Fearless Rebel: A Hero Club Novel

by Eden Butler

  The bottle was heavy in my hand, already going hot from how long I’d stayed out here under the stars, staring up and seeing nothing. The only sound I caught was the low hum from the irrigation system moving through my grandparent’s crops. They found night irrigation lowered their water costs, but it made for a low, droning noise as the water moved through the hoses.

  Piper’s smile came back to the front of my mind, kicking away anything but the sudden need to see her, apologize, tell her I knew what an asshole I was and beg her to forgive me.

  The bottle rolled onto the floorboard when I tossed it into my cab and I cranked the engine, shutting my door as I pulled away from my cabin and past the garden toward the main road, heading through town like my tail was on fire. It was inching toward ten at night and I slowed when I cleared downtown, got even slower when I moved past the B&B to see if Piper’s Jeep was in the drive, relaxing when I didn’t see it there.

  It was ten blocks to Piper’s complex, and my stomach tightened as I pulled into the place, rubbing my eyes and slipping into an empty spot next to her black Jeep before I looked myself over in the rearview.

  My hair was still in a tight braid, but my face was a little damp from lying out in the bed of my truck for most of the night, so I grabbed a half-empty bottle of warm water next to me on the seat, splashed some in my hands and wiped my face clean as best I could.

  The complex was small and neat with rows of tall turn-of-the-century townhouse painted red, blue and gray, that had once been row houses, ten or fifteen in all, each converted into two- and three-bedroom apartments. There was a courtyard in the center of the complex with a small park and garden and each townhouse had wide, stone steps and small porches.

  Piper lived in the last place on the left, a red building with white trim, number five. I stood in front of her black door staring blankly at the brass number, wondering if I had enough nerve to knock, or enough whiskey to get shitty drunk and forget my own name, and which of those options would be the best.

  I went with option one and tapped my knuckles twice against the door.

  It took Piper eight minutes to answer. I only knew that because I kept my eye on my cell, watching the minutes inch by as I leaned against the thin column that held up the small roof on her porch, trying and probably failing to look calm. Around the seven-minute mark I made out the sound of mumbling on the other side of the door, then the release of a lock before I spotted the deadbolt turning.

  Then she opened the door.

  Piper was dressed in red and black patterned pajama bottoms and a spaghetti shirt with “Mama Tried” written across the front. Couldn’t help myself. That had me grinning.

  Her hair was down, in a wild, frizzy mess around her shoulders. From the looks of her bloodshot eyes, I took a guess that I wasn’t the only one into the whiskey tonight.

  “Hey,” she finally said, leaning against the door.

  I took three steps toward her, holding my breath when I moved a hand to the handle, wondering if she’d push it away. But Piper didn’t tell me to leave or remind me of what an asshole I’d been to walk away without a backward glance. One slow glance of those big green eyes up at me, the smallest exhale when I pulled her chin up and she opened the door, letting me inside.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, backing her against the wall, kissing her forehead. “I shouldn’t have walked out like that.”

  “I don’t believe them.” She held onto my wrist, not pushing my hand from her face, just holding me still. “Like I told Sam, Eleanor Miller can kiss my ass. I don’t care what she or anyone else thinks. I…I love you. I love Evie. I love your grandparents and I…”

  “Nizhóní…I love you, too.”

  “I…” She stopped, her back going straight and that open-mouth surprise in her expression transformed as my words seemed to register. Piper gave me her sweet smile, the one reserved for real pleasure, real satisfaction. I hadn’t seen it in a week, but it was right there, for me, open and real and all mine. “You do? Really?”

  “How could I not? You make me feel like home. Every smile. Every kiss. You’re my home, Piper.”

  “Ed…

  When I kissed her, pulled her up, wrapping her around me, Piper came easily, like she couldn’t stop herself. We moved together like a dance. I walked backward, she followed, her mouth to mine, my hand pulling up her shirt, her mouth on my neck, my hands holding her against me until will we moved down her hall, together, naked, touching, tight.

