The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1)(74)

25





ALEX





It must be nearly dawn. The light in the trailer’s grown progressively brighter as the hours have slipped by, but I haven’t moved an inch from my spot on the couch, elbows digging into the tops of my thighs, my balled-up hands pressed against my mouth. My retinas are probably burned beyond repair from the amount of time I’ve spent staring at the laptop screen, but I haven’t been able to look away. I haven’t been able to blink for fear that even that small movement might send me into a fit of rage so dark and bottomless that I’ll never be able to pull myself out of it.

Silver’s email took a while to read, but now her words are scorched into the barren wastelands of my soul forever. They’ve sparked a maelstrom of toxicity inside me that I can barely breathe around. For the past four hours since reading through the email, not once or twice but countless times, all I’ve done is sit here and talk myself out of breaking the promises I made to Silver. I should never have sworn I wouldn’t hurt those motherfuckers before I knew the full story. It was going to be bad, it was always going to be bad, but reading the minutia, diving into every single tiny detail that took place that night…fuck, I felt like I was there, in that bathroom, on my knees, hands tied behind my back, being forced to watch as those sick motherfuckers took turns hurting my girl.

It's with a weird sense of calm that I realize I have officially lost my mind. A temporary kind of insanity. The same kind psychiatrists diagnose people with when they snap and lose all control over themselves and their actions. The only thing keeping my brain from breaking apart and sending me into a fit of incomprehensible insanity is the knowledge that Silver will never speak to me again if I don’t honor her wishes.

There will be recompense, though. There will be an atonement for their sins, I’m going to make sure of it. There has to be a workaround that will allow for those fuckers to bleed for what they’ve done.

And Jacob Weaving…

Oh, Jesus, Jacob. You have no idea what you’ve done. Nine months ago, when you took a drugged, vulnerable girl into a room with the intention of causing her pain, shaming and humiliating her, stealing her virginity, you clearly weren’t thinking of the future. You didn’t consider for a moment what was going to happen today.

You didn’t see me coming.

If you had, you would never have laid a finger on Silver Parisi. You wouldn’t have allowed yourself to even think her damn name.

I’m vibrating with rage, floating outside of myself as I make myself a coffee. No way I’m going to sleep at all now. We’re not back in school until tomorrow, so I’ll go and see Silver later. In the meantime, I plan on getting the ball rolling on this situation, and I know just the man for the job.

I fill up the bike at the gas station closest to the bar, and a guy honks at me, trying to get me to hurry. I want to grind my knuckles into his face. Hit him until he begins to cry like a little bitch. I wanna break his fucking neck.

I’ve been angry for most of my teen years—at Gary, for using his strength and his size over me. At Jackie for keeping me from seeing Ben. At Maeve, Rhonda and a whole line-up of other social workers, who have all made my life way harder than it needed to be. At my mom for fucking dying. But I have never, never been this angry before, spilling over with rage, panting and breathless, rendered mentally incompetent because of it.

I sit on the bike in a parking spot, stewing over everything, thoughts like the blades of a blender, whipping around so fast and so sharp that the inside of my skull is in chaos. Five minutes later, the punk in the white button-down and the pressed khakis who honked at me emerges from the gas station, and I climb off the bike, heading toward him with a tire iron in my hand.

He runs across the gas station forecourt, bolting for his Durango. “What the fuck? You fucking psycho!” He dives into the vehicle, slamming the door and locking it swiftly behind him.

I’m three seconds away from smashing the tire iron into his window when the attendant comes rushing out of the building with a phone in his hand. “Hey! Hey, asshole! Get out of here before I call the fucking cops!”

The taunt sits heavy on the tip of my tongue, burning like battery acid: Go ahead, motherfucker. Call them. See what happens. But I know how that’ll go. They’ll show up here en force, tires screeching as they peel onto the forecourt, guns already drawn, aimed at my fucking head. They’ll cart me off in cuffs. It’ll be on the news. ‘Local thug arrested for attempted assault.’ All of Raleigh will know about it before lunchtime, and Silver will be hysterical. She won’t forgive me. I told her I could handle the truth from her. I can’t let her down at the very first hurdle by pulling this kind of stupid shit.

My pulse pounds like a runaway train in my temples as I stalk back to the bike and climb on, starting the engine and roaring out of the station.

This is not good.

This is not fucking good.

I need to do something.

At the bar, I find Monty in his office, going over surveillance footage at his desk. His expression darkens when I burst in without knocking. “The fuck’s got you so riled up?” he asks, halting the feed on the screen.

“I need a favor,” I grind out. I’m calmer than I was when I had the tire iron in my hand, but I am a far cry from actually being calm.

“Does this favor involve murder? ’Cause you look like you’re about to kill someone.”