“You saw him,” Penna said quietly, putting her book into her lap.
I nodded. “I ran into him. Literally. There were margaritas involved.”
“Did the alcohol help?”
I looked up. “It ended up all over him.”
She snorted, the first laugh I’d heard from her since I got here last week. “Good. Not that he needed it. He’s salty enough as it is.”
I laughed. “That he is.”
“How are you?” Her words were choppy, and I knew how much they cost her.
“Are you honestly asking? Because I’m pretty sure if you weren’t in that wheelchair you’d have no issue throwing me overboard.”
Her head tilted. “I’ve considered it.”
The last thing I could handle right now was Penna’s obvious disgust with my presence, and this was the only place on the ship I was safe from running into Landon. Fantastic.
The door flew open, hitting the wall. “Rach?” Leah yelled down the hall two seconds before she barreled in. “Oh my God! Landon and Pax are going at it right now. What happened?” She plopped on the couch next to me, her legs bare, revealing the parallel scars down the fronts of her legs that she’d kept hidden until this trip—until Paxton had brought out the brave in her. Her whiskey-colored eyes were wide, her brown hair in windblown disarray. Man, I’d missed her every day that she’d been here while I was back in L.A.
“I may have run into Landon.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
She laughed but stopped when I glared at her. “I’m sorry, but after he saw you today on the slopes, that’s all he kept saying. ‘I’m fine.’”
“He saw you on the slopes?” Penna asked, her book forgotten in her lap. This was the longest I’d seen her engaged in any conversation since the accident—since her sister broke her heart.
“He did,” I answered with an involuntary smile. “He looked up to wave to Leah, and I’d just gotten there. I had no clue he’d actually see me. But he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
“And then he ran into the wall,” Leah said, her laughter rolling through her shoulders.
“No way!” Penna exclaimed, another laugh tumbling out. “Like into the wall wall? The side of the slope?”
“Exactly,” I said. “And then some girl ran over him on the lift.”
I wasn’t even near him, and his luck was already turning to shit.
“Oh my God,” Penna said, her laughter even louder. “Then what did he do?”
“He looked for you,” Leah said to me. “I mean, you were gone by the time he pulled himself out of the lift path, but he looked.”
My laughter died as that kaleidoscope of emotion turned in my chest.
“But what was weirder was that he didn’t ask about you,” Leah continued. “When I saw him, he never asked who was standing next to me.”
“He doesn’t care,” I said out of habit and defense.
“No, it wasn’t that. He was shaken. It was almost as if he thought he’d hallucinated you…like it had happened before.”
I met my best friend’s level stare. “That would imply he ever thought about me to begin with.”
“Rachel—”
“No!” I snapped. “He left me without saying good-bye. Left me standing there like an idiot in that ER with five rejected calls, ten unanswered texts, a shredded acceptance letter to Dartmouth, a fractured wrist from falling off our brand-new kitchen counter, and a broken heart—all while the ink on our lease, that I couldn’t afford on my own, was still wet. I sat in that apartment for days, knowing he’d gone back to the Renegades but just hoping he would still come home to me, too. Hoping Wilder had reneged on his goddamned ultimatum, or that I would at least get an explanation, or a good-bye. Do you have any idea how that feels—to be ghosted? Abandoned? Treated like you aren’t good enough for his love, his time, or even a fucking phone call? Leah, you of all people know what it was like for me to go back to my parents—to grovel and plead for help when I’d thrown my independence in their face. I gave up everything for Landon, and it wasn’t enough. So please don’t imply that he ever gave me a second thought.”
“You should let him explain,” Penna said softly.
“You can’t weigh in on this,” I told her. “Not if you want us to have a quasi friendship.”
She struggled with keeping quiet. I could tell by the set lines of her mouth, the way her hands gripped the sides of her book. “Okay,” she finally said. “But there are two sides to every story.”
Leah glanced between us and clapped her hands. “New subject!” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Pax arranged a trip to Nepal during the optional excursion week in India.”
Penna tensed, and my eyes flickered toward hers, which were pointed at her cast.
“Okay?”
“We’re all going! Well, if you want to. He found a great spa for Penna and me, and I hear there’s some fabulous skiing…”
My eyes narrowed at her. “You’re dangling the carrot. You know how much I love to ski.”
“I do,” she admitted.
“Landon will be there.”
“He will…it’s actually his trip. He’s hung up on boarding some ridgeline up by Everest, and this is his shot. He thinks it would put the documentary over the top.”
He couldn’t mean… I shut down my train of thought. For God’s sake. I’d been in his presence all of one time and I was already concerned about him. I had no business even thinking about him, or wondering if he was actually going to try to hit the Shangri-La spine wall he’d always talked about. It was impossibly high, impossibly steep, and offered a high possibility of death.
“Ugh.” I leaned my head on the back of the couch. “I can’t escape him, can I?”
“Not if you want all the perks that come with traveling with the Renegades,” Penna said. “And if I recall correctly, you were always ready to jump in on anything we were working on. Hell, I think you were more fearless than Landon some days.”
