Rebel (Renegades 2)

“You ass. ”

He laughed, but the sound was far from his usual buoyancy. He propped his elbow on the armrest and rubbed his fingers over his forehead.

“I know you’re going to hate this…but…” He hesitated as if trying to decide how or what to say. “I…need to know where we stand, Rubi. ” With his forehead propped on two fingers, he tilted his gaze toward her. She couldn’t see his eyes through the mirrored lenses, but his mouth was tight, and she could easily imagine his serious dark gaze. “I don’t want to walk around for two weeks-or more-not knowing. It will eat at me. ”

Rubi licked her lips. Anxiety bubbled up in her belly and imaginary walls pressed in on her. “I…don’t know how to answer that. Do we really need a label? After only a week?”

He waited, as if hoping more would come. When it didn’t, he turned his gaze back to his lap. “Fuck,” he murmured, barely audible in the wind from the open top. “I don’t know if I can do this. ”

Panic streaked beneath her breastbone. Her mind filled with the jumbled thoughts from the night before-all her desires, all her fears. She took the off-ramp to LAX as if on autopilot and continued toward the departing flights.

“What does that mean?” she asked hesitantly. She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

He looked out the windshield with a shake of his head. “I just… You were right last night when you said I don’t look ahead. I didn’t think it through when I started this with you. I just…wanted you. Had been wanting you for months. In a way, I’d been wanting you even longer and didn’t realize it until I found you. ” He shrugged. “I just thought…you know, it would all work out. ”

Had wanted her longer? She swung to the curb in front of the United terminal and put the car in park, confused.

“Can you at least tell me where we stand before I get on a plane?” he asked.

Her stomach knotted. “Really, Wes, do we have to do this now?”

“We’ve been on a fucking roller coaster for the last week. ” Frustration played in his voice. “It would be nice to know whether or not I’m going to come home to the up, the down, or the end of the ride. ”

“Why don’t you just ask me what you really want to know?” Her stomach burned, even while knowing he had every right to ask. To know. To suspect. “Will I fuck someone else when you’re not around, right?”

His jaw tightened. Nostrils flared. “You know right now whether you will or won’t. It’s already in your heart, Rubi. Is it really unreasonable for me to ask which it is?”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s not. ”

And she did know in her heart. But the fact that he needed to ask made the question too complicated to answer-especially in the airport drop-off line.

A traffic guard strolled by. “Keep it moving, people. ”

Wes nodded affirmation toward the man, but when he turned back to her, a desperate, disillusioned look lay heavy in his eyes. He leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to her lips, lingering as if delaying the inevitable. She met the kiss, wrapping her hand around his head. And found herself hoping, praying, this wouldn’t be their last.

When he finally broke the kiss, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers.

“I’m crazy about you. ” He murmured the words so softly she was sure she’d imagined them, as if the feelings between them had lifted into the air. “I don’t want anyone else. ” Wes’s long, blond lashes trembled as he squeezed his eyes shut, a painful expression tight across his face. “I’m sorry, baby. It’s just who I am. I love everything you hide and everything you don’t. I just…love you. ”

He leaned away, gaze averted. But she saw the wetness clinging to his lashes. And her heart lunged to her throat.

“Wes-”

“Do what you need to do, Rubi,” he said, his voice rough. “I understand. ”

She opened her mouth-to say what, she couldn’t fathom. But she didn’t get a chance. He gave her one more hard kiss and exited the car, disappearing into the airport chaos before her head had even stopped spinning.

Eighteen

Wes blinked his eyes open to the bing, bing, bing of the plane’s intercom.

“Ladies and gentlemen. ” The pilot’s smooth, calm voice filled the cabin. “We’re beginning our descent into St. Louis. Right now we’ve got partly cloudy skies and a temperature of fifty-seven degrees, humidity at sixty-four percent. Relax, and we’ll have you on the ground in about fifteen minutes. ”

Wes pushed himself up from the slouch he’d fallen into while dozing and rubbed his face. He winced when he tried to straighten the fingers of his right hand, and again when he touched a sensitive spot on his injured eye. But it couldn’t compete with the discomfort burning in his gut.

He hadn’t meant to tell Rubi he loved her. Hadn’t even really known it was coming until it was so high in his throat he couldn’t keep it from falling out. And he still felt weird about it. Not wrong, just…weird. He’d only said it to one other woman in his life, so it wasn’t like he went around professing his undying love. But by the panic shining in her eyes when he’d walked away, he knew it had been an ill-timed epiphany. Though he couldn’t imagine a time a declaration like that wouldn’t have been ill-timed for Rubi.

Rubi. Out of all the women he could have fallen in love with, he’d gone and fallen for Rubi Russo? Seriously?