Rebel: (Boneyard Brotherhood MC Romance Book 3)

by Amber Burns

  Rowan looked back at Nina, feeling entirely helpless, and completely speechless. He understood what she was saying. He heard her so loudly, so clearly. He knew that she had to tell her family and her friends that she was alright, that she was still very much alive and very well, hell, better than well; she was better than she had ever been in her entire life. Yet a part of him wanted her to stay here, with him, forever. A part of him wanted her to never walk away, back through those woods, back to the life that she had come from. Because a part of Rowan was frightened, really and deeply frightened. Rowan was scared that if Nina left, she would never ever come back. And the thought of never seeing Nina again was something that made his guts turn to ice and made him wonder if life without this girl was something that was even remotely possible for him, after all the moments they had shared so closely together.

  Nina placed a soft hand upon Rowan’s own rugged, tattooed fingers. She squeezed lightly and looked into his deep, dark eyes.

  “Baby, I know,” she said softly, her voice tiptoeing the line between a coo and a whisper. “I know how bad this feels. Trust me, I do,” she said, tears springing up to balance on the edges of her captivating eyes. “But you know it is right. You know it is what I have to do.”

  Rowan nodded, sniffing, willing himself not to cry.

  “I know it,” he said, forcing a half smile to cross his face, just for Nina. “I know you are right. You are very right.” Rowan nodded again, more to himself this time. “Alright,” he said, pulling his hand back away from Nina’s with a quick squeeze of his own. “Then it is settled. This afternoon, after we have got you all fed and packed some bags for ourselves. We will set off again. On the motorcycle, this time, so that we will be able to move quickly through those woods. And that way, as long as we stick to the path, which we will, this time, we can have you back to your car in the parking lot, safe and sound, in just under two hours. And then you will be able to get home and explain everything. How does that sound?”

  A smile broke Nina’s face into a mask of joy. She leaped into Rowan’s arms and hugged him fiercely, rocking him back and forth with the power of her gratitude.

  “Oh Rowan,” she said, her voice leaping with happiness. “Thank you so much.” She pulled back slightly and planted a warm kiss on his cheek.

  Rowan smiled back at her. Then Nina stood and began to tug on the clothes that she had first been wearing when Rowan had discovered her, lost and hungry, in the forest. She pulled the tartan pants up onto her lithe legs and slid her shirt and jacket over the rest of her form. Rowan watched without saying a word, forgetting how different Nina looked when she was dressed in her normal everyday clothing. She almost looked like an entirely different person. The moment this thought crept across Rowan’s mind, he felt something bothering him, it felt as if it was biting at the back of his mind, slowly eating through all of the rest of his thoughts, until it was the only thing he could think of; until it had taken over his entire thinking capacity. Before he could stop himself from saying anything, he found himself blurting out:

  “I just know that you are going to leave and then you will never ever come back.”

  Nina turned sharply, her cheekbones catching the morning light that fell through the window and flashing Rowan with a fierce expression.

  “What?” she spat, her face suddenly clouding over, her voice arching to a higher octave. She was suddenly defensive, something that Rowan had never before experienced her be, not around him, not here.

  He stared back at her, forcing himself not to drop her fiery gaze, not to lose his integrity. He had said it, whether he had been willing to share that thought or not, share it he had, and it was something that he truly felt and honestly feared, so he now had to explain it, defend himself. He was instantly filled with the sickening feeling that they were about to enter a war zone of words. All the same, he powered on.

  “You are going to leave here,” he began, standing up from the bed now. “I am going to take you safely back to your home. And then you are going to get home, reunite with all your beloved friends, and have a grand old time. You will have fancy cake, and fancy store bought wine, and your parents will probably shower you with gifts, which is all fine and dandy,” he added quickly as he noticed the look of disgust that had taken over Nina’s face. “But what is not okay is how quickly you are going to forget the man who brought you back home. You will go on with your daily life, never once thinking, hey, if he had not found me in the forest that night, I probably would not be here right now. No,” Rowan corrected, crossing his arms over his chest. “You definitely would not have still been alive. I am sorry, but it is the truth,” he said, his voice becoming a little more gentle. “You would not have lasted a night in those woods. And now, you are going to run back home, what a nice little vacation this was! Ooh, living in the middle of fucking nowhere for a couple of days, what a fucking adventure! And how nice it will be that everything is back to normal and you can go living your upper class, high society life. That is what is going to happen after you go home. You know it, I know it, so we might as well just face it,” Rowan said.

  He stared at Nina, his hands resting by his sides, the snake on his torso seeming to writhe slightly as his muscular body heaved up and down gently as he tried to control his passion. Nina stared back at Rowan for a few moments, completely speechless. After several long hard moments of looking at him, she finally shook her head and spoke.

