Fearless Rebel: A Hero Club Novel

by Eden Butler

  “She and your attorney worked together once.” He relaxed as he pulled out of the parking lot. “He let Aubrey know about your release.” Chance moved his chin, a small acknowledgement before he finished. “Thought you’d need a lift. Maybe a meal. Didn’t figure you had any cash in your wallet or…” he pointed to my ankles, not bothering to hold back the snorting laugh, “proper clothes.”

  “It’s been a while.” I shot him my middle finger when he pointed to the Zeppelin logo on my T-shirt, how the fabric stretched across my chest.

  “Yeah, and I reckon you spent all that time in the yard working out.” Chance shook his head, scrubbing at the stubble on his face. “Christ, mate, I think you’ve gotten even bigger since I saw you last.”

  “They left me on my own. So I had nobody waking me up in the middle of the night whining about the woman he left behind in Vegas.” He rolled his eyes but didn’t look the least bit sorry about the vivid dreams he’d had of Aubrey the whole time we bunked up together. I’d called those damn dreams The Aubreys, and he’d tried to pretend he didn’t think about her as much as he did.

  “So you slept more and what?”

  “Got more sleep, had more time and energy to work out.”

  “Well,” he said, reaching behind the seat to pull out a duffle bag that he handed to me. “I can’t have you running around like that.” He pointed to my T-shirt, then glanced back at my too-tight jeans. “What’s in there should fit you.” Chance leaned forward, looking through the front glass toward the diner. “When I got out, first thing I did was hole up in a booth at this place and eat my weight in ham steaks and eggs. You know prison meat is crap.”

  I unlatched my seatbelt, laughing at the thought, my hand already reaching for the duffle. “You ain’t saying nothing but the truth.”

  “So, let’s get you something decent to eat. Then we’ll get you to wherever it is you wanna go.”

  There wasn’t much left back home aside from my sister and grandfather. They loved me, I knew that. They’d always want me back with them, but that town, what it had done to me, what she had made of me, I didn’t know if I could go back.

  Midland Grove had been my hometown since the day I was born. People there knew me. When I was a kid, playing for the high school team, winning district championships, they all loved me. Football was everything in small towns like that, and when you’re good at it, you’re loved for it.

  They never said a thing about how poor we were, how different our culture was from everyone else’s. They seemed to always love my Shímasani Velma’s frybread and the beaded and turquoise jewelry she’d sold at the farmer’s market every weekend. They all talked about how my Acheii Tasso was the finest carpenter in town and could build anything anyone requested at a fair price.

  And when my mother took off with a guy almost twenty years younger than her at the beginning of my senior year, it was my old man that everyone felt sorry for. It was us they all took pity on. They never once made a fuss about our father not being around to attend Evie’s volleyball games or being there for me when Jordan Phillips sacked me a month before the conference championship, because my old man had been camped out on a barstool across town still trying to drink away the memory of our mother with a man who was no man at all.

  But, the funny thing about those small town people—they only cared when I was doing what they wanted.

  When I stopped, when I got lost, they forgot all about feeling sorry for my family. They forgot about anything good they may have felt for me at all. And then I had to make it easy for them to hate me.

  But going back had nothing to do with them.

  Or the woman they convinced to stop believing in me.

  It had everything to do with my sister and the baby swelling her belly. The boy she promised me would turn out better than any of us.

  “So?” Chance said, waiting on me as he opened the door to his truck. “You got any idea where you wanna go?”

  My sister’s face, her big bright smile flashed through my mind. It chased away the memory of me against a police cruiser, my arms twisted behind my back, the cuffs biting into my wrists as some first-year rookie read me my rights and shoved me in the back of his car. My sister had cried the day I was sentenced. She’d promised she’d make everyone in Midland Grove remember how they’d treated me. Especially Piper Warren, her sister-in-law. The woman I thought I’d never stop loving.

  I had to go back. I had to see my sister.

  I had to face them all.

