Nova (The Renegades #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “Because they didn’t want you to know. Parents do their best to protect their kids, and they probably thought they were doing what was best for you. I’m not saying it was right, but you can’t blame yourself for not knowing.”

  “How does that happen? You choose your person, and then one day decide that they’re not your person anymore? I don’t understand how that happens.” Or why I couldn’t stop it—why I couldn’t see it.

  “I wish I could tell you,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers.”

  “Just tell me that won’t happen with us,” I begged. “Tell me that it doesn’t always end like that.”

  He sucked in his breath and gazed at me intensely, like he could see into my soul. “I promise you that I will never cheat on you. I will never lie to you again—I learned my lesson when I lost you. I will be yours for as long as you want me, Rachel Dawson, because you’re the only woman I will ever love. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded, and he clutched me to him, tucking my head under his chin as he rubbed circles on my back. “Remember, we are what we decide to be—you and me.”

  “You and me,” I repeated, closing my eyes.

  “Do you want to come in?” he asked.

  I’d already started to nod when a guard leaned over the stone fence that separated the driveway from the house. “Sir, her father is here.”

  Landon tensed. “Do you want to see him? The beauty of having security is that I can say no.”

  “It’s okay. I was a little harsh on him.”

  Landon waved him in, and a minute later, my dad parked on the other side of me. He climbed out of his immaculate convertible and ran his hand over his silvered hair. “Rachel.”

  “Dad,” I said, keeping Landon’s hand firmly in mine as I turned to face him.

  He looked back at Landon and grimaced. “Can we talk alone?”

  “I’m just going to tell him what we say anyway.”

  He sighed and walked toward us, a manila envelope in his hands. “I’m sorry about what happened this morning,” he said.

  “Me, too. And I’m sorry for what Mom did. You don’t deserve that.”

  He swallowed, pain flashing across his eyes. “Yeah, well, sometimes it’s the people we love most who hurt us the deepest.” His gaze flickered to Landon, and I knew he was thinking about what had happened years ago. “You need to know that I tried. I won’t say anything more, and I don’t want you to take this out on your mother, but…I tried to make it work, Rachel. We just can’t. I can’t. I had to go.”

  I dropped Landon’s hand and went to my dad, hugging him tight. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have been such a wreck. I was just in shock. It’s always been the three of us, and now…now I don’t know.”

  “I know. And we both love you very much. That’s not something you should ever doubt, okay?”

  “I don’t,” I told him, giving a tighter squeeze before pulling back.

  “And I know this is important to you,” he said, fidgeting with the envelope. “The other papers, I’m not sure where they are. Once your birth certificate was in after your adoption, nothing else ever mattered. We shut the door on how you came to us and concentrated on being the family you were always meant to have. There’s not a lot of information in here, but maybe it will help you feel like you’ve found whatever it is you’re missing.”

  I took the envelope from him with a slightly shaky hand. “Thanks, Dad.”

  He nodded and looked back at Landon. “I’d really like you to come home with me, Rachel. If not me, then your mother. Anything but here…with him.”

  My stomach sank. “Dad, not today. I know you and Landon have some harsh feelings between you, but I seriously don’t think I can take anything else today.”

  “He’s not good for you, Rachel.”

  “He loves me,” I countered. With everything else that had gone to shit today, it was the one thing I was certain of.

  “Not enough,” he said softly, sadly.

  “What do you mean?” That sick, nauseating feeling was back in my belly.

  “Today has been hard enough on you. Why don’t you just come home with me and we’ll have a good, long talk about it?” he offered.

  After this morning, I’d had quite enough of being managed.

  “No. You tell me now.”

  “Rachel,” Landon said, coming up behind me.

  I turned toward him. “What is he talking about?”

  Landon looked straight over me to my father. “You really want to hurt her like this?”

  “You were the one who didn’t stay away,” Dad snapped. “Someone that willing to walk away in the first place isn’t deserving of my daughter. She’s worth a hundred of you.”

  “On that, we agree,” Landon said.

  “Dad, Landon and I talked about what happened, and if I can forgive him, then I need you to try.” I got it, he was on overprotective mode, especially with what was going on with him and Mom, but he couldn’t take out his insecurities on Landon.

  “So he told you why he left?” Dad challenged, his blue eyes going hard.

  “Please don’t,” Landon pleaded quietly. “For both our sakes.”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The difference between us, Nova, is that I’m firmly ready for my daughter to hate me, if it’s what keeps her out of harm’s way and away from you. Can you say the same?”

