The Tomboy & the Rebel

by Leeann M. Shane

  I’d probably gotten four hours of sleep. My entire body was sore, especially my feet. My head pounded. I was too warm beside Dare’s oven-like body, but I was also used to it. The moment I moved onto my side away from him, I missed it. I rolled onto my other side and pressed my front into his side.

  He slept wildly. One arm was flung over his head. The other was tucked under my pillow. One leg was out of the blanket and the other was tucked inside. I examined his clothes, frowning.

  He was wearing one of my shirts, a dark blue one and a pair of black athletic shorts I loved to wear with sneakers and a tank top. I rose onto one elbow and gaped down at him. Now I knew what he meant. Him wearing my clothes should not be as hot to me as it was. He made them look good. They were fitted on him because of the size, but in response, they made him look even taller and leaner. Muscles were cut into his biceps and shins.

  In sleep, his face was boyish and less hard. His chocolate hair was sleepily mussed, and his lips were open partially, his breath expelling as his chest rose. I wanted to kiss them. Fit my top lip between them and bite down. Heat overcame me. And want.

  I lay onto my back and pulled the covers up to my neck. I was exhausted. That’s all. I wasn’t… I wasn’t falling for Darren Morre. That wasn’t possible. Plus, I was still majorly pissed at him and hurt. Ah, much better.

  Burrowing down, I fell back asleep, awaking much later to a much different scenario.

  He was the one watching me as I slept. When I looked down, I realized I was giving him a much better show. My lack of bra had left me bare and exposed with only my t-shirt to hide me. My nipples were hard. My shirt had also ridden up and my sweats hung loosely on my hipbones, leaving a hint of thigh bare to his gaze. Of course, when I shot my gaze to his, he only appeared to be looking at my face.

  He grinned, unabashed.

  I closed my eyes shut and then reopened them. “Nope, not a nightmare. You’re still here.”

  His grin fell. Maybe his emotions were scraped raw too. Maybe he was feeling just as bruised. He sagged onto his back and put his arms behind his head, jaw tensed. There was a humming sound. I peered through his elbow to see his phone lighting up on my nightstand as it vibrated with a call. He ignored it.

  “I can’t keep missing so much school,” I said, my voice thick with sleep. But I couldn’t bring myself to care that it was after three in the afternoon, and that I’d missed another day of being bullied and judged. Dare may not be my favorite, but he didn’t bully nor judge me. I guess I sort of needed that more than algebra. My own rules.

  His phone rang again. He ignored that call, too.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He stared at the constellation of Cygnus. I rolled onto my side and got close to him. He didn’t react. In retrospect, maybe I’d been harsh on him yesterday. Harsh on him period. He had been there, when most weren’t. And his ex-girlfriend’s actions couldn’t be hung over his head forever. Eventually her actions were hers alone. And cornering me in a room was that moment.

  Feeling terrible, I leaned close and pressed my lips to his temple, right on the teeny crescent moon mole beside his sideburn. “Are you mad at me?”

  His eyes tightened fractionally.

  I kissed him again, loving the heat of his hot skin against my soft lips. “Dare,” I said, “I’m sorry. Things have been hard for me lately. Not that that’s an excuse to treat you—”

  His body moved indiscernibly fast. He was on top of me before I could react. His elbows settled on either side of my head and his waist sank between my thighs. In seconds, I was out of my element, but inside of it, too. I’d never been that close to a guy before. Felt his body against mine. The heat and hardness of every inch of him. He hovered over me like an eclipse, shutting out anything else.

  My arms hung at my sides, pinned there under my weight.

  “Don’t you dare try apologizing to me, Mel.” He pressed his forehead to mine, and it was too late to worry about morning breath. Our breaths were tangled like us. Close and hot. “I’m not mad at you. I’ve never been mad at you. Not even when you slapped me.”

  “Then why aren’t you talking to me?”

  “Because I’m—” He closed his eyes. “Scared.”

  “Scared of what?” I wanted to kiss him. To kiss away the defeat in his tone, even though I had no idea what had left him feeling that way.