She said it softly, without malice. Maybe this roommate stuff would work after all.
“I do love it,” I admitted.
“Do you think you can handle being around him so much?” Leah asked. “I’m still willing to leave if you need to. I love Paxton, but I hate what he did—tricking us both to get you on board.”
I squeezed her hand. She’d suffered so much in the last few years, and it wasn’t fair to take this from her. I could endure six months of hell for her—for the chance to touch a piece of my history after months of research, digging through my parents’ papers, looking for the location of that orphanage in South Korea, trying to be as covert as possible so I wouldn’t upset Mom… Was I really going to let Landon ruin that?
“I’ll be fine. I can handle being around him.”
A flicker of relief passed through her eyes, and she loosened her grip on my hand. “Okay. Then how do you want to handle things? Pax wants to include you on the trips.”
“Of course he does. He wants me accessible for Landon,” I snapped and then grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You can growl at my boyfriend all you want. He deserves whatever you want to dish at him for this.”
“It’s fine. I’ll only see him on shore excursions. I can duck him the rest of the time.”
“Well…” Leah started.
“What now?”
“This might not be the best time to tell you that you’re also in two of the same classes this term,” Penna answered. “So you’ll be around him for those classes, shore excursions, our trips, and any field studies those classes have.”
“Fuck my life.”
“I figured you would say that,” Leah said, squeezing my hand. “Still okay?”
I nodded slowly. “Just like you, I’m a lot stronger than I used to be. Besides, just because I have to be around him doesn’t mean I have to talk to him.”
“Rachel,” Leah cajoled.
; “He can be pretty insistent…and convincing,” Penna said.
“Yeah, well, I can be as stubborn as he is, and I’ve had way more practice at ignoring him than he has at seeking me out. There’s nothing that guy can do to force me to talk to him.”
I didn’t miss the glance Penna and Leah shared.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I know,” Leah answered. “Your stubbornness has never been up for debate.”
“If I have to be stuck in this thing,” Penna said, nodding toward her cast with a slow smile, “at least I’ll have something entertaining to watch.”
How hard could it be to ignore Landon Rhodes?
I had the feeling I was about to find out.
Chapter Three
Landon
At Sea
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked Paxton as I slammed the door behind us, leaving the cameras in the hallway. I didn’t give a shit if our producer, Bobby, fined us for banning him from the suite—it was either that or I have this conversation with Pax in the fucking bathroom.
I loved Nick, and for him, I would endure the cameras for stunts, preparation, classes, hell, even at the bar where I scored my hookups. But Rachel? No one got to drag her out and air our shit for a documentary.
“Okay,” Pax said, putting his hands up like he was under arrest. “Don’t kill me.”
“Don’t kill you? How the hell can I kill you if I need you to give me answers?” I shouted, uncaring if our neighbors heard us. Given the parade of women I’d had in and out of here, they were used to far worse sounds coming through their walls.
“Let’s have a beer,” Pax suggested.
I silently seethed while he popped the tops on two Coronas and shoved lime wedges through the bottle openings. Then I chugged half the bottle. Seeing Rachel up close had hit me like a punch to the nuts. She was still so damn beautiful, her frame and face perfect, delicate porcelain, but she had a steel core that I more than admired. She was a tiny piece of dynamite, smooth and pretty but capable of blowing your damn head off.
God, I’d loved that about her.
She was a puzzle I’d never figured out. She’d never bored me, always left me craving her, wanting more, and chasing her down. Given the physical reaction I’d had the minute I’d realized it was really her—the way my heart lurched toward hers like a damned magnet—it was safe to say that hadn’t changed.
But the pure hatred shining from those deep brown eyes of hers was definitely different.
“You calm?” Pax asked from behind the bar, using it as a shield, no doubt. Even the bar wouldn’t save him from me. He was more built than I was, but I had a good four inches and twenty pounds on him.
“Barely. Explain. Now.”
He nodded and took a swig of his beer. “Okay. Remember when we started this idea…”
“A year ago?” I clarified.
“Yeah, once the ship was purchased and UCLA agreed to sign on for the academics, and we knew it was going to work, we were sending out invites to apply, right?”
“Sure,” I answered. “That time period was a blur. We were contemplating dropping out of UCLA, prepping for the Winter X Games, so I guess I don’t really remember.”
He nodded. “Exactly. We needed to fill the ship, so I sent out thousands of flyers to colleges as well as individual invites to apply. I may have sent that invite to Rachel and her roommate…Leah.”
My head snapped up from where I’d been peeling the label on the bottle. “You targeted Rachel?”
He didn’t flinch. “I did.”
“How could you? Why would you? How did you even know where she was?” The questions fired out of me faster than he could answer. Did he want her back after all this time? Now that he was with Leah?
“She went to Dartmouth.”
I shook my head. “She declined the acceptance.” Because of me.
“Her father has a friend in the admissions office. He figured you’d leave her—”
“Be careful what you say here, brother.” The warning was more of a growl. “There is a line, and you’re about two seconds away from crossing it.”