  “Yeah,” I told Chance, hopping out of the truck with the duffle stuffed under my arm. “I wanna go home.”

  But would anyone other than my sister welcome me back?

  This wasn’t my first second chance. I’d returned home once before, asking for forgiveness. And I hadn’t gotten it. I wasn’t expecting forgiveness now. Didn’t want it. Midland Grove was full of hard, cruel people. A town who’d forgotten every damn misstep they took, but had no problems remembering mine.

  I’d go back, like I had before, but this time I’d make no apologies.

  Eddie

  Midland Grove,

  Six Years Earlier

  Alex Warren was supposed to be a golden boy.

  If his father had gotten his way, Alex would have graduated Midland High, gone off to Stanford, like his old man had done, gotten his degree and gone on to law school. Then he’d have returned to town with his debts covered by his father’s fortune, ready to take over the family practice.

  That’s what golden boys do.

  But Alex, it turned out, was no one’s golden boy. During his senior year of high school, Alex Warren had committed the cardinal sin: he’d fallen for a girl his father didn’t approve of. My kid sister, Evie.

  She was decent looking enough, as bratty kid sisters went, I supposed, with light brown skin and thick, black hair. She had our mother’s Cajun features, with rounder, lighter eyes, but like our father and grandparents, she was poor and a Navajo, or Diné as we called ourselves, and nothing at all what the Warrens wanted for their son.

  By the time Alex graduated, Stanford was in his rear view, and he’d taken a job with my grandfather while I’d spent the past two years on a Montana ranch working off my anger and my attitude shoveling horse shit and wrangling cattle. While I was gone, Alex had learned to build and sand and do something no Warren for generations had ever done: manual labor.

  It pissed off his old man. To hear Evie tell it, it broke Mrs. Warren’s heart too.

  But Evie and Alex were still getting married. Which was why I decided to tip my hat to the ranch and the frigid ass winters. It was when I knew I wanted to come home. My baby sister wasn’t a baby anymore. She didn’t need me, but I sure as hell needed her. Besides, I had fences to mend.

  Midland Grove never changed, but I was determined to prove to them I had.

  There was still a cop parked behind the welcome sign when I drove by it. Tommy Wilcox if my eyes weren’t lying to me, barely alert enough to do more than watch Mrs. Dickens and Mrs. Riley stand on the corner of First and Freedmont gossiping.

  The bakery on Sixth Street had closed and was now a coffee shop, something that brought my eyebrows up. Things had changed in Midland. Something in my chest got tight when I passed the high school, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t fight the urge to glance at the football field. Everything I was had gotten laid out on that turf. Every hope, every dream, all I thought I’d wanted died right on the twenty-yard line with one swipe to my leg.

  My foot down on the accelerator, I drove my Chevy through town, heading toward my grandparents’ place, on the outskirts of The Grove, an area no self-respecting Midlander would call home. The water tower stretched bold and tall in the center of The Grove and all around it were miles and miles of underdeveloped, untouched property with only a smattering of small lots purchased by poorer couples. There were tiny cottages on these lots, most run down and on a few, trailer homes, some two-to-one property. But in the middle of all the vacant lots and sporadic t
iny, run down homes, my grandparents had built their modest, comfortable farm.

  The road was dark, with only three street lights illuminating the gravel as I headed toward my old home—a small three bedroom ranch with a front porch and large patio in the back—and something warm and comforting settled in the pit of my stomach as I got closer and picked up the sound of drum music and the loud, even tones of my cousins singing powwow songs.

  Our grandparents Tasso and Velma were born near Fort Defiance and were traditional Navajos who’d left the reservation chasing a job Tasso landed just outside of Midland with his cousin. By the time the job went bust, Midland was already home and they’d stuck here, raising my dad and Velma’s younger sister, Queenie, when she moved in with them. But they never assimilated completely. Our culture was always part of our lives, and twenty years later, our grandparents expected Evie to follow the same customs they’d raised us on even if she chose Alex, who wasn’t Native, to be her man.

