The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(10)

His dark hair is thick and full of waves, shielding his face from view as he looks down at the phone he’s holding in his hand. I’m locked in place, feet cemented to the ground, breath lodged in my throat, waiting for him to lift his head. For his hair to fall back and give me a proper look at him…but then I’m flooded with a strange sense of panic, and I’m moving, fingernails digging into my palms as I hurry away from the girls and I hurtle up the steps, and into the building.

Zen shouts something behind me, but I don’t know if it’s at me or to the guy sitting on the motorcycle; her words are nothing more than a blur of sound. Inside, weaving my way through the heaving press of bodies in the hallway, I can feel my pulse all over my body, pounding like a determined fist against a wall, trying to break its way through.

I have no clue why I had to run.

I just couldn’t stand there, waiting to see his face. It felt like pure torture. It felt like waiting for the world to end.





By lunchtime, the whole school’s buzzing with the news: not only has a new student enrolled, but he looks like the frontman of a rock band. He’s covered in tattoos. He had a knife confiscated from his bag in first period. He squared up to Travis McCormick in the locker room and threatened to knock his teeth out.

The rumors grow wilder and wilder with every retelling, and I know I’m on borrowed time. I am going to run into him at some point. The population of Raleigh High isn’t all that big, and the guy who showed up on that motorcycle was no junior. He was a senior, which means we’re in the same year and bound to be in at least one class together. I do not, however, expect it to be my A.P. physics class.

I was never a front row kind of student. Before, I was always most comfortable sitting in the middle row, in the middle of the room, where I had plenty of room to see and be seen. Now, thanks to the fact that my classmates like to throw shit at my back and launch spitballs into my hair, I can be found on the very back row, tucked out of the way, usually in a corner if I can help it. I arrive early to class whenever I can, and I bolt for the door first, too. Easier to get in and out as quickly and quietly as possible.

I arrive at the last class of the day, my brain a little foggy from the overheated library where I ate lunch, and I don’t even look up as I make my way into the back-left corner of the room. I nearly have a heart attack when I dump my bag on the desk, seconds from sitting down, when I look up to find someone sitting there…at my desk.

His leather jacket is hung over the back of the chair, and his legs—how the fuck did I not notice his legs?—are stretched out in front of him, protruding into the aisle. Christ, I must have stepped over them in order to plunk my backpack down on the surface in front of him.

His t-shirt is grey, plain, with the sleeves cuffed, rolled up a couple of times, and the thin material is pulled taut across his chest. There really are tattoos all up his arms—dark swirls of ink that my eyes snag on as they travel up to his face.

High, pronounced cheekbones. Strong, cut jawline. Arrow straight nose. His lower lip is slightly fuller than the top. A pair of dark, intense eyes stare up at me, and it’s all I can do not to squeak like a fucking church mouse. Making eye contact with him is like staring into a bottomless well, inexplicably being stuck with vertigo and almost falling in. He’s exactly as I imagined he’d be. He’s nothing like I imagined he would be. Fuck, I just dumped my fucking bag down on the desk, right in front of him like an insane person, when every single other desk in the room is empty.

His dark eyebrow slowly curves itself into a question.

My brain short circuits. “Ah, shit. Sorry. I—I didn’t—” I reach out and grab my bag, snatching it back from the desk. “I—” I don’t know what the hell to say. I don’t know what to do, either. I stagger back, bumping into the desk behind me, and all the while he just stares at me with those steady, penetrating brown eyes of his.

Jesus wept, Silver, pull yourself together.

“I usually sit there. Is what I meant to say,” I clarify. “And I didn’t see you…sitting there.” For fuck’s sake. That did not go well.

The new guy’s mouth lifts up into an amused smirk. “I’m kinda hard to miss,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, well. I wasn’t paying attention, so…”

He angles his head to one side, studying me from the boots up. He looks confused. “Name?” he demands.

Okay, now that’s just fucking rude. I’m suddenly not so shocked that he’s in my seat anymore. I’m more...mad. Narrowing my eyes, I half-scowl at him. “Nope.”

Now it’s his turn to act surprised. “Nope?”

“That’s right. No.”

“You’re not going to tell me your name?”

“Maybe if you asked for it properly, like a normal fucking person and not some sergeant major asshole handing out an order, I would tell you.”

This earns me a swift bark of laughter. “All right, fine. Please, Oh Angry One, would you do me the honor of telling me your name?”

Mercifully, Professor Cline enters through the door and not a moment too soon. The towering stack of texts books in his hands wobbles, threatening to fall any moment. He curses under his breath, then curses again when he sees that two of his students have already arrived. “Sorry, guys. Sorry. Here, Silver, grab this for me, would you? I’m gonna lose it in a sec—woah!” The top book in his pile clatters to the floor. Looks like the rest of them are going to go any second, too. I lunge forward, rushing to help him.