“Are you okay?” she mouthed, her eyes wide with worry.
For fuck’s sake, was I hallucinating now? The moment I let my memories rule me for a few seconds, she started appearing?
I nodded to Leah and got to my feet. Was I so far gone that my brain was seeing what it wanted?
“You okay?” a girl asked as she slid by me on the pommel, her skis coming within a foot of my board.
“Yep, thank you,” I said, tipping my head. That’s right, ladies, I have four X Games medals, three of which are in snowboarding, and I ran into a goddamned wall.
Get a grip. I headed down the slope and met up with Pax at the bottom of the slope.
“You take a detour?” he asked.
“Yeah, something like that,” I replied, knowing he hadn’t seen me make an utter ass out of myself. No doubt he’d see it later when Bobby—the director of our documentary—got his hands on the footage.
Pax didn’t question me, just gave me a what-the-hell look. “Time to get back. You game? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
They were the only words I spoke while we got out of our gear.
“Landon, are you okay?” Leah asked, racing over to me as we walked out of the frigid air into the dry desert heat.
“What happened?” Pax asked as he wrapped his arm around her.
“Nothing. I’m fine,” I answered, giving her a smile. At least, I think I did. I wasn’t sure, since I felt numb just about everywhere.
That numbness didn’t go away as we were driven back to where our ship was docked. It didn’t go away while Pax told me all about our new numbers since he’d just pulled off the first-ever triple front flip on a motocross bike a few days ago during our live exhibition. Our YouTube subscribers were way up and so were Instagram and Snapchat, but our video views were through the roof.
It didn’t go away when they scanned my ID card as I boarded the huge cruise ship we’d called home since August. All I saw as I walked into our massive, three-bedroom suite at the back of the ship was the replay my brain wouldn’t shut off: the glimpse of the woman I’d seen next to Leah.
“Landon!” Pax shouted, breaking through my brain fog.
My head jerked toward him. “What? Damn, you don’t have to yell.”
“Apparently I do, since I called your name about three times first.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
His eyes narrowed. “Right, but I asked if you wanted to go to the pool?”
I blinked. “I need to work out.”
“You just finished boarding. Skip the gym for one day and come hang out. I know you’re prepping for Nepal, but one day isn’t going to kill you.”
He was right. I could skip one day. Besides, I was so distracted that I was liable to go flying off the treadmill or some stupid shit that was on par with running into a wall.
“Okay. Pool. The pool is good.”
“Hey, maybe you’ll find the snow bunny,” he teased as he headed up the stairs to his room.
“No snow bunny,” I said quietly to myself as I went into my room. Another girl wasn’t going to help me in this situation—not when she was all I could think about. I’d been through it before; I just needed to clear my head. I stripped out of my clothes and changed into trunks before I met Pax in our living room. Bobby had the camera crew in a meeting at the dining room table. If we hurried we could get some undocumented time.
“Seriously, you’re being weird,” Pax said while we took the elevator to the pool deck. “Leah said she saw you hit a wall while we were boarding. Do you think we need to get your head checked out? She’s already up at the pool saving us some lounges, but we can meet her later.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated.
“So you keep saying.”
Music was blaring on the pool deck as we stepped into the ninety-degree heat. The sun beat down onto my skin, but it did nothing to warm the numbness that I couldn’t kick.
Maybe Pax was right and I’d hit my head.
The crowd was thick, and the music was loud—it usually was as we were leaving port—and Pax disappeared to find Leah. I surveyed the gyrating masses and wished I could feel a little of their excitement.
First term was over, there were two more to go, and we were headed toward the Indian Ocean. It was all pretty overwhelming if I stopped to really think about it. Then again, stopping to think about anything was what had gotten me into this situation.
“There you are!” The blonde from the slope bounced over, her tits hanging out of her triangle top.
“Hey.” I forced a smile as she looped an arm around my waist.
“Want to get a drink with me?”
Not really.
“You know, I think I’m going to—”
“Oh, come on. The bar is right over here!” she said, turning us around.
Ice hit my bare chest and slid down my abs to my trunks as I sucked in a lungful of air. Holy shit, that was cold.
“I’m so sorry!”
Her voice hit me with the force of the hurricane that she was, and as she looked up, I lost what breath I’d managed to take in.
Her eyes widened, panic running across her beautiful, so-familiar face.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
The purple streaks in her hair rested against the smooth line of her chin, and her lips were parted in a look of shock that I was sure mirrored mine.
My entire world narrowed to the woman standing in front of me. Even my heartbeat stilled in reverence to the moment. How was she here? After all this time, she was close enough to touch, and all I could do was stare at her, like if I blinked she would disappear.
A thousand emotions crashed through me, fast enough to give me whiplash, long enough to sting me with the force of a billion needles, and none were able to steady me. Unadulterated joy and wonder at seeing her after all this time, fear that she was going to toss what was left of those margaritas in my face, and the most overpowering urge to kiss her, to beg her to forgive the mistakes I’d made as a stupid kid and forget the last two years we’d been apart.