  “Wow,” she said once, still staring at him, shaking her head back and forth quickly, almost as if she did not know her body was even completing the action. “Wow.” She shook her head from side to side several more times, simply staring at Rowan. Her lips were pulled into a tight purse, and her eyes seemed to glow with a fiery rage. “I cannot believe you just said that,” Nina said. She smiled, but it was not a smile of warmth. Looking at the smile that had just carved its way across Nina’s face made Rowan feel as if his insides had suddenly been filled up with ice. He stared at her as she took several slow steps away from him, raising her hands up in defense. “I seriously cannot believe you would say something like that to me,” she said again. “I cannot believe that you actually think that. After all that these last few days have meant to me,” she continued, and her eyes began to well up with tears. “How the fuck dare you. How dare you say that I don’t care about you!”

  Rowan took a step forward, reaching out to her. “I didn’t say that!” he objected.

  “You didn’t need to,” Nina shot back. Her eyes glistened with moisture, but the tears did not fall. She looked at him angrily. “You said everything you needed to say. About how I am just going to run away and go back to my awesome life with my awesome friends and never once think about you? Yea, you said all that,” Nina confirmed, pointing an angry finger at Rowan’s chest. He stared right back at her.

  “I did say all that,” he confirmed, fighting to keep his voice level as frustration pumped through his veins. “I did, and I cannot say I regret it,” he told her honestly. “But I said it because it is what I believe. It is a fear I have, and I believe that relationships are dependent upon two people sharing everything, the good moments, of course, yes, but also their fears. That is what it means to be truthful. So yes, Nina, yes, if you want to know the truth? I do think you’ll leave and never come back. That is what I am afraid of. And I think that, deep down, you know it too. So why don’t you stop lying to yourself,” he said, his voice becoming louder. “And stop lying to me, and just fucking say what’s actually true?

  Nina laughed, a cold, humorless laugh.

  “You are truly incredible,” she said, crossing her arms across her breasts. “You are really something else. And I thought I knew you. I thought you trusted me.”

  “I do trust you!” Rowan objected. “I think that it seems more like you don’t trust me; if you are not even willing to speak plainly and tell me the truth! It doesn’t seem like you trust me at all, actually, if you are just going to stand there and lie to my face!”


  Nina shook her head and breathed out quickly, sharply.

  “Oh, is that what I’m doing?” she asked. “Is that what you can obviously tell that I’m doing? Oh my god, thank you so much for telling me, because I totally thought I was just standing here being honest! Wow, I feel so much better now that I know I’m actually a lying piece of shit. Thanks for pointing that out, Rowan. You’re the best.”

  “Nina,” Rowan said, his shoulders falling in hurt. “Don’t be like...”

  Rowan reached a hand out to touch her, and she jerked her body away.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” she snarled back. “Be like that? Be like what? You’re the one standing here telling me how it’s gonna be when I go back. You’re the one telling me I’m a liar and telling me that I don’t give a fuck about you. So who’s being like what? Don’t even with me, Rowan. Wow. Wow.”

  Rowan stood rooted to the spot, watching Nina as she shook her head and laughed coldly, pacing in circles. After several moments she stopped, and, arms crossed, looked up at him again.

  “You want to know something?” She asked, looking at Rowan, hard, deep in his eyes. “I’ll tell you something. There will be a party when I get back. You’re right about that. There will be, because people care about me and because I work really damn hard at my job, and I make a lot of money for it. And so yes, because the people I associate with and the people who care about me also work in my industry, yes, there will be a party, and yes, they will buy me gifts. And let me tell you it will be a majestic fucking party. Champagne, for sure, and not the cheap stuff either, because I’m not fucking cheap. Because I’m worth more than that. And you’re right, I will be glad to be able to get home. Because I will be glad to wear more than a fucking piece of shit bathrobe all day long, and to have some nice shoes, and to put on some makeup and get my hair done and go out, like normal fucking people, and actually associate myself with other normal people. And you know what? I think that that kills you, I think that it makes you feel like utter and complete shit, knowing that you don’t get that. You jave any money. And you don’t have any friends. Well, here’s a newsflash, Rowan, it doesn’t come free. I work my ass off every day at the office to make the money I do so I can associate with the people I associate with, and so I can go out whenever I damn please. So don’t you look at me and condemn me for living my life just because you have never lived yours. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  Nina stood there, seething, her shoulders heaving back and forth, riding the adrenaline spiked waves of her anger as it riveted her body into sharp, taut angles. She balled her hands into fists and held them tightly against her thighs, containing herself into one small, fiery pellet of rage. She stared back at Rowan, her nostrils flared with anger, her eyes gleaming, her lips pursed into a snarl. Hot angry tears slipped from her eyes and rolled down her flushed cheeks, but she did not so much as move a muscle to wipe them from her face; she did not acknowledge them at all. She simply stood frozen, angry, watching him intently, daring him to insult her.

