Nova (The Renegades #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

The music thrummed through my body, the base line moving the ginger ale in my glass. Usually I had something a little stronger, but the waves in the Indian Ocean were hellacious tonight, and I wasn’t risking my much-needed faculties for dealing with Rachel. She was still irritated, if her icy demeanor at dinner was any indication.

  “Could you at least pretend to have a good time?” Bobby asked after pointing out where the cameras were around the room. “With Wilder going monogamous and shit, you’re all I’ve got on the other aspect of this show.”

  “The man-whore aspect?” I asked.

  He scoffed. “Since when do you object to being a ladies’ man?”

  Since I realized there’s only one woman I want.

  “Look, Bobby. We’re going to have to sit down later and talk this out, because I’m not comfortable with this. Not with…” Rachel.

  He ripped his hand over his thinning hair. “Seriously? You, too? Your contract says—”

  “That I’ll let you film just about every facet of my life for these nine months except when I take a piss. It says nothing about scoring chicks in a bar. I know you want the party part of this trip to play a role in the documentary, and I get it, but I’m drawing the line.”

  “Un-fucking-believable. Half the reason you’re gods to your followers is the extreme way you take on every part of your life, and you’re just going to turn it off? Penna’s sitting on the sidelines, and Wilder’s…well, what does that leave me with?”

  “Every other Renegade,” I said as Alex made his way across the club to join me. “I’ll do your shots, come to your parties, but don’t expect any action. I’m not leaving with anyone.” Nick, of all people, would understand the line I was drawing. What Bobby was about to miss out on with my social life, I’d make up in stunts.

  “Just give me a few good frames, and I don’t care what the fuck you do with your night,” he said by way of farewell.

  “What’s up his ass?” Alex asked as he leaned against the bar.

  “We fucked up in Nepal, and now he’s feeling short of shots. He’s got the dramatic failure, but no comeback and triumph to follow it up.”

  “We didn’t fuck up; Mother Nature took our asses out.”

  “Yeah, well, either way, that was supposed to be the money shot for this term. We didn’t get it, and we lost Gabe.”

  “What do you expect?” he asked. “We’re on a hellacious schedule. The shit you guys have us doing would need an entire year of planning, and we’re pulling this stuff off at least once a week. Not everything is going to go perfectly. We needed more time up there.”

  Time was the one thing we didn’t have on this trip. Already we’d turned our attention to the Jakarta stunt, always looking forward. I was the only one even thinking about going back.

  As Alex turned around to order a drink, Sabrina walked up with another girl. Thank God I hadn’t slept with this one yet. With Rachel on board, I was beginning to feel more than a little dirty over what I’d been doing while we were apart.

  “Hey, Nova,” Sabrina said, leaning against the bar so that her breasts pushed up out of her low-cut top.

  Funny, it didn’t bother me when she called me Nova, when any other girl reminded me of how I got to be called Casanova, really, but Rachel saying it always felt like a kick to the balls.

  “Hey, ladies,” I said with a practiced smile. “How are you tonight?”

  “Better now that you’re here,” she answered with a sly grin. “I was beginning to think I’d never get you alone again.”

  Shit. She wanted a repeat performance.

  “It’s been a busy term,” I said, then slammed my hand on Alex’s back as he choked on his drink. “How was your excursion week?”

  “Oh, I took the Mumbai trip, and then we headed down to the Taj Mahal.” She batted her eyes up at me. “You know, it’s a huge monument to love.”

  “Yeah, we made a stop there before flying to Nepal.” Even after her death, he protected her. That is love, or at least the kind of love I want. Rachel’s words came back to me, and everything finally clicked. She might have wanted the space she asked for, but she needed me to fight for her. Not just to sit back and wait for her to make a choice, but to show her that I’d protect her heart the way I should have the last time I held it.

  I had to get out of this damn bar and find her.

  “It really has been a busy term. You need some stress relief?” she asked, her eyes making clear what her offer really was.

  This was the shit that was going to lose me any chance of being with Rachel.

  “I need some stress relief,” Alex muttered.

  “I actually need to g—” My words failed as I caught sight of Rachel across the bar. She had on some kind of getup that must have qualified as a dress, and it gave her super-petite frame million-mile legs.

  Fuck me.

  Her hair was down, sleekly brushing just under her chin, the purple highlights caught in the club’s lights. She looked like every man’s untouchable dream, the girl you knew would either give you the best sex of your life or the fastest ass kicking you’d ever receive.

  To me, she’d always been an intoxicating combination of both.

  She smiled at some overgrown meathead who leaned on the table next to her, openly ogling her breasts between comments that made her laugh.

  My Rachel, laughing. Smiling. Did she just touch his arm? Look up at him through her lashes? Holy shit, was she flirting with him?

  He brushed her hair back behind her ear.

  Oh, hell no.

  I was halfway across the club before I realized I’d taken a single step. Rachel did a double take when she saw me, her eyes raking up and down my body. Even though she arched that damn eyebrow at me, her lips parted.

  That’s what my Rachel looked like when she was interested.

  Not this smiley, flirty version this guy thought he was getting.

