicken. But that didn’t stop me from loving him, from recognizing the gift he was.

  “Are you sorry you fell in love with me?”

  “There’s nothing you could do that would ever make me sorry for loving you, Penelope. Now rest. We’ll check on Zoe in a little bit.”

  “Rachel knows about us now.” I burrowed closer to him until I could hear his heartbeat beneath my ear.

  “Yeah, I would assume she does.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Pray that you know her as well as you think you do,” he said as I drifted off.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cruz

  Rio di Janeiro

  I closed the door softly, hoping Penelope would rest.

  This afternoon had easily shaved a decade off my life. When Lindsay burst into the department meeting, crying and blubbering, it had taken me a good five minutes to calm her down enough to get the story out of her.

  But nothing had prepared me for the sight of Penelope covered in blood, her clothes torn and messy, her shirt not even hers. I’d reacted in a primal way I’d never experienced before…and put us in a shit ton of danger because I couldn’t control my emotions.

  Speaking of which, Rachel sat at the dining room table, a Corona in hand while she studied.

  “Beer?” she offered.

  I walked the short distance to the table and gripped the back of one of the chairs. “I can’t really drink with students.”

  “But you can fuck one?” she shot, her eyes devoid of emotion.

  Ouch. “Let’s keep the ethical lines I cross to the bare minimum, okay?”

  She shook her head. “I knew something was up. The first time—back on her birthday. Shit, if I’d paid attention, probably in class. When did it start? Did you ask her to stay after class?”

  Damn, and I thought Penelope was a handful. I in no way envied Landon.

  “I don’t owe you anything, Rachel. But I do owe Penelope everything, so I will tell you two things about us. The rest, you’ll have to get from her. First, I met her in Vegas before we ever boarded the ship.”

  Her eyes flew wide, and I had to give myself a mental high-five for rendering her speechless.

  “Not everything is as clean-cut as you think. Should I be with her? Absolutely not. But she is a force of nature that I can’t…” I dropped my gaze to my hands while I struggled to find words that could do justice to Penelope. There were none. “Look. I won’t ask you to lie for us. I don’t drag other people into my shitstorms. But I will ask that you talk to Penelope first. I cleaned her up, and she’s got fresh bandages. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls and check on Zoe.”

  “She’s in surgery,” Rachel said. “Little John sent a message after he got to the hospital. She nicked the artery in her thigh, and they’re repairing it. Broken leg, of course, and a few broken ribs, too, but she’ll be okay.”

  My shoulders drooped with the rush of relief. “Good. Penelope is asleep, and she really needs her rest, so tell her to find me when she wakes up, please?”

  “So now I’m your messenger?”

  “No, you’re her friend, and she’s hurt,” I snapped.

  Guilt flashed in her eyes. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  I was halfway out the door when she called my name. “Doc?”

  “Rachel?”

  “You said you’d tell me two things. That was only one.”

  I looked at the girl who had the power to destroy everything I’d been working ten years for, and gambled. Penelope trusted her, and I trusted Penelope.

  “I love her. It’s not a fling. She’s not just a phase or something to pass the time. I would give everything for her.” I have given everything. “So you can look at me like I’m the enemy, because maybe in some way I am, but I also know that there’s no one in this world who can love her like I do.”

  I watched the debate play over her face. It would take one call to the dean and I’d be off the ship. I would never get another teaching job. Elisa would never go to Harvard—she’d eventually die just like our mother.

  “You really love her?” she asked softly.

  “More than my very life.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Gotcha.”

  I nodded and walked to the door. As I opened it to leave, Lindsay had her hand poised to knock.

  “Cruz! Sorry, you surprised me.” She looked back at the room number. “This is the girls’ room, right? I’m not on the wrong deck?”

  “Nope, this is their room,” I said, trying to keep my smile loose. Guess I was about to find out if Rachel was going to out us or not.

  “Oh, g
ood. I was just stopping to check on Penna.”

  “I was doing the same. Come on in. She’s sleeping, but you can talk to Rachel.” I opened the door, and she came into the suite, glancing at Penna’s closed door before reaching Rachel at the table.

  Rachel glanced between us for a moment, and I waited for her deliberation.