He didn’t back down, probably because he knew I’d wronged him way worse than he’d wronged me. “So they left her spot open for an additional month. During that month…”
“I left her.” You proved her father right.
He nodded, his mouth tightening into a grimace.
We both knew why I had—the ultimatum Pax had thrown down: I could have Rachel or I could have the Renegades, but I couldn’t have both. I’d chosen my brain over my heart, and the latter hadn’t worked since.
We walked a tightrope, knowing that if we wanted to remain friends, there were things we could never talk about. After all, Rachel had been his girlfriend, but she’d been the love of my life. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was that while I’d been blocking every thought of her in my head, he’d been tracking her down.
“And you know this how?”
“Leah. They met at the orthopedist’s office the week after you showed up in Vegas. Then they roomed together at Dartmouth and have been best friends ever since.”
“How did you know how to send the invite to her?” I asked. “I couldn’t find her.”
“You didn’t look,” he said quietly.
“Because of you!” I shouted, slamming my fists into the bar. The sting radiated up my arms, and I welcomed the pain. “I fucked you over. I stole your girl. I know that. You gave the ultimatum, and I came back to the Renegades.”
“But you left your heart with her,” he said.
“This isn’t up for discussion. We agreed on that a long time ago.” Emotions were too tangled when it came to Rachel, to what we’d done to Paxton, to what I’d done to Rachel to return to the Renegades. He was prying open the door I’d been leaning against for over two years, and the shit escaping from the blackened area that used to be my heart was ugly. Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? Rachel had blown the roof off that lockbox the moment I looked into those endless brown eyes.
“We have to talk about it. I know you don’t want to, but you are my best friend, and I’ve watched little pieces of you die off since you came back. You’ve fucked every girl you could get your hands on, and it’s not for fun—don’t give me that bullshit. And that’s not even the worst—the risks you take…you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“You should be one to talk,” I accused.
“Right, only because we haven’t been near the slopes for you to kill yourself on that board. I agreed to the Nepal excursion because I know it’s what you need for this documentary.”
“It’s for Nick,” I argued. Boarding that ridgeline we’d mapped out would put the documentary over the top and he’d be able to write his own ticket as a consultant in our industry. Since it was a stunt for our team that put him in a wheelchair, it was our team that would make sure his future was whatever he wanted it to be. That’s what family did for each other.
“Bullshit, it’s for you. That level of danger…it’s like you don’t care if you live through it. You’re numb, detached, and I’m sick of watching you take recklessness to another level.”
“And you thought getting Rachel here would fix that?”
“Yes, since she’s what you’re looking for, right? I didn’t understand it years ago, when you two were sneaking around behind my back, but now that I love Leah, I get it. There’s nothing and no one that could have stopped me from going after her. You loved Rachel, and I realize now what it must have cost you to walk away from her.”
I braced my hands on the counter, my fingers digging into the wood. “So Leah’s scholarship, and all that shit about keeping her close when we first got on board…”
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his black hair. “When Rachel got mono and didn’t show up in Miami, I knew I had to keep Leah close and happy. If she left, there was no way Rachel would show up for second term. I also needed Leah to help me with my grades.”
“So you used her?” A dark feeling I didn’t like rolled through my stomach.
“At first,” he admitted softly. “But I fell in love with her, and everything changed.”
“And then she found out, right? When Rachel showed up? Jesus. That’s why you were such an asshole last week. That was why you altered the trailer for the documentary to be all about you falling for her. So she’d see it at the expo and give you a second chance.”
He nodded.
“You’re a manipulative asshole.”
“I have no regrets,” he said. “I brought Rachel here for you to get a second chance. I know she blocked you on social media, and I know you haven’t gone after her because of us—not just me, but the Renegades. And I know now how wrong it was to ever give you that stupid fucking ultimatum.”
For the first time since I’d stolen my best friend’s girl, I felt like there was an open, honest line between us, and as pissed as I was at him, I was also blown away that he’d gone through all of this for me, especially since it involved the one person we’d both agreed to never talk about. Him, because I’d hurt him so badly by going behind his back with her. Me, because I couldn’t bear to hear her name from his mouth. I didn’t care that they’d been together for five months—she had always been mine.
“You’re seriously pushing me at your ex.”
He shrugged. “She was always more of your ex. I…” He took a deep breath. “I was never that heartbroken over Rachel. I liked her, but it was what happened between you and me that broke me.”
“And now with Rachel here? Everything we’ve worked for?” Was he risking the Renegades by bringing her here? Our friendship?
“I’m honestly okay. I have Leah, and there is no one on this earth better for me than she is.”
“You would walk away from the Renegades for Leah,” I said as fact, not question.
“In a heartbeat.”
I fidgeted with the label. “I walked away from Rachel. It decimated me, but I did it.” And she would never forgive me. I’d seen it in her eyes.
“You had your reasons.”
“She doesn’t know them.”
“Then tell her. It doesn’t have to be today, or tomorrow. You’ve got six months with her living right down the hall.”
Nova (The Renegades #2) Page 3