Rebel (Renegades 2)

She didn’t answer. He didn’t blame her after that snap.

He made another restless trip around the living room. Go after her? Again? Let her go? “How did she get to the airport?”

“She took Wyatt’s truck. Said she’d leave it in long-term parking. Keys will be on the inside of the front tire. ”

His stomach balled into a knot. “When does her flight leave?”

“I don’t know. ” She paused. “Wes. ”

He turned toward Whitney, his anger and frustration melting into hurt. Soul-deep hurt—she’d left him. And fear. Hot, liquid fear—he’d lost her. “What?”

“You really can’t try to fix this until you understand why it happened. Or it will just keep happening. ”

“What did she say?”

Whitney shook her head. “She didn’t want to talk about it. ”

“Fuck me. ” The unfamiliar sensation of helplessness clenched his hands. The equally unfamiliar pressure of tears pressed the backs of his eyes. “We were arguing. Melissa called and was in full meltdown mode. I just thought it would be good for Rubi and me to chill out. I was just trying to help. ”

“Reasonable,” Whitney said, “from your perspective. ”

The way Whitney said it told Wes it probably wasn’t reasonable from Rubi’s perspective.

“Don’t walk out on me. ”

Wes sat down hard on the window seat and dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t know, Whit. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we really don’t work together. I feel like she fits me better than anyone ever has. Like she really gets me. Like I can be who I should have been for years when I’m with her. But maybe I’m not right for her. ” He sat back with lead in his stomach. “We were all raised to do exactly what I did for Melissa today—help out friends and family. ”

“We were,” she agreed softly.

“My job requires me to travel. My schedule changes all the time. My hours are long. ”

“All true. ”

“I can’t always be there when she wants or needs me. I can’t ignore other responsibilities because she’s upset about something. ”

“No, you can’t. ”

Silence fell between them. Whitney took a sip from her mug. More silence.

He crossed his arms, but it did little to create counterpressure to the pain inside him. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say I told you so?”

“No. This is where I ask you if what you see as the problem is, in fact, the problem. ” She stared down into her mug. “Because Rubi doesn’t strike me as clingy, needy, demanding, or even unreasonable. ”

She wasn’t any of those things, Wes agreed. “So why the hell are we hitting this wall?” he asked himself more than Whitney.

His sister pushed to her feet. “It seems to me that she recognizes the importance of your family to you. She’s gone out of her way to accommodate that, even though she’s the first to admit—as she did to Mom the moment they met—that she’s not good with family. ”

Whitney held her empty mug out to Wes, and he took it automatically, without even knowing why.

“Unless you’re ready for serious therapy, which would include baring your darkest secrets to your sister”—she winced as if the thought caused her as much pain as it would him—“I’d suggest thinking about what’s really important to Rubi, and finding a way to convince her it’s just as important to you. ” She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “Now, I’ve got to go give some equally vague advice to clients who actually pay me for it. ”

Thirty

Rubi’s phone rang while she had a glass of wine in one hand and a bottle of Xanax in the other. She lifted her gaze from the warning label on the prescription and glanced around the chaos she’d created in her bedroom. Rodie, curled into a ball on the bed’s only clear spot, glanced around just as Rubi did.

Where the hell was her phone? If she weren’t so desperate to take a break from packing, get out of the house, and gain some human companionship, she would have let it ring. But she was hoping Lexi was calling to tell her a client had canceled their dinner plans.

She pushed to her feet, dodged the boxes scattered through the room, and dug beneath the hangers and hangers of clothes she’d thrown on her bed. When she dug it out, she glanced at the display.