The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(20)

If he’d slapped me across the face, I’d feel less scalded right now. I roll back my shoulders, reeling through a mental Rolodex of insults to hurl at him, searching for the perfect one, but then it occurs to me that he’s probably expecting me to be hurt by the words he just flung at me, and I won’t play into his heavily inked hands like that. No fucking way. I grab my bag, pulling my cell phone out of the front pocket, then I hold it out to him.

“My rate’s sixty bucks an hour. I have time to teach on Thursdays and Mondays, right after school. Take your pick.”

“I’ll take both. Has to look like I’m learning fast on paper.” He eyes my phone like it’s an unexploded bomb. “Am I expected to do something with that?”

“Put your number in it. I have to send you learning materials, and you’re going to text me an hour before our classes to confirm that you’re coming. I’m not going to waste my time, waiting around on you if you’re not gonna show.”

He curves a dark eyebrow at me but takes the phone and taps his number into it all the same. When he hands it back to me, he catches hold of my wrist, and I fall still. Slowly, he turns my arm so that the back of his own hand is face up, clear for me to see now. He’s showing me the ink I was studying just now—it is a wolf. A fierce, angry looking, feral creature, with anger in its eyes. He drops his hold on me, letting my arm fall, but leans in a little closer, his gaze dipping down toward my black lacy top again. This time I can’t help myself: I instinctively cover myself.

“What the hell are you doing?” I growl.

A curved, almost cruel smile lifts Alex’s mouth up to one side. “You asked for people to stare at you when you dressed like that, Silver. Don’t get on my case because I’m a fucking normal, curious human being.”

He slaps something else into my hand, then spins on the balls of his feet and smoothly exits the girl’s bathroom as if he had every right to be in here. I grimace down at the money he just gave me, then, numb and frankly a little shocked, I follow him out of the bathroom. Jacob and his crew are still standing there, taking up too much real estate in the hallway, acting like morons even though the bell’s about to ring. I watch as Alex walks right up to Jake and stops in front of him, back straight, eyes flashing with sharpened steel. Surprised, I note that Alex stands a good two inches taller than Jake—something that looks like it doesn’t sit well with the King of Raleigh High. Jake laughs under his breath, glancing at his boys as if Alex’s intense stare isn’t unnerving him in the slightest.

“Hey, man. There a problem?” He folds his arms across his chest. “You didn’t seem like you wanted to talk a moment ago. Now you look like you’re about to ask me for the next dance.”

“Tell your coach I’ll join the team,” Alex bites out.

Amused, Jake makes a show of looking Alex up and down. “That’s not how it works, Homie. Just ’cause you’re new doesn’t mean you’re special. You gotta try out, just like everyone else.”

A muscle pops in Alex’s jaw. The air is laden with tension, to the point where my feet feel like they’re glued to the ground. Horror courses through the highways and byways of my nervous system, making me vibrate with uneasy energy as Alex swipes a wave of his hair back out of his face, his nostrils flaring. “When?” he grinds out.

“Coach’ll probably put you through your paces over lunch if you think you’re ready for it.”

Alex doesn’t say anything further. He just smirks and walks away.





6





ALEX





Pretending to learn guitar is a complete and utter waste of time, and playing a sport is pretty much identical to signing up for voluntary torture, but I have no other choice. There really is no way I’m joining the fucking debate team, and I have to make an effort to show Rhonda that I’m taking this shit seriously. If that means I have to strum out a few chords and bulldoze a handful of jocks on a football field, then so fucking be it.

The apartment issue’s going to have to wait for now. I have a roof over my head, but Rhonda was right; no judge in their right mind is going to look at the trailer I call home and sign off on it as a safe, secure place for a child. I’m going to need to bust my ass to make some cash for a deposit on a better place, in a better neighborhood, but that’s not really a concern right now. The money’s there to be made if I want it. And that in itself is my main problem. Getting another job that pays as well as my position at the bar is going to be challenging to say the least.

If only I could get paid to lie for a living, I’d be rolling in cold, hard cash by the end of the fucking week. I barely even blinked back in that bathroom when I told her I wasn’t interested in her. I sounded seriously unimpressed by the very idea that I might be into Silver, that I was laughing at the very concept of an attraction between the two of us. I managed to sound that way, even as I was fighting the urge to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist, pin her to that vile yellow tiled wall behind her and shove my tongue down her throat.

From the moment she dumped that bag on the desk in front of me, she’s been plaguing my thoughts, day and night. I tried to tell myself on the way to Raleigh this morning that guitar lessons were nothing but an easy way to get where I need to be with the family court, but I’m no fool. There are other reasons why I chose her…