The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(103)

“Today, we return to Raleigh with heavy and broken hearts, but please know…I will never allow anything like this to ever happen to our community again. I promise to keep you safe. I promise to do better. Now, let’s go and shine…and let’s help each other remember how to breathe again.”





SILVER





I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous. Alex has been to the house before, but never under these circumstances. Never as the boy I’m dating. Not as my official boyfriend. God, it’s still so weird to think of him in those terms. It feels stupid. Childish. Immature. Alex was shot not too long ago and nearly died. Seems to me there should be a weightier title for him now.

“Silver! Can you remember where we put that photo album with that one picture? Y’know, the one with you hiding behind the couch, taking a shit in your diaper?”

Dad is loving this.

In turn, I have learned that it’s possible to love a parent but also want them to writhe in pain. Nothing serious. A broken toe would be nice. Or surprise root canal surgery.

I almost trip over my own feet in my haste to make it down the stairs and into the dining room. Mom’s laid out the table with all the fancy cutlery and dishes, six places set around the massive, formal dining table that only gets used at holidays and for special occasions. I gape at the set-up, holding out my hands just as Dad enters the room. “What the hell is this?” I demand.

Dad takes a bite out of an apple. “Your mother went mad.”

“We’re not Catholic. We aren’t, are we? Why does it look like the Pope’s coming for dinner?”

“We've lapsed,” my father confirms. “But, sidenote. I’ve recently taken up praying again. Funnily enough, my renewed faith coincided with the night you asked to go spend the night with a guy who looks like something out of Sons of Anarchy.”

“Dad. Please shut up.”

He holds his hands in the air, still brandishing his half-eaten apple. “All I’m saying is, I think I’m greyer than I used to be. If I start clutching my chest at dinner and I slump over my plate, face-down in my stroganoff, it’s because I’m faking my own death and I can’t live with the knowledge that I basically gave that little punk permission to defile you.”

“DAD! Oh my fucking god. No! Don’t ever open your mouth again. Especially not in front of Alex.”

He laughs like the evil monster that he is as he turns around and heads into the kitchen. I pace anxiously up and down the hallway for the next thirty minutes, worrying at my thumbnail with my front teeth, trying to come up with a decent excuse to call off the entire dinner. I come up with plenty of solid reasons, but every time I pull out my cell to text Alex, I realize how stupid I’m being and talk myself out of it.

At six thirty on the dot, the doorbell chimes. I just so happen to be banging my head against my bedroom door at the time, so Max gets there before me, screeching like a banshee at the top of his lungs. “ALEEEEEXXX! IT’S ALEX!”

I’m hissing every dark, vicious curse word I can think as I thunder down the stairs, running to get to the door before Max can say anything to embarrass or humiliate me. When I arrive, however, Alex is standing with his tattooed hands resting on the shoulders of a very pale, wide-eyed young boy, introducing him to my brother.

“Ben’s eleven, too. You guys are in the same year,” Alex says. He looks up at me, and my heart stops dead in my chest.

Holy fucking Christ on a bike.

He’s wearing a button-down black shirt, the top button popped, that is tailored and fits him perfectly. I nearly faint at the sight of his sleeves rolled up, cuffed around his elbows—what the hell is it about rolled up sleeves? I swear to god…

His black jeans are brand new, minus the usual rips and tears, and his Stan Smiths look like he spent a considerable amount of time scrubbing at them with a toothbrush. There isn’t a speck of dirt on them. Alex smirks ruinously at me, biting down on his bottom lip. He begged me not to do that the first night we spent in the cabin because it was driving him crazy. I wonder if he’s aware that the action has the exact same effect on me when he does it.

“Silver, this my brother, Ben. Ben, this is Silver,” he says. There’s a cautious edge to his voice. Usually, he’s so confident and unshakable, but right now he seems downright nervous. It’s kind of adorable. I hold my hand out to the little boy, my breath catching in my throat when I look at him properly, square in the face, and I find a small, timid version of Alex staring back up at me. The shape of his face, the cheekbones, the straight, no-nonsense nose. Even his chin looks identical to Alex’s, and for a second I’m taken aback.

Alex would have looked a lot like Ben when does now when he was six. When he walked into the house and found his mother lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Except he was even smaller, five years younger, and the mental image that conjures itself in my mind makes me want to burst into tears.

He doesn’t just look like Alex. They both look so much like her.

Instead, I whisper out a greeting as Ben uncertainly takes my hand and shakes it. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Ben.”

“Pleased to meet you, too,” he mumbles in return. When I let go of his hand, he slips it underneath his other arm, tucking it against his body like he’s protecting it. He looks up at Alex, big brown eyes wide and unsure, and Alex nods, smiling down at him.