  Piper was pale and soft, curling against me when I moved her to the large mattress in her room; arching and pulling when I crawled over her. Stopping as I looked down at her, a grin frozen on my face as I stared at the red lace covering her breasts.

  “What?” she said.

  “I…damn, baby, I like this.” I demonstrated, grabbing the strap, fingering the soft material, loving how her skin looked beneath it. A fire lit in my gut seeing her like this and must have shone in my eyes because Piper’s expression went dark, needy and she pulled me closer, covering my hand with hers, helping me to squeeze her.

  “Stay close,” she told me, tugging on my arms.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  What she had was mine. What I’d offer, I hoped she’d take and keep on taking as long as she’d have it.

  “Ed…” My name came out low and sweet, like the music from the old records we always listened to. I’d never get tired of hearing my name from her lips.

  She let me kiss the curve of her spine and moved back against me, arching toward me when I fit behind her, cupping between her legs, my mouth on her skin, my fingers between her wet, warm pussy, opening her, smiling as Piper tightened her eyes and rocked against me.

  “You like this, don’t you? Me behind you? My fingers inside you, staring at you while you ride against me.”

  “Yeah…oh God…” She couldn’t answer, not when I used two fingers, not when I bent closer, taking the small of her ear between my lips. “Ed…that feels…that feels…”

  “I can do better, baby.” But I wouldn’t. Not just yet, not when my lady was writhing from my fingers so close, so wet and ready. I could watch her like this, see how much touching her would make her stretch an arm up to grip the pillow, how deep her top teeth dented into the thick pout of her lower lip. She was a damn fantasy and she was mine. All mine, my love.

  “Ed…faster…” Piper said and I listened, curling my fingers, turning her to her back, my fingers still inside her to lower over her chest and capture one nipple into my mouth, sucking and teasing, lapping and moaning against her hot skin as she clenched around my fingers and her orgasm blasted through her. “Ed…oh God!”

  I wanted to watch her—the heavy, wild pants, the shudder of her body as she tried to get her heartbeat to return to normal, how her skin glowed and shined like something had lit her up from the inside, but my body was on fire too. I couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t keep from her a second longer.

  She barely moved when I was on top of her, my hands at her face, pulling her chin up. Piper took my kiss, long, slow and languid, like each swipe of my tongue only extended whatever aftershocks remained from her orgasm. At first, she seemed too overwhelmed with sensation, but as I kissed her, touched her thigh, opening her wider for me, her attention went to my body, my arms and back, to the way I angled over her, steadying myself to slip inside her.

  “Ah…Ed, that’s it.” She pulled on my neck, taking a kiss as I worked my way deeper and deeper inside her.

  Hard breaths accompanied each movement. The wild, warm sensation of her nails on my back biting in and the grip of her tight walls milking me, wetting me, was bliss and torture and I never wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

  She let me lift her leg, pulling it around my waist and the angle deepened my movements, had my rhythm quickening, clamping at the headboard, squeezing my eyes shut when Piper’s sweet, hot pussy tightened and squeezed and her voice rang out across the room with my name once again on her lips.

&nb
sp; “Ed! Oh God…yes!”

  She was fucking glorious and beautiful and mine.

  I didn’t stop, lowering over her, still working into her, grabbing her face, holding her still long enough to kiss her, taste her mouth before the effort and sensation was too much and I followed Piper right over the edge and collapsed into my orgasm.

  “Oh God…” I wheezed, feeling useless and high… “Yeah, baby,” I told her grabbing her around the waist. “Yeah, I love you something awful.”

  Later, when the room had gotten quiet and our bodies were calmer, Piper lay next to me, twisted against me and the blankets with her arm draped across my waist and her fingers in my hair, combing out the waves she unbraided.

  It was an absent, comforting rhythm she made at the ends of my hair and I thought of nothing really but the sensation of her nails hitting my bare arms and the smell of her skin all over mine.

  “Why do they still talk like that about you?” she asked, reminding me of the mention I’d made a few minutes before to what Maddox had told me back at the site. When I looked down at her, Piper shrugged, finishing needlessly. “The game? The break-in? Or was it…the robbery?”