  As I pulled into the driveway and under the largest oak near the back of the five-acre property, my mouth twitched, spotting the large Hogan Tasso and Alex had built together the month before. I grinned, thinking of Alex trying to get the space right, knowing Tasso would only nod or shrug until he had the posts correct and the size of the dome shape just so. But if our grandparents wanted Evie to have a traditional Navajo wedding—and they damn sure did—Tasso would make sure Alex built the Hogan the way it was meant to be with the entrance facing the east, large cedar posts holding up the sides and roof. From the looks of it, Tasso had gone for a more modern version, but there was still a lot of work and effort into the constructions from the pictures Evie had texted to me, excited to brag how far her fiancé had come, how talented he was.

  I couldn’t deny that. It was a tall structure, of thick cedar logs and beams and black shingles; temporary, but secure. A perfect place for Evie and Alex to have their ceremony in a few days.

  The yard was bustling already with Evie and Alex’s friends from town and, from the license plates I spotted as I left my truck and moved toward the house, our cousins from New Mexico, and a few from Arizona. The drum music came from our cousins, their voices strong as they sang loud and clear, and I smiled, the music reminding me of my powwow days competing and dancing all over the country as a teenager before I got serious about football and even more serious about landing a scholarship that forced me to pay more attention to my GPA.

  There were only four steps between me and the front door when the loud squeal and the crash of a tiny body hit me. My kid sister’s arms wrapped around my neck.

  “Shit!” I said, catching Evie. “Damn, give me a sec.”

  “No way! You’re late.” She stepped back, that wide, wild smile like a beacon as she looked up at me. “Where the hell you been? Tasso is mad you weren’t here for dinner.”

  “It’s a party, Choady. The whole night is a dinner.” The name was a small tease, something leftover I’d called her when she was young and chubby and the sweetest kid sister any guy could ask for. She always hated when I called her that but never complained too much.

  Evie slugged me, a light tap I ignored, before she grabbed me again, hugging me tight. “Shinaaí, I missed you. I don’t know why. You’re so bossy and ugly as all get out.”

  “You are too,” I told her, laughing as she squeezed me. “Don’t know what that white boy sees in you.”

  It wasn’t anywhere near to the truth. I’d been chasing boys away from my sister since she was fourteen. She was small and mouthy, and I knew she could take down anybody who wouldn’t leave her be. Problem was, she wasn’t all that picky. That had presented a problem or two when she was young and boy crazy. Until Alex started mooning after her and had Evie going a little stupid because he was a damn gentleman. Hard to hate a guy like that. But Evie was beautiful with sharp cheekbones and a wide, full mouth. Her hair was black and straight, and her face was a perfect oval. I hated that she was so pretty. Hated more how idiots would stare after her anytime she walked past them.

  “You talking about me already?” Alex came through the back door, his hand raised to shake mine. “Ed, you’re late.”

  “I told him that,” Evie said, moving next to her man. “Tasso’s mad. He’s gonna yell.”

  “He might, but at least he left my truck for me at the train station like I asked,” I told my sister, shaking Alex’s hand then nodding to him when he passed me a beer. “Best get on with it.”

  I followed them through the house, grabbing a slice of brisket from the covered tray on the counter before we left through the sliding door and moved out onto the patio.

  “Shit, Evie, you invite the whole town?”

  “Just about.” Alex shook his head. “I tried to tell her to keep things small.”

  “What?” My sister frowned at me as I looked out onto the crowd.

  Half of Midland was here—townsfolk mingling with our cousins, some staring openly as they drummed. Others, trying and failing to sing along, still others drinking and laughing, not seeming to understand what was happening but still enjoying the party all the same. Rey Rigby, a friend of Evie’s and a mistake I’d made before I left Midland two years ago, held a bottle of tequila in one hand and two red Solo cups in the other. Two other girls I remembered from my sister’s rodeo days stood waiting—one with three cut limes in her open palms, the other eagerly staring at the tequila filling up the cups as she held a shaker of salt.