  I didn’t stop until I was within kissing distance of her. She tilted her head at me, her lips curving at the edges.

  “Can I help you?” Meathead asked, puffing out his chest like I gave a fuck who he was.

  “Nope,” I answered without looking away from Rachel.

  She shifted her weight and held my gaze. So damn beautiful.

  “Is this guy bothering you?” Meathead asked Rachel.

  “Every day of my life,” she answered.

  “Look, I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” Meathead started.

  “Hers. I’m hers,” I finished. There. Line drawn in the fucking sand. I was here to fight.

  Her eyes widened, and all trace of playing left her face. “Landon…”

  “Rachel.”

  She looked over to Meathead. “Can you give us a second, Thomas?”

  He looked between us and then swore under his breath. “Yeah. Sure.” He grabbed his beer bottle and left.

  “Seriously?” I asked her.

  “What? He’s in my geography class, and he asked me out this afternoon.”

  “And you said yes?”

  “Apparently,” she answered. “Just like you said yes and ran off with physics girl this afternoon.”

  “She’s my lab partner.”

  “Sure, that’s all,” she said sarcastically and took a sip of her cider before putting it on the table next to us.

  Why the fuck didn’t she believe me? Because you haven’t given her a reason to.

  “It is all. And what is this? Payback?”

  “This is me living.” She shrugged.

  I tucked my thumbs into the front pockets of my jeans to keep my hands off her. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss her or throttle her, and neither was a good option. “I thought you were thinking about us?”

  “Thinking means weighing my options.”

  “And he’s an option?”

  “Everything and nothing is an option,” she answered, sipping from a bottle of hard cider. “And if I marched over every time a girl had the nerve to touch you, I’d live plastered to your sid
e.” She peered around me. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re being missed right now.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “You’d hate to miss an opportunity to uphold your name, wouldn’t you?”

  I would have fired back if that little comment hadn’t been accompanied by a flash of pain in her eyes. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  “Sure. For this five minutes, because I’m shiny and fun to chase. Every girl has fallen in your lap the last couple of years, right? I must be an intriguing little challenge.”

  “Damn it, Rachel. I thought we made some progress in Nepal. Is it always going to be one step forward and two steps back with you?”

  “In Nepal it was easy to remember why I fell for you. Here on the ship, it’s so much easier to see what you’ve become. How many have there been, Landon? How many memories are in your bed nowadays?” She forged on ahead, her eyes glossing over with a layer of what I was hesitant to call tears. “Can you remember them all?”

  Heat rushed through my veins, a nauseating mixture of anger, shame, and the bitter taste of regret. My brain screamed at me to retreat and lick my wounds, to try again with her when she wasn’t on offense.

  My heart reminded me that I was going to have to fight for this woman with every weapon in my arsenal if I wanted her.

  And damn, I wanted her. Craved her. Needed her.

  She was the only one I’d ever felt connected to—the only one my heart woke up and shook off the ice for. The only woman who challenged me and took me down in the process.

  I stepped forward and clamped both of my hands on the table, boxing her between my arms. She craned her head to keep my gaze, unwilling to back down. It was the quality that both frustrated the hell out of me and turned me on faster than anything—her constant refusal to yield for just a fucking second.

  “Can I remember them all? Probably not.”

  She snorted.

  “You want to know why?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Because blonde, redhead, brunette—I saw their features for a millisecond. The moment I had one of them in my bed, they all had eyes the color of dark chocolate and hair so black it was almost blue…” I glanced at her hair. “Or purple. I never needed to remember them, because they were always you.”

  “Don’t say things like that,” she begged. As if I could physically see her walls start to crumble, she softened. “You don’t get to say things like that to me. Not anymore. Not when everywhere I go on this ship there’s a bevy of girls you’ve fucked, Landon.”

  “Yeah, well, I was a stupid asshole. And the worst part is that I used every single one of them to try to forget you, only to turn them into you in my mind. I have no excuse.”

  “What do you want me to do with that?”

  “Forgive me. I want you to forgive me. Not just say it, but mean it. Do it. I want another chance with you, because I promise I won’t fuck it up. Not this time.”

  She swallowed, and my breath caught as I saw her—my Rachel—the side she protected and hid away from the world. The one she’d been before I’d destroyed her.

  “Did you ever stop to think that there’s a difference between me forgiving you and me trusting you? I do forgive you for what happened with us years ago. We were kids. I don’t need to forgive you for becoming Casanova, because you didn’t do anything wrong. But that doesn’t mean I can trust you now.”

  “You can,” I urged. “I lost you once. I’m never going through that again.”

  “So what? You’re going to promise me forever? We’ve been breathing the same air for three weeks, Landon.”

  “I didn’t need three minutes. The minute I saw you on that deck I knew I wasn’t letting you get away. Fate brought us—”

  “Wilder brought us together!” she shouted. The music kept its driving beat, and it struck me as almost hilarious that I was having the most important conversation of my life in a damn club.

  “Yeah, he pulled the strings—”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she cried, her hands fisting in the front of my shirt. “I loved you. I gave up everything for you, and you chose him. You don’t get to just jump in and get me back because Paxton Wilder snapped his fingers and offered me to you. I’m not his to offer, or yours to take.”