  I shook my head, dismissing the question, ready to ignore it, but Piper looked in a curious mood and I’d already pissed her off once tonight. I had no plans of repeating that shit.

  I adjusted her, pulling her fingers out of my hair to kiss her knuckles before she leaned against the headboard at my side and let me grab her hand in mine. “Because I gave up. That’s not something you’re supposed to do in this town. You know that.”

  She shook her head, frowning. “Why did you give up?”

  Piper came from a nice family. The Warrens were well-connected and lived on the right side of the Grove. She didn’t know how things were done, or that bad things happened to good people and sometimes, those good people couldn’t do a damn thing about the bad that happened to them.

  I hated to fracture whatever idealized image she had of Midland in her head, but my truth wasn’t a pretty one. And she wanted to hear it.

  When I glanced at her and rubbed my face, hesitating, Piper pulled my hand away, holding my fingers against her chest. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I could argue with that,” I started, grinning when she frowned, “but no kid does that thing you do with your tongue and…” I dodged her fist and kissed her—a small peace offering she seemed to like. It at least got the frown off her face.

  “Come on. Tell me the truth.” She brushed the hair from my face and nestled next to my shoulder. “I know Midland isn’t kind to everyone.”

  “No,” I said, unable to keep my kiss from her forehead. When she continued staring, insisting with one look, I dropped my shoulders, giving up the fight. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  She took to messing with my hair again and I grabbed the glass of water on the bedside table, swirling the ice around to give myself something to keep my hands busy. Piper was an easy distraction, and we both knew it.

  “Ricky Smithson had three friends playing for Wilson Tech. My cousin Eric went there that year. He was good. He was a sophomore playing varsity ball. Could have gotten a scholarship.” I took a sip, catching the slowed movement of Piper’s hands as she fiddled with my hair, but didn’t look at her. “Eric got into a wreck three weeks before the conference started, and I overheard Smithson tell a few of the guys in the locker room that his uncle was a D.A. He did the case for the Wilson Tech boys who hit my cousin. Turns out they were drunk.”

  Piper dropped my hair and sat up, pulling the blanket over her shoulders, but didn’t speak. One look at her face and I understood that I’d already chipped away some of that Midland sheen her folks had spent her whole life shining.

  I nodded to her, letting her know it was bad, hoping she understood it was about to get worse. “Those assholes hit my cousin cut and dry. They should have done time. Even if they were minors. They should have gotten more than community service because my cousin almost died. He’ll never walk again.” Tears swelled in Piper’s eyes, and I looked away, staring at the glass, unable to take seeing her upset. “I shouldn’t bother you with this stuff…”

  “No…I want to hear it all,” she said, grabbing my wrist when I moved to take off the blanket and leave the bed. “Tell me, Ed. Tell me everything. Please.”

  She was stubborn, but kind. I had no idea how Piper and Alex turned out the way they had with folks like theirs, but me and my kid sister lucked out. “Alright,” I told her, pulling her close with my arm around her shoulder. “So… Smithson says his uncle was a Wilson Tech alum and one of the guys that hit my cousin was the best lineman in the county. If he was out of the game, Wilson Tech wouldn’t place in the conference.”

  “And?” Piper looked up at me, clearly not catching my meaning. She knew rodeo, not football.

  “If they didn’t place, they wouldn’t play us. If they didn’t play us, then half the town would lose the spread on the game. Midland Grove and Wilson Tech had the biggest point spread in conference history. Thousands. So when Jordan Phillips tackled me and the doctor told me I would be out, that I could get back with a little PT and some hard work, I thought about my cousin and how he’d never get out of that chair. I thought about all those people who would make a killing off of a game I could win if I worked hard rehabbing my body. But they were the same people who wouldn’t bat a damn eye over Smithson’s uncle letting those little punks walk. I decided that was it for me.