  “Nothing,” he sighed miserably. He ducked his head to rest beside mine, his hot breath kissing my shoulder. His body weight settled on top of me. And Dare wasn’t unashamed, about anything, it seemed.

  I wriggled my arms free and brought them around his waist, hugging him to me. His arms cradled my head to his shoulder. It felt so incredibly good, I didn’t realize how much I needed the contact until I had it. He smelled neutral. No soap or cologne. Just clean skin and strangely enough, me.

  “You’re a virgin,” he stated.

  “I’m a virgin,” I confirmed, giggling quietly.

  He pressed his hips against me, and my giggle cut off at the contact. “No giggling when I’m on top of you.”

  The contact sent a wave of headiness through my thoughts. Want had a smell. It was tangy and addicting. I could smell it everywhere. I kissed his neck, feeling his pulse thrum against my lips. He kissed me in the same place. A long, deep stroke of his lips over my pulse. The smooth heat of his lips made it hard to think. Our pulses pounded against the other’s kiss.

  My fingertips dug into his back. He kissed my neck harder, tugging my flesh between his teeth. It felt so good I moaned, baring my throat to him. He hummed low in his, the sound moving over my entire body. Something hot and wet—his tongue—slid over where he’d sucked, and I jerked, making more of our bodies come in close contact.

  He started moving his hips, sending the proof of his reaction to what we were doing against me. One of my hands slid up and my fingers buried in his hair, pressing his head against me.

  I arched in his arms when he bit down, sucking my flesh between his teeth. He kissed my neck the way I thought he wanted to kiss me.

  I wanted his lips. But I didn’t want him to stop yet to have them. “Dare,” I exhaled, the sound of my voice foreign. I liked it. I sounded like someone I didn’t know, someone who wasn’t so sad and angry. But I felt like me, too. New.

  Dare was doing that to me. A strange sense of support in an otherwise disrupted mind.

  His lips slid up to snag my earlobe as our bodies continued to meet. His lips were on my jaw, and then my cheek. I turned my head to the left and his soft, warm lips brushed against mine. I felt my entire body relax. My mind fogged over. All I wanted was for him to deepen the kiss. I opened my mouth, and he opened his, and right before the deepness could overtake me, I was wrenched from it.

  “What is this?” someone shouted.

  Dare and I both tore free and looked over at my door. Sean was standing there; horror, and if I wasn’t mistaken anger, painted his face.

  “Melanie,” he said desperately, like he wanted me to deny what he’d seen.

  I was frozen. Dare looked back to me, unfrozen. The boy was so hot, his skin nearly seared me where I touched it. His gunmetal eyes had struck, and they were shimmering silver. I felt myself caving, wanting to dive into them, but Sean tore me from him once more.

  “Melanie!” he snapped.

  I imagined what this must look like. Dare on top of me, our body’s tangled, our lips much the same. If he’d been in bed with Maisy, I’d feel the same way. Betrayed. “Can you get off of me, please?” I asked Dare, who was looking down at me with so much heat I thought I’d catch fire.

  “Do I have to?” His deep voice brushed over my lips.

  “Yes, you do.”

  He pushed to his elbows and then sat up, not hiding the tent in his shorts. He smirked when he saw me staring at it. I blushed, shot him a glare, and then rolled out of bed on hollow legs. Sean wasn’t in the room anymore. Unable to think of what to say, I knew the on
ly option I had left was the truth.

  Sean was pacing the hall at the far end when I closed my bedroom door and stepped out.

  “Please tell me what I just saw.”

  A hysterical bubble of laughter spat out of me. When he glared, I covered my mouth with my hand. I dropped it when the moment passed. “Honestly, Sean? I don’t know.”

  “You ditched—again—to stay home and hook up with Darren Morre? A guy you were crying over and running from yesterday at lunch?”

  “No need to point out the obvious, Sean.” I really wanted some coffee. I didn’t know if my headache was from the few shots I had, or the day, but it was pounding.

  “You look like crap,” he said. Not meanly, pissed off. Like a big brother. Still, it smarted. “Do you have a hangover?”

  I gave him a guilty look.