  She felt sure that he stood silent now because he was absorbing everything she had just told him. She felt suddenly that she might hate this man, this man who thought that rich people were just rich people because they were lucky or had been born that way; this man who condemned the fact that yes, she would have a party when she got back, and yes, she would accept gifts from people, because that was what normal people did. She felt that, at that moment, she and Rowan did not see eye to eye. And she hoped that the words she had just spoken had just succeeded in educating this man, if only by an inch, on the matters of the world, because he clearly had no idea how hard it was to get to where she had succeeded in getting. Nina stewed, thinking of how many hours of overtime she put in at work, of how many people she was forced to suck up to, just to make the amount of money she did. She would not have a fucking woodsman, someone who was basically a fucking hermit, telling her that she was horrible because she actually worked to make money and live the life that everyone in the world wanted to live for themselves. She would not.

  Rowan stood still for several long moments, simply breathing, blinking, looking right back at Nina. He no longer looked angry, Nina noticed, nor did he seem sad. He stood there, his face relaxed, his arms uncrossed, simply looking straight ahead at her. Finally, he breathed out, the breath making a rushing, sighing sound as it slipped from his lungs. Then he looked at her again, and he shook his head, slowly, sadly.

  “You just have no idea.”

  The words were not an insult, there was no force behind them at all. They sounded more remorseful, more wrought with a great, deep, sadness than any words Nina had ever heard anyone speak before. Rowan looked at her for several more long moments before he finally sighed and turned around. He began to dress, his back to her, slowly and deliberately; as though the simple task was suddenly extremely difficult for him to force himself to do. He spoke, his back still turned to Nina, his limbs still wrestling to pull the clothes onto his suddenly weakened body.

  “All ready to go?”

  Nina watched the muscles in Rowan’s back work to wrestle the shirt down over his head. She felt something, not unlike regret twinge in the pit of her stomach. But she grabbed her dead phone from where it lay on the window sill and nodded, even though the dark man’s back was still turned to her, and he could not see her face.

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly calm once again.

  Rowan turned around, avoiding Nina’s eyes.

  “Alright,” he said. “I guess there is no point in waiting around, anyway. Let’s just get a move on and go.”

  Nina looked down at her feet. Her shoes had been forever lost in the dark depths of the tangled forest, she had nothing to wear on her feet. She looked up at Rowan.

  “What about my shoes?” she asked.

  Rowan glanced at her feet.

  “What about them?” he asked. His voice sounded flat, dead as if all emotion had been stripped from his heart.

  Nina stared at him incredulously.

  “Do you not remember? The part where I lost my Louboutins in the forest?”

  Rowan continued to stare at her blankly. She dipped her chin, her eyes widening.

  “My high heels?” she said, wondering if maybe he just had not understood what the brand name connotated.

  Rowan nodded as if he now understood.

  “Right. Right.” He looked dejectedly around the room, then crossed to the linen closet and pulled out a pair of soft, leather slippers. He extended his hand towards Nina. “Here. I made these, but they turned out too small anyway. Take them and put them on. You can just have them.” He looked away.

  Nina eyed him carefully for a moment, trying to force him to make his coal black eyes meet her own. He did not. She finally grabbed the leather slippers from his outstretched hand. They were soft and smooth to the touch but made expertly, so that they were strong and untearable. She slipped them onto her slender feet and wriggled her toes. The material felt gloriously luxurious against the soles of her chapped feet. She glanced out of the sides of her green eyes at Rowan.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly.

  She watched as Rowan nodded his dark head up and down. He made as if he was about to walk out of the door, but at the last second, he stopped short. He suddenly turned around, his eyes falling upon Nina, his mouth open as if he was about to say something. But he saw her, holding her phone clutched against her chest, dressed in those tartan pants and that designed jacket, and the words were stoppered before they ever slipped from out of his lips. He slapped his lips closed and turned back around, then walked slowly out the door.

  Nina stared after him for a moment, her mind filling with words unsaid, things she could have done to make their argument not an argument at all, but a conversation. Yet she found herself gripping her phone tightly against her chest, forcing herself to think.

  No, Nina. No. You said what you could say, and you did what you could do. The rest is up to him, and it is obvious that he does not have any
desire to make anything work. Well, I don’t know… something like that, anyway, she thought, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that had suddenly taken complete control over her stomach.

  She inhaled and then exhaled sharply, quickly, trying to clear her mind for the journey that lay ahead. Outside, she heard the muffled rumbling of the motorcycle engine revving to life, and she glanced about the room, suddenly sentimental. She was flooded with the instant realization that he was probably right, she did not feel that she would ever return to this cabin in the woods, in the middle of fucking nowhere. It was not that she didn’t love him, up until just a few moments ago she had been so sure that she loved the man who had built this cabin with his own hands that she would have bet her life upon the fact. At the end of the day, what pulled Nina towards home, permanently, was that she did not feel she deserved this life, she did not feel she was good enough for it. For she craved money, she craved hot showers and electricity and laptops and wifi hotspots. She did not think that she, Nina, was good enough at conquering the forest, at living off of the land, at being a lover, because that was, at the end of the day, largely part of it. She did not see herself to be the person that this man, this dark and handsome, muscled man, deserved. She knew in her heart that she was wrong for him and that she would never be enough, and so she clutched the phone tightly to her for comfort, took a deep breath of sweet, sweet country air, and headed out the door and towards the sound of the rumbling motor.