  “Hey, Dr. Gibson. Beer? Dr. Delgado already turned me down.”

  Lindsay laughed. “No, no. Are you sure you should be…?” She gestured to the bottle.

  “Well, I’m twenty-one, in my own room, and I’ve had a shit day, so I’m going to go ahead and say yes.”

  “Point taken. Penna’s sleeping?”

  God bless Rachel, she didn’t bat an eye or look at me.

  “Yep. She’s okay. Cleaned up, bandaged, and resting like the doc ordered.”

  Lindsay nodded. “I wanted to tell her that I’m sorry. I was in charge—”

  “No you weren’t,” Rachel said, leaning back in her chair. “You may have been in the advisor seat, but you weren’t in charge. In that moment, Zoe was in charge of herself. Renegades tend to do what they want, when they want, and any illusion of control you have is just that. Landon, Pax”—she glanced at me—“even Penna. They all do stuff they’re not supposed to do. That’s how they made a name for themselves. So don’t feel guilty. You had zero chance of stopping her.”

  She looked up at me.

  “None of us had a chance of stopping her.”

  …

  “She’s fucking insane,” Nick said as he parked next to me.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, sitting back on the picnic table. “Not sure why I thought she’d rest up for a week or so.”

  “I wasn’t sure she’d get back out here.”

  I watched Penelope talk to Landon, already balanced on her full-size Elizabeth, nodding her head as Paxton joined in.

  “I was. This is who she is.”

  He shot me a puzzled look, and I shrugged. Stop fucking up all over the place, please. At this rate I may as well walk into the dean’s office and tender my resignation.

  But there was Elisa to consider.

  “How the hell did you guys get this set up, by the way? These ramps don’t exactly look easy to move.”

  “They’re not.” Nick laughed. “I called in some favors from the guys who own this park and the ones who owned the last one. Add to that the money Pax was willing to drop from the Renegade budget to get Rebel back on that bike, and here we are.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “The Renegade Open in Cuba. Usually you’d have to qualify to get in. I gave them each one guy from their organizations who could enter without qualifying.” His eyes narrowed toward Penelope and the others. “What the hell are they telling her?” he mumbled and took off to join the conversation.

  Rachel took a seat next to me on the table, and I inwardly cringed. It had only been twenty-four hours, but the girl felt like Robespierre, and I was at the guillotine.

  “Heads up, these first few runs are going to be the hardest to watch,” she said.

  “There’s a giant foam pit.”

  “Which doesn’t protect her if the bike comes down on top of her. This isn’t a mini. That’s two hundred and twenty pounds of angry motorcycle. She’ll be fine, it’s nothing she hasn’t gone through already, but unless you’ve sat through something like this before, it’s kind of brutal.”

  “But she’ll be okay?”

  She studied my face for a moment before facing forward again. “As okay as she’s ever going to be. You didn’t exactly choose a tame one.”

  A quick glance told me the cameras were all busy capturing every aspect of Penelope, or what they could see of her under all that gear.

  “She talked to you?” I asked quietly.

  “If by talk you mean told me that it was none of my damn business. Oh, she also added that I’m sworn to secrecy because she kept my relationship with Landon a secret for so long. Excellent play of the guilt card by Miss Carstairs.”

  “You kept your relationship a secret, too?” What I wouldn’t give to be out in the open with Penelope. A few more weeks, that was all we needed.

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I was dating Wilder at the time, so…I guess you’re not the only one to cross ethical lines around here.”

  “Jesus. You, Wilder, Landon, Brooke, and Nick—it’s like an incestuous CW drama around here.”

  “Pretty much. Point is that I’ll keep your secret, and not because you love her, but because she loves you, and I think you are the one responsible for bringing her back to the land of the living.”

  My relief was short-lived as Penelope started her bike and rode down to the end of the track. Knowing what would come next, my heart rate skyrocketed.

  That goddamned ramp still had Zoe’s blood on it.

  “She just needed someone to listen.”

  “I would have listened,” she mumbled.

  I weighed my options and made a choice.

  “Do you have siblings?”

  “No. I’m an only child.”

  “Pax and Landon?”

  “Landon is an only child, but Pax has an older brother.”