  His eyes popped out of his head. “You went out last night and drank?” He jabbed a thumb at my door. “With him?”

  “Kind of. Sort of. Yeah.” I stepped toward him. “Can we sit down?”

  “Mel, I can’t even think right now. You’re ditching, drinking, and hanging out with boys you don’t even like?”

  “I like him,” I argued. Obviously. “He just gets on my nerves super bad, that’s all.” I giggled again.

  He wasn’t kidding. “Are you so lonely that he looks like a good idea?”

  His question slammed into me. And pissed me off. “Sean, can we talk about this later?”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “Because you’re too busy drooling over the girl who’s making my life hell!” I snapped.

  He studied me. All over. Taking in what I only assumed was my face after last night’s squabble. “What happened?” he demanded.

  I broke out into tears, telling him about what happened at the party through barely intelligible sobs. He scooped me up in his arms. I felt better, but that good feeling faded when I wished that it were Dare’s arms around me instead.

  “She did that?” he asked, pained disbelief in his tone. He didn’t want to believe that Super Maisy had become the villain. “It’s kind of hard to love her after hearing that.”

  I rolled my eyes, my face squashed against his chest.

  “We need to talk, Mel. Really talk.” He pulled back to gaze down at me, concern all over his face. “Okay?”

  I nodded, stepping out of his hold to wipe at my eyes with my shirt. I was floating on this cloud of unease, and I feared that if I stepped wrong, I’d fall over the edge and never find my feet again.

  “When?”

  I shrugged, guiltily, not wanting to have whatever conversation he wanted to have with me. It couldn’t be a good one. “Tonight?”

  “Is he going to be there?” He glared darkly at my closed bedroom door.

  I frowned. Dare didn’t seem to want to leave. Getting rid of him might be a problem. One because he toyed with boundaries. At least he did when it came to me. And two because, I wasn’t sure I wanted to entirely get rid of him anymore. The admittance filled my stomach with doubt and nervousness. What was happening to me? I was an experiment. He was a project. But it didn’t feel that way anymore. It felt… confusing.

  “Let’s talk at school tomorrow. I have to meet with Principal Darwin before class, so we can talk afterward.”

  His eyes lasered through my soul, picking it apart and holding it up to the microscope in his head. “I’m going to ruin her reputation.”

  “Who?”

  “Super Maisy.” He turned and left, taking off for the stairs at the end of the hall.

  But I saw the flare of disappointment in his eyes when he turned for the stairs. It was hard finding out the person you were in love with were really evil reincarnate. My eyes slid to my closed bedroom door, and I froze. I didn’t want to go back in there because I did.

  “Mellllll!” Dare called, drawing out my name lasciviously in his low, deep voice.

  I gulped.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” My bedroom door opened, and there he stood. His eyes looked startlingly clear. Like he knew things I didn’t. Like he wanted things I didn’t. Like Darren Morre had put an equation together in his head I hadn’t, and gotten an answer he not only wanted, but that answer was good enough to make the gray of his eyes shine like metal.

  My scattered brain nearly exploded at the sight of him. I barely even knew my mind anymore. And shamefully, part of me loved it. Loved not knowing my situation enough to be hurt by it.

  He put his arms above his head and rested his elbows on either side of my door. He leaned forward a few inches and stared through my soul. “What are you doing?” he asked quietly.

  I shrugged, my fingers wringing together.

  His lips curled into a crooked smile. “Where’s your friend?”

  “He left,” I mumbled, trapped in his gaze.

  “Are you afraid to come back in here with me?” he guessed, his crooked smile turning into a full-blown rebel grin.

  It irritated me, giving me the spark of clarity I needed. I brushed past him and ducked under his arm, going into my room. I was still muddled from sleep and his kiss. Nothing made sense.

  None of this was real.

  But it felt like the realest thing in my life.

  “Your clothes are in the dryer,” I informed him, going into my closet. I didn’t know what I was getting dressed for, but I needed to do something.