But the biggest was sheer and utter relief that I could breathe again, that the numbness I’d felt since the slopes was gone, my skin tingling everywhere as if the blood had finally rushed back into the starving capillaries.
It all came down to one word.
“Rachel?”
Chapter Two
Rachel
Dubai
I had thought I was prepared for the inevitability of this moment.
I was so wrong.
Breathe, I told myself—not to calm down, but to push oxygen into my lungs before I passed out. Planning on seeing Landon and coming face-to-face with him were two completely different things. One was purely logical, and the other…well, there wasn’t a single nerve in my body that didn’t come alive at his nearness.
Now say something—anything.
“Hey, Landon,” I said quietly, looking up into shocked hazel eyes. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful they were, how the color changed with his mood or what he was wearing.
Which wasn’t a lot at the moment.
Well, he was wearing my margaritas. They were currently dripping down the insanely hard lines of his abdomen, paying no mind to the myriad of tattoos that colored his skin.
Did he cover up the one he got for me? Not that I could see it under all that bright green muck sliding down his body.
I jerked my eyes back to his, but he was still just standing there…staring. Okay, maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. “Well, it’s good to see you,” I said with a shaky smile, taking in every detail of his Hemsworth-worthy face. He’d lost what little softness he’d had since I’d seen him last, leaving the strong lines of his nose and chin, but those lips still looked as soft as ever and just as practiced at smooth lines and smoother exits.
I tried to block out the barrage of memories, but they assaulted me, pelting me with the low timbre of his voice when we would spend
hours locked in conversation, the look in his eyes the first time he’d told me he loved me, the feel of his hands on my skin. No matter how hard I’d tried to keep everything locked up tight, it all came rushing back, overloading me with emotions I couldn’t afford to explore. Ever.
I’d been on board for a week, known he was here—known the incredibly sneaky lengths Paxton had gone to get me here—and avoided him like the plague he was. I was here for Leah, for me, to touch my own history and find my birthplace, for a hundred different reasons that didn’t involve Landon.
“What…how…?” His normally smooth lines were absent.
A thousand times I’d practiced this in my head. How cool I was going to be. How dismissive. How I’d show him that maybe he’d wounded me, but I wasn’t broken. My imagination had nothing on this moment, or my physical reaction to seeing him.
Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Why couldn’t you choose me? Why wasn’t I enough for you? Every question eighteen-year-old me had cried into my pillow reared its ugly head, and I beat them all back down, swallowing past my suddenly dry throat that had zero to do with the desert heat.
“Um, do you know each other?” the blonde he had his arm wrapped around asked. I wonder if he even knows her name.
A wry smile twisted my lips. Different year. Different country. Same Landon. “We used to.”
He was still shell-shocked, and I took what little advantage I had. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.” I ripped my gaze away from him, my chest aching like he’d left me yesterday instead of two and a half years ago.
I managed to turn and walk away, dropping our margarita cups in the trash. I’d find Leah and explain later, but right now I had to get the hell out of here. The elevator was ahead, maybe only ten feet away when he caught up with me, no blonde in sight.
“Rachel!” he said, his fingers brushing my upper arm like he’d changed his mind midreach.
So close, I thought as the elevator doors closed ahead of me.
I turned slowly, trying to visualize locking up my emotions with a row of dead bolts. He wasn’t getting through. “What can I do for you?” I asked his pecs. His chest was safer than those soul-melting eyes.
“Rachel,” he whispered.
Inch by inch, I drew my gaze up until I met his over a head above me. Landon’s light brown, finger-tousled hair towered above my five-foot-two frame, but the difference had always made me feel protected, like he was a mountain no one could move. Turned out I couldn’t really move him, either. “What?”
“I…don’t know what to say,” he admitted, a look of awe and fear on his face.
Me, either, eighteen-year-old me called out from where I’d locked her away.
“Wow. I have to admit that I expected some smoother lines from you.”
He shook his head a little and blinked, like he expected me to disappear, like I was some figment of his imagination. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“That’s pretty obvious. Look, we don’t have to see each other. You stay to your classes, and I’ll stay to mine. I’m sure we’ll have some overlap with the whole Leah/Paxton thing, but my plan is to generally ignore you.” I had to in order to survive.
His eyes narrowed. “Leah/Paxton thing?”
I arched an eyebrow and tried to calm the pounding of my heart. It felt like the damn thing had wings, and it was hammering against my ribs to get out of my chest and back to the one person it had always belonged to. Hell, no. “They haven’t told you?”
He stepped forward, and I retreated. “Told me what?”
We continued our dance—I backed up and he followed. Each step took me closer to the elevator, closer to getting the hell away from him.
“Rachel, would you stop? I’m not going to stalk you into the elevator.”
“Yeah, you’re usually a walk-away kind of guy.”
He winced. “Really?”
The horn blew, and the ship launched from the dock. “I have some pretty personal experience with that side of you.” I looked behind him, where the blonde was staring at us with her arms crossed under her breasts. “And from the looks of things, nothing’s changed.”
“Rachel…” He reached for me, and I stepped back, turning slightly to hit the down button on the elevator.
