Wild Rebel

by Laurelin Paige

  I wasn’t feeling that bitter at the moment.

  She squinted her eyes and studied me all the same. “Okay, I see it. You’re...intimidating.”

  “Damn right I am. I’m also good at orchestrating people, it seems, so I moved up from heavy to management, and that’s where I met Donovan.”

  “He was working management in illegal art? Or was he buying it?”

  This was a detail I’d never been able to quite hammer out. “Not quite sure what his role was. Nate hooked us up. He’s one of the other Reach owners. He was dealing art at the time, and when I got bumped up to the more civilized level of the business, our paths would cross now and again. Sometimes we’d go out drinking, get in trouble, or whatever, and this one night he brought along Donovan. Rich motherfucker, fresh out of Harvard with his MBA and fascinated with business strategy and structure, no matter what the field. Nate and I spent all night telling him about our jobs. Which was really bad judgment. We were lucky he wasn’t an undercover because we told him everything.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  I shrugged. “A lot of drugs and alcohol. And also Donovan has a way, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed.”

  Her tone made my chest tight with jealousy, and I both wanted to drill her about all the things she’d “noticed” about my asshole friend and also drive straight to the office and show Donovan “the look” and also maybe kick him in the nuts.

  After a calming breath, I could live with doing neither. “It was a good thing we told him, in the end, because we impressed him. He told us both that he wanted to put something together eventually, some sort of business, and said he’d be back in a few years with an offer. Promised he’d have something to get me out of the States. Nate blew him off—he was too happy making money the way he was, though if you ask him about it now, he doesn’t even remember the conversation. I thought it sounded like a nice way to eventually retire, and if he could get me someplace foreign, all the better. I still had a bunch of loans—I was making good money, but you don’t want to pay off anything all in one bunch like that if the income isn’t going to be reported on your taxes—but I was able to get them deferred and applied for more so I could get a master’s in entrepreneurship. I wanted to be ready when he came back.”

  “You quit the other stuff just on this guy’s maybe-someday offer?”

  “Oh, no. I kept the day job. Or night job. Most of that work was in the dark. Plenty of time to go to school on the side.” I could feel her eyes pinned on my profile, could feel her interest in my story. “I was just graduating when D came back a couple of years later with a basic idea to launch a worldwide international ad firm. Recruited me and Nate. Introduced us to his buddy Weston and his almost stepfather-in-law, Dylan—don’t ask. It’s complicated. The five of us sat down, made a plan together, and here we are. And yes, now I’ve quit the night work.”

  “That’s crazy admirable.” She sounded more impressed than I could have hoped for and also exactly as impressed as I’d always dreamed she’d be.

  It was pretty impressive when I let myself remember where I’d come from. After I’d run away from Stark, I’d been dirt poor, living on the streets. I hadn’t even had my diploma. I’d had to take the GED before college, and now I was co-owner of one of the biggest marketing firms in the world. I burned money just for fun. I wanted for nothing.

  Well, that wasn’t true.

  “I’m not going to pretend I don’t like having my ego stroked, but which part specifically was admirable?” I was a total glutton. No denying it. But also, I really wanted to know what she thought. Needed to know.

  “All of it,” she said. “All of it. Changing your look. Working your way up. Becoming somebody. Finding your people. But the part I really admire is the part where someone told you to trust in his vision, and you just...did.”

  That surprised me, and I was sure that it said something about her that I hadn’t realized before. Something big. Another puzzle piece in my hand, but this one I couldn’t quite place.

  Besides, she was wrong. “Some people would say it was naive.”

  “But it wasn’t naive. Donovan came back with a real plan.”

  “Some people would call that fool’s luck.”

  She shook her head, adamant. “It wasn’t luck. And you’re not a fool. You just know how to let yourself believe.”

  She was still wrong, but I didn’t argue. The truth was much more basic, and not impressive in the least. It hadn’t mattered whether I believed in Donovan or not.

  I just hadn’t had anything left to lose.

  Twenty

  “Skiing?” Jolie asked as I turned where the highway sign pointed toward Hunter Mountain. “You’re taking me skiing? No way. I’m not skiing.”

  I chuckled as I resumed speed. “Calm your tits. I’m not taking you skiing. I didn’t forget you don’t know how.”

  She scowled at me again. “It’s been a lot of years. I could have learned.”

  “But you didn’t.” It wasn’t even a guess. I knew it like I knew anything.

  Still, she held out for a beat before admitting I was right. “No, I didn’t.” Her forehead remained wrinkled in distrust. “You sure as fuck better not be trying to get me to take lessons. And I’m not snowboarding, either.”

  I tried to imagine that scenario, but it was too absurd to picture. Jolie was one of the strongest women I’d ever met, fearless too, in many ways, but she hated daredevil shit. Heights, fast speeds, anything reckless had always been a hard no. It had taken a lot of convincing just to get her to sneak out to her roof back in the day. I knew what her limits were.

  That said, it was possible I was pushing those limits with my plans today. I reassured her all the same. “I’m not signing you up for lessons, and I’m not taking you snowboarding. Chill.” As if I wasn’t already pressing my luck, I added, “Trust me.”