  I could feel his gaze on me as I sifted through my jeans. I turned to find him leaning against the wall, watching me. The more he irritated me, the more I was reminded of last night. To a me that was in fact extremely unhappy with him. My eyes must’ve changed because his did too. They lost their cocky, hungry edge. There were many different parts of him. That should have comforted me. To find that rebel wasn’t in fact a one-dimensional cardboard cutout of rebelliousness. But it didn’t comfort me. It freaked me out. Because so far, I liked what I saw.

  What I touched.

  What I kissed.

  “What are you looking at?” I sneered, taking my fears out on him. Like I always did. What about that boy made it okay to be an emotional mess? I guessed because even though I was, he hadn’t run away. He didn’t leave me alone and hungry. Feeling bad, my shoulders sagged.

  “We need to talk about last night,” he said instead, the low heat that had been in his voice earlier gone. “And this morning.”

  I turned my back on him and grabbed a pair of overalls. I pulled them roughly from the pile and then moved on to shirts. “What is there to talk about? Your ex-girlfriend jumped me. Courtesy of you. And we made out. Just a normal day in the life of… not me.”

  “I really am sorry about that. There’s not much I can do but talk to her. I’ll do it at school tomorrow. Okay?” he asked softly, remorse thick in his tone.

  The sound of it had me closing my eyes and finding it hard to breathe, my hands on my t-shirt pile. “Thanks, Dare.”

  “Now,” he said, clearing his throat. “Let’s talk about that kiss. Did you, or did you not, feel that?”

  My knees locked. I peeked over my shoulder to find the silver fog of hunger back in his eyes. It was better than free falling. It was being doused in something beautiful and bad at the same time. I found myself leaning back ever-so-slightly in his direction. “Feel what?” I whispered.

  “Oh, come on, Mel. Every time you run from me, I’m running after you. Especially after kissing you and feeling something I’ve never felt before.”

  Oh, dear. Dare’s hungry look in the closed quarters of my closet was dangerous. There was nowhere else for it to go but to me. Like a fire compartmentalized in my heart; I was going to combust. “Stop looking at me like that. It was just a kiss.” But my last sentence came out weak and lackluster.

  He heard my lie, giving me another cocky grin. “You felt it. That’s all that matters. So, what are we going to do today? We’ve got—” He paused, flicking off his fingers as he counted something. “About sixteen hours until school tomorrow.”

&nb
sp; I gaped at him. “Aren’t you going home?”

  He shook his head, his eyes darkening a bit. I thought of his ringing phone and his ignoring it. Did Dare not want to go home? Was hanging out with me a wall between his home life the way he was a wall between mine? I understood his need for a wall and wanted to give him one after he’d given me some.

  “Okay,” I said cheerfully. “Whatever you want to do. As long as it doesn’t involve alcohol and bikini wearing ex’s.”

  He smiled, and I swore his shoulders sagged in relief around the edges. “Let’s get out of Phoenix,” he said, with a wistfulness I’d never seen in him. He wanted to run, I realized, my heart hurting for him.

  How bad was home? Was it worse than mine? It had to be, if my house was preferred over his.

  Worse, I wanted to run with him. I ached to put some distance between me and the dust motes.

  “Okay, Dare,” I muttered, wondering if it were possible to fall in love with a boy I barely even liked.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dare was in my bathroom taking another shower, as I had a mini panic attack getting dressed.

  I put my overalls on and paired it with a lavender-colored sports bra and a black tank top. I rolled up the cuffs and then put on my black and white Adidas. I went through the motions of getting ready like a barely breathing robot. Lotion with flecks of glitter in it, and I pinned my hair up into a messy bun. I still felt queasy from the night before and went downstairs to get some ice water. The ice-water hit my stomach like a block of emptiness.

  I couldn’t stand looking at the kitchen, at the counter riddled with unopened mail. The kitchen table that hadn’t been used in two years. The calendar on the wall that hadn’t been flipped in over six months. This wasn’t a house. It was a time capsule, except instead of feeling nostalgia, I only felt the sting of unshed tears in my eyes.

  The loss.

  I went back upstairs, a fresh cup of water in my hand, to find Dare using my hair stuff in the bathroom.

  “Water,” I stated, setting it on the counter.