  I blinked. “That’s what you think? That I only want you now because Pax says it’s okay?”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Two years of silence from you, and then he serves me up on a platter for your dinner, so now it’s okay. Do you seriously not understand how badly I want you? How much I want to trust you? To try with you? Being with you again isn’t just a rush, it’s intoxicating. It’s like coming home—that’s how well you know me—but you burned that home down, and while I’ve accepted the past, that doesn’t mean I’m going to hand you the gasoline to torch my future.”

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a flash, the reflection of the light on the camera lens. “Damn it. Let’s go somewhere more private.”

  “No,” she refused, letting go of my shirt. “The minute that happens, you’ll kiss me, and I can’t think when you do that.”

  “Doesn’t that tell you something? That one kiss and we’re both lost?” I challenged. There was nothing compared to touching Rachel, to finding myself while I was exploring her.

  “That we’ve still got some insane chemistry? That we’re still really attracted to each other and had some mind-blowing sex?” she threw back. “You’ve had sex with easily a dozen girls on this ship, Landon. What the hell makes you think I’m signing up to be added to that number?”

  “You are the number!” I yelled, my temper finally snapping. “I can’t change what I’ve done. But I can tell you that there’s been no one since I saw you again. I haven’t touched, kissed, or even thought about sleeping with anyone else.”

  She wavered, her shoulders slumping. “And how long could that possibly last?”

  “Forever.” I answered instantly, and knew it to be true. “You’re it. You’ve always been it, and I don’t care if I have to prove it to you over the rest of this damn year—you’re the only girl I’m going to touch.”

  She stared up at me silently, and I saw the war raging within her, hating myself for having put her in the position in the first place. Hating that I’d left her, thinking that it would be better for both of us in the long run, and yet wishing I could go back and tell the world to fuck off, to quit being Nova and just be Rachel’s Landon.

  “If you’ll let me prove it to you, I swear that I will keep a personal bubble around me big enough for only you to fit into. And you’re pretty tiny.”

  She glared up at me, that fire sparking back in her eyes at me calling her tiny.

  That’s my girl.

  “I’ll show you,” I promised. “I’ll wear you down, I’ll get past all those goddamned walls you can’t stop building, and I’ll earn your trust…and your heart.”

  Her lips parted, and her eyes went liquid.

  I lifted one hand to her cheek and stroked the softness of her skin, resolve filling every single one of the holes I’d felt since I’d left her. I felt whole, determined, and strong enough to be whatever she needed.

  “I’m still considering my options,” she whispered, letting me know that I might have gotten close to her defenses, but she wasn’t tearing them down yet.

  Then I conquered my own desire, and instead of kissing her lips, I brushed mine against her cheek. “Consider, if that’s what you need to realize that there’s nothing in the world like what we can have together. Have a nice rest of your date.”

  Then I walked away, but I felt her eyes follow me past the other girls and out the door.

  She’d better remember what I’d just told her, because I meant every word.

  And I was ready to prove it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rachel

  At Sea

  I wanted to die. Hell, I’d already sent up a few prayers with that request. The tile of the bathroom floor was cool against my c
heek, and I tried to concentrate on that sensation instead of the hell that was going on in my stomach.

  “Rachel?” Penna asked through the door. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “No,” I grumbled. “But thank you.”

  “Are you sure? I have to head to class, but I don’t want to leave you here.”

  Class? What time was it? The nausea had struck as I’d left the club not long after Landon professed his intentions, and the puking had started soon after.

  “I’m okay,” I promised, watching the contents of the glass of water I’d poured myself rise and fall with every freaking wave. “Can you make the boat stop rocking?”

  “I wish. Hold on, someone’s here.”

  I heard her shuffle away, finally in a weight-bearing cast. A minute of muffled voices later, she was back at the door.

  “Rachel, Landon’s here.”

  “Great. Tell him to go away.” There was no chance I was letting him in here. Not when I could barely move, and I was pretty sure there was vomit in my hair.

  “Not happening,” Landon said through the door.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to come in here.”

  He juggled the door handle. “Unlock it, Rach.”

  “No. Trust me, I’m saving you.”

  “How long has she been like this?” he asked.

  “Since last night,” Penna answered. “So about fourteen hours, give or take?”

  “For fuck’s sake,” he growled. The handle moved again, then the door popped open. “Rachel…” Landon sighed as he hit his knees in front of me, gently lifting me into his lap.

  “How did you get in?”

  “It’s a bathroom door. Not Fort Knox.” His hand swept across my forehead. “You’re all clammy. Is it something you ate?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said as my stomach rolled again. “I just…I need the boat…” Oh God. No. My mouth filled with saliva and I bolted off Landon’s lap, lunging for the toilet. “Get. Out,” I told him, my voice echoing strangely in the bowl.

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  He rubbed my back, and within seconds, I was heaving, acid burning my throat as my stomach emptied itself of bile. Not like I’d eaten anything… At just the thought of food, my belly rebelled again, my abs tensing with every dry heave.