  I immediately regretted the words, even as they passed my lips. I definitely deserved her trust, but I didn’t like asking for it. I didn’t want her to think she could count on me, which was irrational considering how I’d been doing nothing but showing her she could count on me since she walked back into my life.

  But it was out there now. The words said, and as though she understood what it cost for me to say them, she answered earnestly. “I do.”

  She didn’t ask again what we were doing at the resort, and we were silent as I found a rather fortunate parking spot near the lodge. Car off, keys in my coat pocket, I gave her my full attention for the first time since we’d started driving. Her expression was wary, but her eyes were bright. She meant it, I realized. That she trusted me. So easily after all this time, when she hadn’t trusted me back then.

  I didn’t know what to make of that or of the way that revelation punched at my gut.

  So I didn’t try to analyze it. “Let’s go.”

  She followed me without question as we walked up to the lodge and headed for guest services. “Two standard size tubes,” I said, pulling out my wallet.

  “We’re going tubing?” Jolie sounded both intrigued and anxious.

  “We’ll stick to the kiddie hill. Even three-year-olds can handle it.”

  “I imagine they’re sitting on a parent’s lap when they do. They probably also have very little choice in the matter.”

  I took my card back from the customer rep, pocketed my wallet, then accepted the two passes before turning again to Jolie. “And neither do you it seems.” She opened her mouth—to protest, most likely—but I didn’t let her. “Here’s the receipt so you can pick up our tubes at the counter outside. I’ll meet you there in a few.”

  I left her still gaping and headed to the retail shop before she could argue.

  Half of me expected her to follow, but when I chanced a glance over my shoulder a half a minute later, I saw her trudging toward the back doors of the lodge. It felt stupidly good that she would just do what I said without a fight.

  Maybe having her tru
st wasn’t so bad after all.

  Quickly, I picked out what we needed, not being particular about what I grabbed, and paid for the items, declining a bag. Less than ten minutes later, I found Jolie outside with a blue and a red tube, each awkwardly tucked under an arm.

  “Here,” I said, throwing a scarf around her neck, then another around mine. I tucked the rest of the clothing into the crook of my arm while I pulled a beanie with the Hunter Mountain logo over her head. It was too intimate, and as my fingers let go of the edge of her hat, I found they were too close to brushing down her cheeks, red from the cold.

  “Thank you.” Her breath came out in a puff, but it was the color of her tone that was the warmest.

  It was that heat that drew me into making another dangerous choice. “You can put those down.” I waited while she set the tubes down, each balancing on end between us so they wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. The barrier between us was good and necessary, but I still resented it as I took one of her hands and put a glove on it like I was a goddamned lady in waiting.

  Too close.

  Too intimate.

  Too fucking dangerous.

  Her skin burned against mine as I tugged the waterproof fabric over her fingers. The small gasp she made at the contact told me she felt it too. I zipped the glove on, and without saying anything, she offered her other hand so I could clothe it as well.

  Dumb. I was so incredibly dumb.

  Especially because this time, I took my time, running the tip of my thumb over the backs of her bare knuckles before presenting the glove. I paused on one digit in particular. “This finger is bare,” I said before I could think about it. The thought was a fly I’d tried to keep bottled up, ignoring how it had buzzed inside me, wanting to be free.

  With my guard down and the distraction of silky skin, it escaped, and now it buzzed between us.

  “It’s always been bare.”

  She didn’t belong to anyone. She’d never belonged to anyone.

  A weight on my chest lifted, but the fly still buzzed, nagging to know more. “No one’s ever tried to put a ring on it?”

  “Once.” A pause. “Wait. No. Twice.”

  Twice. Not one but two separate men had thought he was good enough to ask her to be his forever.

  “What happened?” I hoped she said that they were both dead. That way I didn’t have to go looking for them.

  “I had no interest in the one.”

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. “The other?”

  She frowned. She’d been solemn, but this was the first time the conversation seemed difficult for her. Her hand turned over so her palm was against mine. “I hurt him very much.”

  My breath stuck in my lungs. Me. She meant me. There was no way she didn’t mean me, and acknowledging the past and the pain in that way let loose something in me that was far bigger than a fly. Something more the size of a beast with fangs and predator eyes. A beast that would tear us both apart if I let him.

  I stepped back, snatching my palm from hers, and handed her the other glove to put on for herself. Putting on my own gloves and hat, though, I kept thinking about then, about the fucked-up proposal I’d made with a pipe cleaner I’d found in my mother’s hobby box.

  “One day it will be a real ring,” I’d promised.

  “It doesn’t matter. You know I love you.”

  She’d been crying, and I’d thought for a long time that her tears had been for the situation. For fear of the unknown and where we would go and how it would possibly work out, but every now and then I wondered if they might have been a different kind of tears—the kind shed out of sentimentality and emotion too brimming to keep in.

  The way things turned out, that notion seemed unrealistic, but I’d lived long enough to know the complexity of emotions. She could have been crying both kinds of tears all at once. She could have been crying out of happiness and still thrown that happiness away.

  But if she hadn’t? God, I would have loved her for a lifetime.