“No. You don’t get to Rachel me. You don’t get to anything me. You get to be all Nova-y, and I get to stay the hell away from you for the next six months.”
“Well, your tactics have worked pretty well, considering this is the first time I’m seeing you and we’re three months into the trip.”
Did he have to look wounded? Like I’d done something dastardly by hiding away from him? “I only got here last week.”
His forehead puckered, and I fought back my urge to smooth those lines with my fingers like I had when we were together. He wasn’t mine to touch. He wasn’t mine in any form of the word.
“Last week? Funny, that’s when Leah’s roommate…” His eyes widened to a nearly impossible size.
“Put that together, did you?” The elevator dinged open behind me, and I shamelessly retreated into it, seeing the camera crew heading our direction. I needed space, and I needed it now.
“Wait.” He lunged forward, stopping the elevator door with his arm. “I don’t understand.”
“Paxton will fill you in,” I said and pushed the close-door button.
“Paxton?” He shook his head again.
I blew out a frustrated sigh, realizing there were other students in the elevator. “Paxton Wilder. Your best friend. Come on, Nova—”
“Landon,” he snapped. “I’ve never been Nova to you. Not in that way.”
You’re like a supernova—an explosion so bright no one can see past you, I’d told him once after he’d won a competition. But like my love, that name had been twisted into something entirely different. Now he was Casanova…and no longer mine.
“What we were to each other sure as hell doesn’t matter anymore,” I countered. “Me being here isn’t some act of fate, or God. It’s an act of Paxton. If you want answers, go to him. Once this door shuts, my plan is never to speak to you again.”
“You think that’s possible? That I’m just going to ignore you?”
“It’s worked pretty damn well for the last two and a half years.”
Someone behind me coughed to hide a laugh.
Landon glared over my shoulder, and then that arrogant Nova smirk appeared, which twisted my insides in opposite directions—one wanting to smack him and the other inconveniently remembering what this man was capable of doing to my body. “Rachel.”
“What?” I shouted. I would pay money to make him stop saying my name like that—like he still knew me, still wanted me, still loved me. Like the last two years had just evaporated and we were still talking about our future in the apartment he’d left me holding the lease for. He didn’t get to say my name like he hadn’t drastically altered the very fabric of my being—I wasn’t that girl anymore.
“We’re at sea for the next four days, so it’s not like you can leave the ship. This isn’t over.” He leaned back, removing his arm from the door.
The doors started to slide shut, and he held my gaze, something heating there. Guess the shock of seeing me had worn off.
“This was over a long time ago,” I said quietly.
He flinched as the doors shut.
I closed the door to our suite and leaned back against it, letting my head thump on the barrier. It hurts. God, it hurts so badly. My hand rested under my heart, praying it would find some semblance of a normal rhythm, but it kept up with my lungs, which worked overtime, bringing giant gasps of air into my chest. Even my throat was on fire from this lump that wouldn’t go the hell away. My face scrunched as I fought back tears. God, I hated crying. What was even worse was that it wasn’t that I was sad. No, my eyes were prickling from anger, from embarrassment, from the pain in my chest from seeing him, from…the myriad of emotions that my body didn’t know how to process.
&n
bsp; I drew air into my lungs in a steady stream. You’re stronger than this. You are iron. You are concrete. You are invincible.
All true, but he was my one stupid weakness.
Somehow in the span of those few minutes, he’d managed to slice open my soul and set me back years. How was this fair? He was the one who’d walked out without a word, leaving me collegeless, with a pissed-off family I had to go crawling back to and a lease I couldn’t afford, but from the looks of it, he was fine. More than fine, really, and I was the one trying to get over the newly opened fissure in my heart…again.
“Rachel?” Penna’s voice came from the living room, and my stomach sank. If there was one person on this ship who hated me more than Wilder, it was Penna. She’d despised me for years—since the moment she’d realized that while I was dating Wilder, I was deeply in love with his best friend.
She’d also become my roommate when Leah moved to Pax’s room a couple of days ago. I understood why—Penna needed time to heal out of the public eye, and our suite was off-limits to the rabid camera crew, but man…it was awkward around here at times.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered, walking down the hallway of our suite as I composed myself. The marble floors, double bedrooms, and full amenities were way overboard, but I wasn’t complaining. Wilder had gone to a shit ton of trouble to get me here. I just hated that he’d used my best friend to do it.
But he’d fallen in love with her, so I guess it all worked out.
“Hey,” Penna said from her wheelchair. Her leg was casted to her thigh and elevated by one support of the chair, and her superlong blond hair was piled onto her head in a knot. Injured or not, she was ridiculously model-worthy beautiful but still rode a motocross bike better than most of the guys.
“Hey,” I echoed, sinking into the plush leather sofa and stretching my legs out onto the coffee table.
She turned her attention back to her book, settling us into an awkward quiet.
Nervous energy coursed through me, and I sat up, leaning my elbows on my knees to hold my head. God, this was stupid. This was ridiculous. I had six months here with him. Watching him seduce everything in a skirt. How the hell was I going to handle that? Handle him?
Nova (The Renegades #2) Page 2