The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(54)

“That woman’s tried to have me incarcerated more times than I can count,” he says. We’re sitting on the couch. My legs are over his, covered by a blanket, and he’s running his fingers up and down the soles of my bare feet, smirking every time he hits a ticklish spot and I twitch. “I deserved it back in the beginning. I was an asshole. I did plenty of shit to warrant the ten million phone calls she put in with the cops.” He lets his head fall back against the sofa cushions. “I set her trash cans on fire once. I also stole her cat.”

“You stole her cat?”

“Ben’s allergic. His eyes were all itchy and red every time I saw him. He’d be covered in hives, and Jackie didn’t seem to give a shit. For years, she and I were locked in this shitty war of attrition, neither of us backing down, neither of us giving any ground, and then I realized…I was the problem. I had to make some changes. Since then, Mother Theresa wouldn’t have had shit on me, but Jackie’s still trying to shut me out. It’s been two years since I started playing nice, and Jackie’d still have me banished to fucking Alaska if she could.”

I want to touch him. It's becoming more and more normal to reach out for him. We've spent the day trading casual, fleeting moments of physical contact, but I'm still nervous as hell when I slide my hand under the blanket and find his arm. His skin is smooth and hot to the touch. My fingertips buzz as I trail them up, over his bicep, slipping beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt until I hit the top of his shoulder. We're both vibrating with this frenetic kind of electricity. Alex looks like he's forgotten all about Jackie; he's staring down at his shoulder, at the point where my fingers are drawing small circles into his skin, and he's as tense as can be. Slowly, with heavy, hazy eyes, he looks up at me, and suddenly all I want to do is slide over, straddle him and rip off the shirt I'm wearing.

He has a hungry predator’s eyes. Dark eyes that make promises and cut down to the quick. He’s unflinching. When Alex Moretti looks at you, you feel your soul laid bare, and it’s the most disturbing, thrilling thing I’ve ever experienced. Right now, he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me.

I draw my hand out from underneath the blankets, face heated, fire singing in my veins. It’s unspoken between us: after everything that happened, I can’t be rushed into anything. I’m shocked by how easy this is with him, though. How much I want it. Want him.

“You say you’ve been on best behavior, but that isn’t true, is it?” I whisper.

His gaze is still so unfocused. I've become so used to Deadpan Alex at school that I've learned the language of him now. I can recognize and decode even the smallest facial movement, the tiniest, little twitch. But here, alone with him, Alex isn't the guarded, hyper careful version of himself that I'm so used to. He's let down a considerable number of his walls and seeing so much of what he's thinking and feeling on his face is making me a little dizzy. He picks up my hand and lifts it to his mouth, softly placing a kiss against the inside of my wrist. “And why would you say that?” he asks.

Hard to think with his lips brushing over such sensitive skin. “You did something before you came to Raleigh. Must have been pretty bad to get you kicked out of Bellingham and nearly carted off to prison.”

He smiles against my wrist. “Just ask, Argento. I thought we were done with the pussyfooting around.”

“Okay then. What was it? What did you do that got you into so much trouble?”

He groans, smiling awkwardly, slumping back into the couch. He’s suddenly very interested in the fringe trim on the ancient cushion beside him; he tugs at it, clearing his throat. “Well. The last time I got separated from Ben, I was sent to live with this guy, Gary. He was a parole officer, and he fucking haaaaated me. Told me he only took me in because he was sick of watching little punks like me get away with blue murder, and I was going to have some sense knocked into me if it was the last thing he did. And boy, did he like knocking sense into me.”

It’s far too late for the dread that writhes in my gut, urging me to do something, to help him—this has all taken place already—but I feel it just the same. “He hurt you?”

Alex grunts, eyes blank, fixed on the fire that’s burning in the grate on the other side of the room. “I left a dish in the sink, I earned myself a swift right hook. I came back too late, I got a steel toe cap to the ribs. I played guitar too loud, I got three of my fingers broken.”

“He broke your fingers?” Of all the terrible things that happened to him, this, to me, is the worst. Stealing a musician’s ability to play is tantamount to stealing away their soul. Alex holds up his hand—the one with the rose inked into the back of it—and wiggles his fingers.

“Middle, ring and pinkie,” he informs me. “Bastard held me down and pinned me to the side of his truck, then slammed the door on them repeatedly until I started fucking screaming. I was twelve.”

“God, Alex…”

“I was lucky really.” He closes his hand into a tight fist, shoving it back underneath the blanket. “They healed up straight. No real, long term damage done. They ache when it’s cold and I’m on the bike sometimes, but…” He shrugs. “Gary was trying to crush my hand. If he’d fucked up the bones and the tendons there, I never would have played again.”