  “Then he might be the only one who can understand what she’s going through. I have a sister whom I love so much that I’m willing to give up almost anything for her. Penelope is the same—and I think perhaps a few of you have forgotten that in the last few months.”

  “She misses Brooke,” Rachel whispered, like it had never dawned on her.

  “With the force of a thousand nuclear weapons.”

  “Oh God. We’re so blind.”

  Penelope came barreling down the track, and I started rocking back and forth. She hit the ramp and flew impossibly high, pulling the bike into one turn, then a second— “Shit.”

  Midway through the second turn, she lost the bike and came crashing back to the earth. She landed in one end of the foam pit while her bike hit the other, and I heard her swearing from over here.

  “She’s fine,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah, glad she is. I was less nervous on house-to-house raids in Afghanistan.”

  “It’s one thing to risk your life. Handing your heart to someone else and watching them toss it around in the air for fun? That’s a whole different ball game.”

  I sighed and settled back on the table, trying to brace myself for about thirty upcoming heart attacks.

  “What wouldn’t you give up?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you’d give up almost anything for your sister. What wouldn’t you give up? Is there a measurement there?”

  Penelope climbed out of the foam pit as her bike was lifted by the giant crane Little John piloted, and I grinned at how pissed she looked. I’d take pissed over crying any day.

  “Yeah, there is. I’d give my own life for Elisa, but I wouldn’t give up Penelope. She’s the measurement of everything in my life.”

  Rachel nodded. “Good answer. I might just like you after all this.”

  I laughed, but it was short-lived.

  Penelope ran that ramp again and again until she landed the bike in the pit. Landed, meaning she came down on the bike…just not necessarily with her wheels under her.

  By lunch, I was ready to demolish the damn bike.

  Penelope unsnapped her helmet, ripped off her pink bandana, and cursed fluently as she pulled her hair up high on her head.

  “You’ve also got about a hundred pounds on me, Pax,” she snapped, and I got the fuck out of her way as she walked by.

  But she subtly brushed my hand, which sent bolts of lightning through me.

  “How is your side?” I asked as she put her helmet on the table.

  “Fine.”

  “Penelope?” I lowered my voice to a growl, noting that we had about twenty feet on the camera team.

  “It fucking hurts, and that’s not going to change.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows shot up and she mouthed, “good luck,” to me be
fore hopping off the table.

  “Oh no. You take her back to that little tent they set up and change her bandages,” I ordered Rachel.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re one day post-accident and acting like nothing happened, so why don’t we both cut the bullshit and agree that you’re anything but fine, shall we?”

  She turned to me, crossing her arms over her chest and leveling me with a glare. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, this should be good,” Landon said, flanking Pax as they walked over to the table.

  Paxton waved off the camera, and they backed away. Probably got more than enough footage yesterday.

  “I said, go change your bandages.” I picked up the kit Little John had put together and offered it to her.

  “And I said I’m fine.”

  I handed the kit to Rachel. “Go with her, and get your damn bandages changed, Penelope!”

  “Or what?” she snapped.

  I stalked forward until we were about twelve inches apart—barely outside the lines of propriety. “Or I cancel your practice for the rest of the day.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  Renegades tend to do what they want, when they want, and any illusion of control you have is just that. Rachel’s words from yesterday ran through my head.

  “After what happened yesterday, I most certainly would. Now you can be stubborn and fight with me right here for the rest of the afternoon, or you can go with Rachel, get your bandages changed, and go back to trying to kill yourself up there. It’s absolutely your choice.”

  We stood there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the other to back down. I would win—I was far more patient, and she had more to lose.

  “Who needs TV? This is awesome,” Landon said.

  At least six heads turned to glare at him, but Penna and I stood locked in a battle of control, concern, and compromise. She had to learn to give an inch, to trust me just a little, or we had zero shot at this thing once we were off the boat. I wasn’t some pushover she could tread on, and while I’d never hold her back, I’d put my damn foot down when she was doing more harm than good.

  “Ugh! Fine!” She stomped off, and Rachel followed.

  “Damn,” Pax said, slapping me on the back. “Glad we chose you, because she would have flipped us the bird and told us to fuck off.”