His words from the elevator hit me like a high-speed train. “You’re insane. You know that, right? Crazy hot—no, exquisitely beautiful—smart, strong, and incredibly magnetic, but a little fucking nuts.”
I walked away before I could say something we’d both regret, but threw a smile over my shoulder at him. “Pretty much. Welcome to the Renegades.”
…
“Penna!” Hugo caught up to me as I waited for the elevator back on the Athena. In a move of mercy, Bobby had let me sneak away without a camera escort.
“Hey, Hugo!”
“Have fun out there?”
“Yeah, I actually did.” I shifted my backpack, my muscles deliciously tired and my ribs more on the angry side. “You really need to come out with us one of these ports.”
“Yeah, no. I love you ladies, but you—and those guys—are kind of nuts.”
I laughed, feeling lighter than I had in a while. “Yeah, well, they don’t call us Renegades for nothing.”
“True,” he answered, grinning. “Hey, you had a package come in today. I just got the notification. I’ll bring it up in a little bit.”
“Is it in the mail room?” I asked. “Because I seriously don’t mind going to grab it. You already do enough for us.”
“Nawh, I don’t mind.”
“Too bad. I’m going to get it. Go take that girl you’ve been eyeing during math out for dinner or something.” I motioned toward the redhead waiting at a different elevator.
“Julie?” His head tilted like he was thinking about it. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea.” Then he practically ran to catch her.
“Boys.” I laughed to myself as Rachel walked up. “I’m going to detour to deck six, wanna come?”
“Sure, if you’re finally going to tell me what the hell I walked in on the day before yesterday,” she challenged, her take-no-shit face in place. “And don’t think that I didn’t notice him taking you out of that snowmobile’s path today.”
Ah, the reckoning was finally upon me. I glanced at the students around us as we got onto the elevator. “Yeah, let’s just get to the suite first.”
“What are you going to do with our day in L.A.?” she asked, keeping our conversation eavesdrop-safe.
“Not sure,” I said honestly. “I want to see my parents, but they’re always…occupied.” I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure any of the other Renegades would understand or let me go alone.
“Yeah, I need to do the same. I know I just saw them before the X Games, but they’d kill me if I was in town and didn’t stop by. Figured I’d load up on Cherry Coke since this boat only carries Pepsi, and pray that Landon and my dad don’t kill each other during the visit.”
“Yeah, good luck with that one.” There was zero love lost between Landon and Rachel’s dad due to some very shitty sponsorship terms that had cost them their relationship once—nearly twice.
The doors opened at our deck, and we walked out into the lobby. I winced as I adjusted my pack.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I hit my ribs on the handlebar when I landed. It’s nothing, so don’t give me that look.”
She put her hands up, palms out. “Hey, you’re a professional. If you say it’s not serious, then I’ll believe you.”
“Thank you.” We walked down the narrow hallway past the office she’d nearly caught me kissing Cruz in, but she didn’t say anything, thank God.
“Name?” the mail clerk asked as we approached the half door.
“Penelope Carstairs,” I told him.
“Hey, Dr. Delgado,” Rachel said.
“Rachel,” he said in that gorgeously accented voice. “Penna.”
It had been only a day, and I already missed the way he said Penelope.
Small ship. I cursed my luck but still glanced at him over my shoulder. It was like a law of nature—if Cruz was in the room, I looked at him. Then I craved him, missed the potential of what we could have been, and hated our circumstances. Those, too, were pretty much law since coming aboard ten days ago.
“Car…Carlson…Carstairs. Here you go,” the clerk said, handing me a shoebox-sized package.
“Thanks,” I said absently as I checked out the return label. Oak Moss Grove. I barely made it to the lobby before I ripped the packing tape down to the cardboard to open it.
The flaps came apart easily, revealing the contents, and my knees nearly gave out. “No, no, no…” I whispered, balancing the package in one arm as I sifted through it with my free hand. “They’re all here.”
“What’s all there?” Rachel asked.
“Why? Why would she…? I don’t understand.” How could they all be here? There had to be some explanation—at least that’s what I told myself to keep my chest from imploding. I barely fought off the urge to curl in on myself, to shrink away from the world the way she’d managed to do.
“Penna?” Rachel prodded.
I looked up, my vision blurry but clear enough to see Cruz watching me from the stairs with a look of worry in his eyes. Streaks of warmth raced down my face, and he took a couple of steps toward me before stopping himself, a letter of his own gripped in his hand.
“What’s in there? Why are you crying?” Rachel asked softly.
I didn’t take my eyes off Cruz. “It’s every letter I’ve written to my sister since Dubai, since they put her in Oak Moss Grove.”
His eyes softened, those massive shoulders drooping as if he felt and carried the weight of my sorrow.
“Every letter?” Rachel looked inside the box.
“I think so. And they’re all unopened.”
“Maybe she’s not allowed to get letters?”
“No, my parents write her all the time and get responses.”
“Oh.”
I batted away the tears that ran down my face. “It’s okay. It will be fine. Everything is fine.”
