The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(55)

“What happened then? How did you end up getting away from him?”

Alex smirks. “Puberty. I got big, and I got big quick. Fucker was content wailing on me when I was a scrawny little shit with Popeye muscles, but I started bulking out when I was fourteen, way quicker than any of the other kids in my year. I was fifteen when I started hitting back, and Gary…boy, Gary did not like that. Took him a while to give in, mind you. He spent a year trying to get the upper hand on me. He'd wait until I was asleep in the basement, and then he'd creep down there and start laying into me while I was unconscious. Fractured my jaw once. Eventually, that was the only way he could best me, so I just stopped sleeping. I used to lie there on the mattress, faking it, willing him to come sneaking down those fucking stairs so I could surprise the motherfucker and knock a couple of his teeth out.

“One night, he started whaling on me with this crowbar, and I fucking lost it. I took it from him and started in on him with it. Next thing I know, the cops are dragging me off, and Gary's being fawned over in the hospital, poor, saintly, selfless member of the community that he was. I was put before a judge. Told me I had to spend the summer break in juvie and do six months' community service after that. Once I got out of juvie, I was expecting to be sent to another shitty foster home, but that's when Monty showed up.”

“Monty?” I haven’t heard him mention the name before.

Alex nods. “Montgomery Richard Cohen the Third. He owns The Rock. He was friends with my dad back in the day. He read about me beating the shit out of Gary in the Hoquiam Gazette and petitioned the county clerk’s office to take me once I was released.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Said he owed my father a debt, and he supposed it’d been paid now.”

“So you went to live with him?”

“Only for a few months. The county did a couple of random drive-bys to make sure I was behaving myself and sleeping where I was supposed to be sleeping. Once they signed off on all my paperwork, Monty gave me the keys to my place now, and I've been living there ever since.”

“At the Salton Ash Park?”

“You missed a word out of the title, Silver,” he says ruefully. “The Salton Ash Trailer Park. I’m not ashamed. No need to skirt around it.”

A prickle of shame bites at me, making my cheeks burn, because that's precisely what I did do. “Sorry. I don’t even know why I did that.”

He gives me a slow, almost sad smile. “Sure you do. You live in a big house with a wraparound porch and a manicured lawn out front. You have both your parents. You get to scream at your brother every morning because his bedroom is the room next to yours and he's annoying the shit out of you. Whereas I live alone in a doublewide on a gravel plot, and I have to fight for the chance to spend enough time with my brother that he might get the chance to annoy me.”

I slump against the cushion, feeling like a grade-A asshole. “You’re right,” I murmur. “I’m s—”

“Don't apologize. I'm not sorry. I have freedom now. I can go where I want. Do what I want. Be who I want. And believe me, my place right now is a dramatic step up from Gary's basement. Which brings me back to my morose story. I always planned to pay Gary a visit, to let him know how much I appreciated his care and attention one last time, but I got caught up working for Monty and trying to settle back in at Bellingham, and time kinda got away from me. And then, one morning, Monty chucks the newspaper at me, and there it is on the front page.” He holds up his hands, framing the imaginary headline. “'Officer Feldman, dedicated civil servant of Grays Harbor County, killed following denied parole appeal hearing.' He'd been escorting someone from the courthouse when a group of guys in ski masks jumped out of a van and shot him in the chest. Killed instantly. They were rescuing their buddy. As far as I know, they got away with it, too. Ironically, Gary was buried in the cemetery on the far side of this lake. When he got out of hospital after the beating I gave him, the fucker went to the detention center where I was being held and told them I'd stolen a piece of his jewelry. They let him rifle through my shit, and he took the only thing he knew mattered to me.”

“Which was?”

He tugs down the neck of his t-shirt, closing his hand around the small golden medallion hanging around his throat. “My mom’s St. Christopher. Gary knew I never took it off, but that I would have had to surrender it at the center, so he took it to hurt me. Then he died, and I was determined to get it back. I went to his place and tossed it, but it wasn’t there. I knew the asshole wouldn’t have sold it or given it away. It was the one thing he had over me, and I knew for a fact the sick fuck would have coveted it because of what it meant to me. So I went and dug him up. And low and behold, there it was, clasped tight in his greedy, dead little hand. A cop found me pissing on him and Tazed me. And that is how I ended up at Raleigh, hanging onto my freedom by the skin of my teeth.”

“Jesus, Alex.” Hesitantly, I touch my fingers to the fine chain where it falls across the back of his neck. I’ve noticed him toying with it many times since he started at Raleigh, but I haven’t realized how significant it is until now. How important. “I don’t blame you for doing any of that,” I tell him. “I would have done the same thing.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. The light from the fire dances across his face, and I can’t help myself: I release the chain, my hand rising up the back of his neck, a wild shiver of nerves and anticipation flying up and down my back as I brush my fingers over the closely cropped hair at the base of his skull. High, and a little higher still, and then my hand is buried in longer, wavy hair. I wind my fingers through it, curling the length of it around them, almost massaging his head, and slowly Alex closes his eyes.