Wilder (The Renegades)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “I’d love to say that it’s okay, but it’s not,” I answered honestly. We hadn’t lied to each other in years, and I wasn’t going to start that shit back up again.

  He looked away and nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

  I saw the cameras walking in the distance and took advantage. “Listen, I have to ask you about something, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”

  He immediately met my eyes. “Anything.”

  “The rigs from the first zip-line. Did you store them? Put them away?”

  His forehead wrinkled. “No. But if you’re looking for them, the production crew has been stashing most of the stuff under my bed and in my closet. I didn’t want any of the gear getting lost.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, we found them the day we were looking for your pack.”

  “Oh, okay. Then what’s the deal?” He looked confused, maybe worried, but not guilty.

  I let go of the breath I’d subconsciously held. “The brakes had been tampered with.”

  His eyes flew wide. “No fucking way. Seriously?”

  I nodded.

  “Pax, I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that, right? No matter what’s gone down with us in the past.”

  “Yeah. I do. I didn’t even want to ask, but it wasn’t just my life at stake on that thing. Leah was with me.” It was one thing to risk my life following my passion, but another to put hers on the line.

  “Okay, well, who else had access to the rigs after you assembled them?”

  “I don’t know. I had the crew take them. They were only out of my sight for maybe ten minutes, but I’ve never been worried about this shit.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah. And there’s more. My chest plate from Rome has a clean break. The damn thing is straight. Someone fucked with it.”

  “Who knows?”

  “Just you and Leah. I was going to bring Little John and Penna in, too. We need all eyes open.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Little John’s been with us the longest, since we were what—seventeen? I’d bring Brooke in, too. She’s family.”

  “You don’t think it would be too much after what happened with Nick?” She’d been devastated, and no one could blame her.

  “I think she’d kill us if there was a danger to Penna and we kept it from her. Plus, she’s working on a problem that came up while you were cuddled up to Leah. Some of our videos are being hacked on the site. Nothing big, but in combination…”

  My stomach tightened. “We’re under attack.”

  “It looks like it, and Brooke will know that something’s up.” He motioned behind me where Penna walked down the hill with Leah. The cameras would be coming soon, and it would be game on.

  “How’s that going, by the way?” he asked quietly.

  “Great until you assholes showed up.”

  He clutched his chest. “You wound me.”

  “She’s not a fan of all this, and she’s been freaked out since Rome.”

  Landon smacked my back. “You found a good one. Try not to fuck it up.”

  I bit back the urge to say something that would do more harm than good. Along with being protective of Leah, I was realizing that I was possessive, too. Great if this were the Middle Ages, not so great while filming a documentary where my fuckups could send this brand-new relationship down in flames.

  “Is that the kicker he designed?” Penna asked, looking up at the metal piece that dipped down at the end of the ramp.

  “Yeah,” I answered as I wrapped my arm around Leah’s shoulders. “He shipped it here. It’s working great. I just can’t seem to nail the full rotation.”

  “How’s it going?” she asked, studying the ramp with a practiced eye. Penna was the only one close to keeping up with me on a bike.

  “I’m coming down vertical in the third rotation.”

  She sighed and rubbed her hand over her eyes. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know where her head was, because mine was there every time I hit the ramp. “I’m consistent, Penna. I always make it that far.”

  “Yeah, until you don’t,” she muttered. “Look, the live exhibition is in what, seven weeks?”

  “Somewhere around there,” Landon chimed in.

  “We haven’t announced what you’re doing. Let’s kill it. Pick something else.” A shot of fear raced through Penna’s eyes. “We’re not losing both of you to this fucking trick. It’s not worth it.”

  My muscles tensed, and I glanced at Leah’s slightly widened eyes. Damn it, Penna, I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. “No. We all had one thing we wanted to nail on this trip, one trick that would make the documentary phenomenal. This is mine, and it’s the least I can do for him.”

  A look passed between the three of us, and they each nodded. “Okay. Then let’s see how to get you there,” Penna offered begrudgingly.

  The cameras caught up to us, Bobby looking unapologetic, since he no doubt got the shot he wanted this morning. I needed to call in legal to see how much of the documentary I could cut Leah out of. She didn’t need to be exposed like that, especially not on my account, especially since we hadn’t discussed officially going public.

  “Hey, guys, why don’t we show you the ramp?” Penna offered, flashing her mega-watt smile that usually distracted anyone with a dick.

  Landon rolled his eyes in my direction but got on board. “Yeah, you’ll probably want to see where he has to start from to build momentum,” he said, guiding the cameras back toward the track and away from Leah and me.

  “Tell me now,” Leah demanded once they were out of earshot.

  “Leah…” Her name was a sigh on my lips as she moved to stand directly in front of me.

  “No one’s ever done this before, right? Completed it? Look at me, Paxton.”

  I did, taking in the slight look of panic in her eyes, the stiff way she held herself away from me. “No. No one’s completed it.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, but not in stubbornness. It looked more like she was trying to hold herself together. “Okay. Who’s attempted it?”

  My jaw flexed. I didn’t want to answer. I wanted to drag her back to our room and make love to her until she forgot the question. Until we both forgot what was waiting out here.