I did my best to pull my shit together, knowing there could be cameras on me at any moment—even now.
Brooke wouldn’t answer my calls or even open my letters. My sister, my other half. She wanted nothing to do with me, and that hurt worse than the aching in my ribs.
“Please don’t tell them—Pax or Landon. They don’t know that I’ve been writing her.”
“Okay,” Rachel said softly, taking the box from my hands when I began to tremble from the exertion of holding myself together, of not running to Cruz and begging him to jump off another Ferris wheel with me to make everything stop hurting.
“She betrayed them.”
“She betrayed you, too,” Rachel whispered.
She’d sabotaged every stunt and nearly killed Leah, then Pax, but she’d never gone after me. Even that final accident, when she’d dropped the stadium light, causing the accident that crushed my leg, she’d thought I was Pax. She’d never intentionally hurt me. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to her. But she didn’t want me.
I would have traded another three months in that cast for this feeling to go away.
“But she hadn’t. Not until this very moment.”
Chapter Eleven
Penna
Los Angeles
There were few places better in the United States in February than Los Angeles. Then again, it was my home, so I was probably pretty biased.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Leah asked, holding Pax’s hand as they walked down the ramp in front of me.
Disembarking was a hell of a lot faster with our VIP passes—another perk of Pax owning the ship.
“Certain,” I answered. Two whole days away from their lovefest would be a welcome break. Between Pax and Leah and Landon and Rachel, it was like a nonstop Hallmark movie in our group—not that I was jealous.
Okay, maybe a little jealous.
We said our good-byes at the end of the ramp, and I promised again to get to Pax’s house to practice on the ramps tomorrow. Well, they could practice, and maybe I’d work up the courage to sit on my f
reaking bike.
I slid in to the welcoming leather of the town car’s backseat and the driver shut the door. “Where to?” he asked as we drove toward the port’s exit.
“My apartment, please,” I answered. “Wait!”
The car came to a screeching halt next to where Cruz was walking alone, his hiking pack over his shoulder. I rolled down the window. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Walking to the parking lot to get my truck,” he answered with a what-the-hell-does-it-look-like-I’m-doing face.
“Your truck is parked here?”
“I had a friend park it last night. I do have friends, you know.”
“I vaguely remember seeing them in the bar in Vegas,” I answered before I thought better of it. “Hop in, we’ll take you.”
“Not a good idea.”
“Oh, come on. That parking lot is at least another mile past the rest of these cruise ships. I’m offering you a ride, not a striptease. In fact, I’ll promise you the opposite—I vow that my clothes will stay on.”
A smile flashed across his face, those adorable dimples making a rare appearance. “You sure?”
“Get in,” I said, opening the door and sliding over.
He looked over his shoulder to make sure we were alone—we were—before climbing in next to me.
“Where to, sir?” my driver asked.
“You have a driver.”
“I have a service. Now tell him where your truck is, or we’ll waste half our time here arguing.”
“Right. I’m parked in V-19. It’s a black quad-cab F-250.”
“Yes, sir.”
The car started to roll, and Cruz rested his head against the headrest. “We couldn’t be more different if we were from different planets.”
“And yet we wound up on the same ship.”
He looked over at me, those incredible eyes of his so deep that I wanted to fall in. “That, we did. So tell me, Penna.” He nearly choked on my name. “What are you going to do with your break?”
“I’m going to see my sister,” I told him. “You’re the only one who knows.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t told any of your friends? Are your parents taking you?”
“Nope. I don’t want to tell them about the letters, and the other Renegades…well, they wouldn’t understand. I just…I need to see her. If she won’t answer my phone calls or even read my letters, then I have to try this.”
He didn’t attempt to talk me out of it like the others would have, or argue that she betrayed us, nearly killed me, or was generally messed up in the head. He simply nodded as we pulled up next to the truck I assumed was his. “Okay, grab your bag.”
“Excuse me?”
“Grab. Your. Bag. I know I have an accent, but it’s not thick enough for you to have misunderstood me.” His hand rested on the door handle, but he didn’t open it.
“Why?”
“Because you’re not going to see your sister alone. You might not be able to tell your friends what’s going on. Hell, maybe you feel guilty for missing her—which is a normal human emotion—but I’m not going to let you do this on your own. So grab your bag, because I’m taking you.”
“I…I have a car.” Okay, that excuse sounded lame even to me.
“Right, but just for fun, let’s pretend that you’re not the daughter of tech-com millionaires and that you didn’t pull in over a million yourself last year—”
“How did you even—” I sputtered.
“Google. Just get your bag and pretend to be normal. Get in the truck.”
“You’re my teacher.”
His jaw flexed, the tiny muscles in the side pulsing a few times. “And you’re my student. But I also happen to care about you. We’re not going to cross a single fucking line,” he growled, but it seemed like the order was directed more at himself. “But please, don’t do this alone. Let me take you, or tell one of your friends. That Leah girl seems kind.”
“She is, and I know she’d go with me, but she’d never understand.” My voice dropped along with my eyes. “Brooke nearly killed her in Morocco.”