  “I wasn’t going to give them the chance to make money off me. Not when my cousin will spend the rest of his life in a chair and they didn’t give enough of a shit about it to give the assholes responsible more than a slap on the wrist. Those assholes would play in the conference. Eric wouldn’t. Neither would I. I wasn’t going to be anybody’s damn puppet.” I inhaled, letting some of the rising temper fall. It had been a long time ago and I’d spent two years in Montana trying to get over being pissed about my knee and the assholes in this town. Talking about it shouldn’t get me riled up.

  But the look Piper gave me made it clear she didn’t know all there was. She didn’t remember what her folks, everyone in this town, had been like to me after I got hurt. I shook my head, my gaze shooting over her sweet face, fighting the urge to abandon this walk down memory lane and get back under the covers.

  “They wouldn’t let up on you, would they?” she asked, her voice flat.

  “Not so much, no. Not the coaches. Not the trainers. Not even the damn doctors. They kept calling, kept coming by, hassled my grandfather, hassled my sister at school.”

  “I remember Evie getting called into the office a lot that semester, but she’d never tell me why.”

  “It was usually because of me for one reason or another,” I told her, inhaling when I thought about the hell they gave my family. “She got bullied that semester. Because of me. Because I had to make a damn stand.”

  “We had different schedules that year. Different tracks, but I remember her fighting a lot and I remember her having detention.” Piper laughed, but didn’t smile. “My mom told me she was going to end up in juvie and that I shouldn’t be friends with her.”

  “Yeah well, it was because they were hassling her.” I gripped the glass, my fingers aching from how tight I held it before I swallowed what remained of the water and set it back on the table. “Then, Tasso gets hired by Tillson to build a new set of cabinets for the bakery racks at the back of his store. When he finished the job, Tillson tells Tasso he would only pay him if I got off my lazy ass and played in the game. He owed my grandfather. That shit wasn’t right. So, I went to get the money he was owed.”

  “No one ever mentioned that…”

  “Of course they didn’t, baby. Why would they?”

  I scrubbed my face, taking in a breath when I saw that old asshole’s face in my head. When I spoke, it was behind my fingers. “Tillson didn’t leave it with me robbing him either. It wasn’t enough that I got arrested. He blacklisted Tasso
for months with the other business owners in town. It was why he and Alex started branching out of town. They had to.” I sat up, feeling tired, but relieved when Piper leaned against me again, rubbing my hand.

  “Every day that got closer and closer, they kept at me, wanting me to play, like I was the only shot they had to win. When they arrested me, I was happy. I thought, finally, I could get a break from them. I’d rather do jail time than play that damn game. But the judge was lenient. Gave me community service. That at least kept me out of the game. But by that time, I was so pissed off, so over them and their bullshit no one wanted me on that field. They let it go but no one ever forgot.”

  “You didn’t deserve that.” Piper pulled on my arm, tugging me to the side to look at her. Her fingers on my face, that soft touch down my cheek instantly calmed me. “You still don’t.” Her cheeks went pink, her eyes glassing over, anger welling up in the curl of her top lip. “Oh…that…that pisses me off! Those…assholes!”

  “Baby…” I tried to repress a laugh, but didn’t quite manage it, and breathed a small sigh when Piper moved from the bed, naked, her face pink and her jaw tight.

  “Those sons of bitches, all of them. All that bullshit? To you and Evie and, oh, God, Tasso? He’s just the sweetest, uh, Eddie, I could just…just…”

  She looked around her room, spotting the framed picture of her parents on the bed side table, grabbing it, but I jerked forward, taking it out of her hand. “Easy, lady,” I told her, putting the frame back on the table before I held her warm face between my hands. “It’s all in the past.”

  “No, it’s not. They’re still…”

  “I don’t care about them.” She took my kiss, her body relaxing. “Not a single one of them.” She didn’t complain when I kissed her again, letting it linger, taking my time covering her mouth, taking in the sweet taste of her lips and the low hums of her moans before I pulled back, holding that perfect face between my hands. “I never want to disappoint my family like I did back then. To make them go through any of that because of my decisions and I never want to see you upset like I made you today. I’m sorry. I meant what I said. I love you. More than anything. I love you.”