  “Paxton.”

  “I only know one other person in the world who’s tried it.”

  “Okay, and where is he? Is he still trying to do it, too?”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “Why?” Her eyes pleaded with me for the truth.

  I gave it to her, breaking the vow of secrecy I’d sworn to him, because I couldn’t bear to lie to her.

  “Because he’s in a fucking wheelchair. He couldn’t land the rotation, and the crash paralyzed him.” There it was.

  I expected her reaction to be nuclear. It was more of an electromagnetic pulse. There was no explosion, but the light in her eyes, the happy energy she’d had radiating around her all morning, died in a split second.

  I would have rather seen her rage than watch those damn walls go back up.

  She didn’t say a word, simply kissed me, the press of her lips heavy with fear and a touch of desperation. Then she turned toward where she’d sat all yesterday and walked away.

  Yeah. I definitely would have rather had a yelling Leah than a silent one.

  When I finally had my gear on, ready to hit the ramp for the first time that day, I looked to where her seat was, expecting to see an empty space.

  She sat, her outstretched legs covered in white, gauzy pants, reading one of the literature books Penna had brought with her from our assigned homework.

  It didn’t matter to her that what I was doing was dangerous, that any minute she could be sitting in the hospital with me—she was there.

  Damn it, that pressure was back in my chest, ten times what it had been, burning with an intensity that only Leah could soothe, because she was the balm to everything that was broken inside me.

  I prayed that I didn’t break her, to
o.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Leah

  Mykonos

  He was insane. That was the only reason I could come up with for why he would do this to himself. Any one of these people could have messed with the zip-line rigs, or weakened his chest protector, and he was putting his life in their hands. Again. Watching him yesterday was hard enough, but this was torturous. He started his umpteenth run at the ramp—I’d lost count of how many it had been—and I held my breath as he went flying, tumbling through space, until he landed closer to the full rotation in the foam pit. Thank God the sun would be going down soon, because I wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take, let alone how much more I could stomach.

  Penna leaned over the foam pit, analyzing what had worked, as Little John moved the crane to lift him out.

  Paralyzed. The only other person was paralyzed.

  Over a stupid trick.

  Yep, insane. That was the only answer.

  I flipped another page in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and tried to pay attention, but it was useless. We’d already missed a couple of each class, and I didn’t even want to think about what it was going to take to catch us both up, but I was going to have to.

  Paxton couldn’t afford to have anything else on his mind while he was hunting death.

  Paralyzed. Ugh. I slammed the book and threw it on the blanket. All over a stupid documentary that he said was the least they could do for someone else. What would even possess him to want to try something that had done that to someone else…unless…

  I sat up, watching the dynamic between the three of them, Landon, Paxton, and Penna. There was an empty space between them, like someone was missing from the conversation—because he was.

  Because the fourth Original wasn’t taking time off. Nick had to have been the one hurt. He was the one paralyzed.

  That’s why Paxton was so hell-bent on getting the trick down. Was he doing it to show up the friend who’d stolen the only girl he’d ever cared about? I doubted it. Paxton wasn’t that petty.

  But the evidence suggested otherwise.

  Add to all of that the nagging feeling in my stomach that not everyone here had Paxton’s safety as a priority, and I was a bundle of nausea.

  When he blew me a kiss, I wrapped my arms around my knees and forced a smile. This was the last place I wanted to be, waiting for disaster to strike, but if I left it would distract him, and possibly bring on said disaster. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

  So I stayed.

  My breath froze in my chest as he came barreling down the track, driving at the ramp faster than I’d ever seen him go before. He launched higher, and my teeth sank into my lower lip, as he flipped once…twice…three times…

  And landed on both wheels in the foam pit.

  The celebration began at once, the crew all whooping with arms raised. Paxton didn’t wait for the crane, just climbed out of the pit, jumping to the ground and ripping off his helmet mid-run.

  Exhilaration burst through me like a joyful shock to the heart. He’d done it!

  I was in his arms before I even realized that I’d stood. His mouth found mine, kissing me with both of his hands tangled in my hair. My arms were around his neck, and I held on for dear life, well aware of how dangerous everything was around him, knowing I had to savor each kiss, never waste any of them.

  “You did it!” I yelled as he swung me around in his arms.

  “Not quite, but almost,” he said, laughing, punctuating his comment with another kiss.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “He has to actually land it on the dirt and ride off, now,” Landon answered, smacking him on the back. “That was amazing!”

  Yeah, I was right.

  They were both insane.

  …

  Fuck. This.

  How long was he going to keep this up?

  Day two of watch-Paxton-try-to-kill-himself, and our last day on Mykonos, had me camped out on a separate area of the track. They’d moved the ramp, which had taken hours, and packed dirt higher on the mound Paxton was supposed to land on.

  Except he’d skidded out more than he’d landed it.

  Every time he hit the dirt, I felt the crash in my bones, the scrapes on my own skin. I rubbed my hands over my bare arms as he picked up the bike again, giving me the thumbs-up.

  When the hell did I get to give the thumbs-down?