“Then get in the truck, Penelope.”
My gaze flew to his at the use of my full name. His expression wasn’t the distant one he’d used on me the last two and a half weeks. No, he looked like the guy I’d met in Vegas, the man who had trusted me enough to jump with a chute he hadn’t packed.
Guess it was my turn to jump.
“Okay.”
A couple minutes and one dismissed car service later, I was belted into the passenger seat of Cruz’s truck as we pulled out of the port. The soft leather interior was meticulously clean, making me wonder what his cabin looked like. I highly doubted it had clothes strewn about like mine currently did.
“Where are we headed?” He motioned toward the GPS in the dash.
“I think it’s about an hour away. Is that okay?”
“Absolutely.”
I plugged in the address as he hooked his phone into the dock, and then I leaned back against the seat, stealing small looks at his profile as he drove through the abominable, ceaseless traffic that was L.A. I could tell myself all I wanted that he was my teacher, but it didn’t change the fact that he was the most incredibly beautiful man I’d ever seen, and for someone who spent her life surrounded by beautiful men…well, that was saying something.
“Twenty One Pilots?” I asked as his music kicked on.
“Why so surprised? I’m twenty-seven, not seventy.” A corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.
Somehow those five years between us felt as big as the Grand Canyon.
“You sure? Because I’ve seen your tie collection.”
His mouth dropped. “Take that back.”
“Nope. Just admit that you have the taste of a geriatric man in the tie department.”
We pulled onto the highway, and I felt lighter with every mile he put between us and the Athena.
“Not fair. I had about twenty-four hours’ notice before I had to pack to leave for the ship.”
“So you went shopping in my grandfather’s closet?” He was way too much fun to tease.
“Hardly!”
“You walked into a department store and picked out the first ten ties you saw.”
He glanced at me quickly, never looking away from the road for too long. “Twelve.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, turning in my seat to full-on face him.
“I picked out the first twelve ties I saw.”
“And so the truth is revealed!”
“Hey, when I was in the army, I only had one tie. It was black and matched my blues. Then I didn’t have a lot of reasons for them in graduate school until student teaching, and at that point I just didn’t care. What’s that look for? What are you thinking?”
I tilted my head. “Just picturing you in army dress blues. My imagination approves.”
“Penelope,” he warned, but I didn’t miss the way he fought a smile.
“I have this whole Officer and a Gentleman vision playing out in my head right now,” I admitted.
He shook his head, his grin finally full enough to show me those sexy-as-hell dimples. “You do realize that’s navy, right? Not army?”
“Who cares? Swooping in like that to carry off the woman you love? That’s the stuff of legends. I can’t think of any guy I know who could pull that off. Even Landon or Pax, and they’re pretty swoony for those girls of theirs.”
He scoffed, that grin turning into another smirk.
“What?” I asked, waiting for the next smart-ass remark out of his mouth. He didn’t back down or roll over when I dished crap at him, which was one of the things I really liked about him.
“That’s because you’ve been hanging out with boys.”
“Oh really?”
“Your friends? All boys. Their little follower-Renegades? Boys. Jumping out of airplanes and flipping motorcycles doesn’t make you a man. Serving something larger than yourself, sacrificing for someone y
ou love, understanding the nature of true suffering and working to alleviate it in someone other than yourself—that’s manhood.”
“I have friends that definition would fit.”
“No, you don’t. Not fully. That’s why you’re still single.”
My back straightened, and I crossed my arms in front of me. “Oh, that’s why?”
The look he sent me could have been personally responsible for global warming. “You are a headstrong, independent, stubborn woman surrounded by a sea of boys, when what you crave—what you need—is a man. One who isn’t going to hold you back but isn’t afraid of you, either. One who knows the delicate balance between watching you fly and protecting you so you don’t fall. Hell, I’m not sure any of those boys would even know what to do with you if you ever let them get their hands on you.”
But you did. You do.
I shifted in my seat and forced my gaze away before either of us could say what hung in the air between us. Cruz was that kind of man.
He just couldn’t be my man.
Now if only my libido could understand that.
“So are you sad to be leaving L.A.?” I asked, changing the subject to something safer.
“A little. It’s been my home since I was nine. I’m excited for a new opportunity, but I’ll definitely miss the weather.”
“Why not settle in Florida, or somewhere with a bigger Cuban community? I can’t imagine it was easy leaving everything behind.”
“It wasn’t. But we knew Miami and those communities would be the first place he’d look. We needed to blend in with our new country.”
“You were running from someone.” I stepped into territory I had no right to. “Maybe the person who burned your arm?”
He glanced at me briefly.
“It looked like a cigarette burn,” I said quietly.
“Cigar, actually. My father is not a good man.” His hands flexed on the wheel. “I thought my grandma had chartered a fishing boat for the day. That day turned into three when the motor gave out, but we made it to the Keys.”
“You must have been terrified.” I couldn’t imagine going through that so young—or ever. It spoke of a desperation I had never tasted.
“I was never as scared on that boat as I was living every day in his house.”
Rebel (The Renegades) Page 11