  It was better not to think about that. Easier too, for both of us I was pretty sure, and when I swatted the fly away and let the topic drop, she didn’t try to pick it back up.

  The next couple of hours were lost to the stupid thrill of going up and down. The kiddie run was even more tame than I’d imagined, filled with lots of parents and children too young to remember to break for the bathroom without a reminder, yet it was fun all the same. Not much more of a ride than we would have gotten if we’d just gone to Central Park, but I was glad I’d dragged her farther away. The drive had eaten up time and psychologically the distance, made the day feel more like an escape.

  She wouldn’t talk to me about it, and I’d stopped pressing, but I would have been naive to think that Jolie wasn’t carrying a burden at all times, despite the warmth in her eyes and the ease of her smiles. I’d lived a similar past, and I sure as fuck carried shit from those days, so it was a no-brainer that she’d feel the same.

  Plus, there was the whole help-me-kill-my-father thing. People didn’t come to those kinds of decisions without something weighing on them. Point being, she didn’t have to say anything for me to know she needed a chance to set down her load and take a vacation from the strain.

  Two straight hours of her infectious giggling, and I was confident the day’s activity had done the trick.

  “One more run?” I asked after we’d taken a break to warm up with hot cocoa in the lodge. We’d been frozen to the bone, despite all the layers, and jonesing to sit by a fire, but after twenty minutes in front of the roaring fireplace, I was thawed enough to go back into the cold.

  I watched her as she considered. She’d taken off her gloves, and her scarf was open, revealing the hollow of her neck.

  I’d never realized how sexy a throat could be, and I wasn’t even thinking about when my cock had been buried inside it.

  “Yeah. I could do one more.”

  I tore my eyes from her neck and took the empty Styrofoam cup from her hand to toss in the recycling along with mine. “One more good run, then we can pick up another round of cocoa for the drive home.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  Outside, we stopped by the counter to get two new tubes, then headed to line up for the conveyor belt that would take us to the top of the hill.

  “This was such a great idea,” she said as we got in line, and my chest puffed out involuntarily from the praise. “How did you even know about this place?”

  “Carla had a boyfriend we lived with for a while in Poughkeepsie. I came here once with some friends from school.” I leaned around her to see how many people were in front of us. The crowds had gotten longer as the day had gone on and more skiers abandoned the slopes for tubing. I spied a shorter line next to us, one that led to a longer run. “Here, come this way.”

  She followed without question. “That’s right. I forget that Carla had a life before she remarried.”

  “I do too.” My mother had always been Carla between the two of us. Her days of being Mom had long passed by the time her choices had brought me into Jolie’s world. I couldn’t hate her for that, no matter what else it had brought me, because knowing Jolie had been the single most gratifying thing in my life. But I’d never forgiven Carla for the rest of it, and these days I rarely thought about her at all.

  “I know you haven’t talked to her. She’s never tried to reach out?”

  I glanced behind me at her as I stepped onto the magic carpet, partly to make sure she was still following, but also because of what she’d said. Since she’d been gone for so many years, I’d assumed she didn’t have any news from home. “No, she hasn’t, thank God. How do you know I haven’t talked to her?”

  “I went home recently.”

  She said it all casual, like it was no big deal when instead it was a big fucking clue. “You said you were hiding from your—”

  “I was hiding. And then I wasn’t.”

  I adjusted my tube and turned around so I was riding the belt facing backward. I had so many qu
estions but was very aware that she would have told me already if this was stuff she wanted me to know.

  But she was talking now. So did that mean she was ready to answer?

  “He found you.” Guessing felt more sure than questioning, but it still felt tentative. Like I was walking out onto a frozen pond, trying to decide how long the ice would hold.

  She gazed in the distance to where the sun was starting to get low in the sky. “No.”

  “Something he did drew you out.”

  She avoided the question-not-question. “I didn’t lie when I said I didn’t know anything current about him. I wasn’t home long enough to learn anything useful.”

  Asking what happened with Langdon was useless. I blew out a breath that steamed in the air like the exhale from a cigarette. “But you were home long enough to figure out I haven’t talked to Carla?”

  She gave a cute shrug, her lips puckering as she did. “I might have asked about you while I was there.”

  “What else do you know about me?”

  “Hmm.” Her cheeks went rosy. Probably from the cold and not the conversation. “I know you’ve never had a ring on your finger either.”

  “They know that much about my life?” I’d thought I’d gone as dark from the people back home as they’d gone for me.

  “No, actually, that…” Now she definitely blushed. “I Googled. Public record says Cade Warren has always been single.”

  We were still moving, but I swore the earth stood still. I’d known she had to look me up in order to email me to meet with her. That didn’t require looking at public records. She’d looked that up because she’d wanted to know.

  Why had she wanted to know?

  Why did it mean so much that she did?

  My feet hit snow as the belt came to an end. Since I hadn’t been watching, I hadn’t been expecting it, and Jolie crashed into me. I put my arms out to steady her. To steady us. She shivered as my free hand found her waist, and after I stepped us to the side and out of the way, I left them there. She took a step in, bringing us even closer, despite the tubes we carried, and for a second I thought we were having a moment.