  Selfishly, I was exhausted. My eyes tracked every motion around Paxton, watching to see if someone messed with him, the bike, the ramp, the crane…all of it. It had to be someone close to him, someone familiar with the gear and his routines. We’d ruled out Little John last night over a quiet dinner—after all, the rigs had been found on board, and Little John hadn’t been on the ship since Miami.

  That only left every other Renegade to question.

  “It’s not easy to watch, is it?” Brooke said, sitting down next to me.

  “Hey, when did you get here?” I asked.

  She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. “This morning. I had to do some tech work on the website and the channel. We’ve been hacked a few times since we set sail, and a bunch of the videos were taken down.”

  “Do they know?” I motioned to where Paxton was discussing the last jump with Landon and Penna.

  “Yeah, Penna’s the one who asked me to look at it. I used to run all their site stuff before they blew up big, and she’s not quick to trust people, even if she’s paying them to maintain the site.”

  A sick feeling settled in my stomach. “Do you think it’s malicious? The videos coming down?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not skilled enough to tell you that. I don’t know. But I can say that there are a ton of worse things they could have done in there than just take down some videos.”

  As a single incident, the site hacking didn’t seem too bad, but when combined with the mishaps with Paxton, it was adding up to something that had my stomach twisted in knots. Plus, if Pax knew, why hadn’t he told me? Because you would have screamed until he shut down the practice. “Right.”

  I was going to hand his ass to him later.

  “It’s probably some stupid hacker kids out for bragging rights or something. I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” she finished. “Are they done for the day?”

  “They shouldn’t be, it’s not even lunch—” The words died on my tongue as Paxton stripped off his chest protector and then the Under Armour beneath it, leaving his torso deliciously bare. Sweat ran down the carved lines, making his tan skin glisten in the sunlight. The nasty bruise along the side of his rib cage was turning green, but even that didn’t detract from his appeal. He could probably radiate sex in a full body cast.

  All it took was one look in my direction and my body was humming, despite the fact that he’d made love to me before breakfast.

  Or rather…I’d been breakfast.

  He grinned as he walked up to us. His blue eyes held me captive as he bent to kiss me. “You look good enough to eat.”

  I raised an eyebrow, and he laughed. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had this morning on the brain. “Well, I think we should probably get you some lunch, don’t you?” I asked.

  His eyes dropped to my lips, and he lifted me out of my chair by my waist, pulling me against his chest. “Are you offering?”

  Yes. “No. I meant food. Real food. The kind that fuels that body you’re torturing out there.”

  “Oh, you fuel me, Firecracker.” He kissed me again, and I nearly forgot where we were.

  “You two are nauseating. Cute, but vomit-worthy,” Penna said from behind him. “Let’s get going; our reservation is in about thirty minutes.”

  “Reservation?” I asked.

  “I’m taking you to lunch,” Paxton answered. “So if you’ll go with Penna, I’ll hop in the shower real fast.”

  “It’s a group date,” Landon added.

  “A group date,” I parroted. “I didn’t realize anyone else was seein
g anyone,” I mused out loud.

  “Oh, well, you date one of us, you kind of get us all,” Penna said with a grin.

  “That’s a show I’d pay to watch,” Landon said with a wiggle of his eyebrows in our direction…until he caught Paxton’s death glare. “You know… I think I’ll go wait on the plane.”

  “Plane?” I looked up at my boyfriend. Boyfriend. How amazing is that?

  “I didn’t want our first official date to be ordinary,” he said with a soft kiss on my forehead.

  “Oh, nothing with you could ever be ordinary.” I laughed.

  “Thank you.”

  I tilted my head. “I’m not sure that was a compliment.”

  He held my face in his hands and kissed me softly. “Wait and see what I have planned for us.”

  …

  “You want me to what?” I asked a few hours later, standing on a hilltop in Zakynthos, over three hundred miles away from Mykonos.

  “BASE jump,” Paxton said, positively giddy.

  “You want me to jump off a thousand-foot cliff? Are you out of your mind? I don’t even know how to operate a parachute.” No way. No freaking way.

  He brought my hands up to his heart, as if the beat would reassure me. Damn it, he was right. “First, it’s actually only nine hundred feet, and we’d go tandem—together. I’ll work everything, and you’ll just enjoy the ride.”

  All around us, the Renegades were strapping on their harnesses and parachutes. Little John was even helping Brooke into one.

  “You’re doing this?” I asked her.

  “Hell yes. This is Navagio Beach—one of the most epic sites ever. I’ll never get an opportunity to try this again. Besides, I’ll pull the cord so fast that there won’t be much free fall, just the view.”

  “Insane. You’re all insane.”

  “I told you this was a bad idea, that it wasn’t fair to make her do this,” Penna said quietly enough that only Paxton and I could hear. “Leah, if you want to walk down, I’m with you all the way.”

  Paxton shot her a look. “Point noted. I’d never make her jump.”

  I shook my head. “This feels like a death wish.”

  “I’ll second that,” Little John said as he brought our harnesses over. “Bobby is going to kill you when he realizes you ditched the cameras on this one.”