  The party was heavy with people I didn’t want to see, and as I scanned the yard, avoiding the glares I got, I downed my soda, saying a silent prayer that I’d be able to keep my temper in check. There were a lot folks I spotted, mostly assholes who’d never forgiven me for not healing enough to rally our team to a state win; or the worse, for the stupid shit I’d done that had nothing to do with a damn football game.

  In the center of the Hogan sat our grandparents, talking to several of our aunties. I lifted my chin to my grandfather, then hurried toward him when the old man made a face, pushing his mouth up like something rotten had caught in his throat.

  Our cousins laughed when they spotted me, working my name into the drum song they sang, and I grinned, shooting them a smile, but kept walking toward my grandfather, taking the good-natured slaps on the back my family offered as I moved into the pavilion and knelt at the side of the old man’s rocking chair.

  “Acheii…” I said, giving him my hand. He nodded, still working his mouth into a twist of disgust but otherwise not acknowledging me. Glancing at my grandmother, who I knew wouldn’t greet me until Tasso did, I set my soda down, wiping my hand dry on my jeans. “Thank you, for dropping my truck off for me. You heard about that storm in Billings? I sent you a message.”

  He nodded again but still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Freak summer snowstorm no one was ready for. We had to get the herd taken care of before the bad weather set in. Put me off my schedule by a couple days.”

  The old man could be stubborn, and his temper was legendary, but this wasn’t about me getting home late. I knew that. Two years ago, my grandfather had told me he didn’t want me to leave Midland Grove. He didn’t think learning to be a man would happen on some white man’s cattle ranch with a bunch of people I didn’t know.

  I went anyway.

  I let out a breath, leaning an elbow on the arm of his rocker. “I won’t leave again.”

  He was stubborn, but he wasn’t cruel.

  “It’s good,” he said, dipping his head once. “Because I’m too old to teach Evie’s man all the things I know.” He nodded behind me, and I caught the mock salute Alex gave Tasso before I turned back to face him. “Your turn,” Tasso said. When I let out a small laugh, low and breathy, my grandfather finally looked at me, shifting his gaze over my face, squinting as though he wanted to focus on my features and see how much I’d changed. “Still the spit of my son.” He looked away, head twisting into a shake. Our father drank himself into an early grave and Tasso was still angry about that shit. He probab
ly always would be.

  “Can’t help that.”

  “Suppose you can’t.” One side of his mouth moved up and he touched my face, brushing my cheek with a small pat. “Go on. Kiss your Shímasani before her eyes leak.”

  “Shíyázhí!” my grandmother said, reaching for me when I moved toward her. I glanced at my grandfather, spotting the relieved smile he tried to hide before I let Shímasani Velma smother me in her tight hug. “Here. Let me see you.”

  “I’m fine,” I told her, pulling her hands from my face when she squeezed my cheeks. “A little cold from their winters, is all.”

  “You’ll thaw out now that you’re home.” She shook her head, but still smiled. “So skinny, though. Did they feed you? No good food, I bet.”

  “No frybread,” Auntie Queenie said, standing next to my grandmother’s rocker.

  “Course not. Bacon and steaks, pan fried, I’d guess.” My grandmother moved her chin, motioning for her sister to come closer. “He’s hungry. You’re hungry, aren’t you?” She glanced at Queenie, but still spoke to me. “She made frybread and mutton ribs. Go with her, and she’ll feed you. And stay away from those girls drinking whiskey. It’s always the drunk ones who will try to crawl in your bed.”

  “That’s bad?” I asked, dodging my Shímasani’s hand when she tried slapping me.

  “Go eat.” She frowned at me, but there was a light in her dark eyes I’d seen every time Tasso made her laugh. Velma shook her head, that frown vanishing when I winked at her. “Ayóo anííníshní, you fool boy.”

  “I love you too.”

  She still smiled as I walked backward a few steps, then turned and followed Queenie toward the kitchen.