  My grip tightened on the envelope. “Dad?”

  “What did he tell you, sweetheart?”

  I didn’t look at Landon. I wasn’t sure I could. “That he had to rejoin the team or they couldn’t put on the competition. It was an all-or-nothing deal.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “Rachel,” Landon whispered.

  “Because he left.”

  “You’re just going to hurt her more,” Landon said, his voice breaking.

  Dad looked over my head at him. “I’d rather hurt her now than her think she can spend her life with someone who can be bought from her side.”

  “Bought?” I asked, finally looking up at Landon.

  There was so much pain in his eyes, and my first thought was to take it away. How ridiculous was that? “How were you bought?”

  He reached for me, but I stepped backward.

  “Gremlin pulled the sponsorship of the event, but it wasn’t because I’d left. It was because I was with you.”

  I spun and then backed away from them both, moving toward my car. Pieces clicked in my head, the puzzle anything but pretty. “You pulled their funding,” I said to Dad.

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “And you dumped me to get it back?” I asked Landon, hoping there was another answer, any other way this had gone down.

  “Yes.”

  “That and more,” Dad added. “Gremlin signed the Renegades for thirty months as a team once Landon returned. With a sizable advance to get them going.”

  “You’ve been his paycheck.”

  “Yes, and his is a great deal bigger than the others’. That was the deal when he gave you up.”

  My heart shattered, the pieces sharp enough to cut through my soul. I shook my head and backed up, but Landon followed. How stupid could I be? I knew Gremlin sponsored their events—I should have logically realized they’d sponsor the individual athletes as well. Or maybe I’d just assumed that Dad hated Landon so much he wouldn’t do business with him. But he’d paid Landon even more to dump me, and Landon had taken it.

  How could I have been so wrong about Dad? About them both?

  “You have to let me explain. My parents were pissed about what had happened between me and Pax. They didn’t support my career choice, and you were that final straw. They cut off my money.”

  My head snapped up. “Money. Are you fucking kidding me? Leaving me for friendship, I forgave. Pax and Penna are basically family to you, and even though you destroyed me, there was still this honor about your choice. But money? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?�
��

  Panic was etched across his features. “I didn’t have a job. Without the competition, I couldn’t even afford to rent that apartment with you. What the hell kind of life did that leave us?”

  “One that we made together! You could have come to me. We could have figured it out together.”

  “With everything you’d already given up for me? Your dad showed up and told me that if I walked away from you, he’d have Gremlin restore the funding and sponsor us individually. The competition would go on, and he’d pull every string he had to get you back into Dartmouth, even though you’d just turned them down for me. All I had to do was walk away from you and you’d have the life you were meant to have without me fucking it up for you.”

  “You took money for me?” I shouted, uncaring about the rest. “I didn’t care about Dartmouth! I would have lived anywhere with you. I would have left L.A. I didn’t need the money, the fame, the sport—you did. How much was our love worth to you, Landon? Six figures? Seven?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Yeah, it was more than the other Renegades, but I’d gotten us in way over our heads, and it was the only way to put it all back to the way it was—to fix the mistakes we’d made.”

  “I’m not a goddamned mistake!” I screamed. Jesus, didn’t anyone want me for what I was? Just me. Only me.

  “No, you’re the best choice I’ve ever made,” Landon swore fervently. “But I wasn’t your best choice.”

  “Don’t believe him, Rachel,” Dad added.

  My head snapped toward him. “Oh, no. I’m done listening to you. You bought me—” A self-deprecating laugh took hold, racking my shoulders. “Twice, I guess.”

  “If you want to accuse someone of that, look at your boyfriend,” Dad snapped.

  For fuck’s sake, I had whiplash.

  “What are you talking about?” Landon asked.

  “Oh, come on. You didn’t think I’d realize what you’d done? Wormed your way back in with my daughter while we’ve been in negotiations for our sponsorship of the Renegades for the X Games? Now that your thirty months are ending? How much is it going to cost me this time, Nova?”

  “What?” Landon balked.

  I laughed. “Of course.” I shrugged. “Of course this is what happens.” I looked at Dad. “You needed me to fix your marriage, and apparently I didn’t do that well enough.” Then I turned to Landon. “You needed me to secure your funding. When were you going to dump me, Landon? Tonight? Closer to the X Games? I’m so damned stupid.”

  At that moment, I had the strangest longing for my broken wrist—for the pain that had semidistracted me from this heartbreak the first time. But this was a hundred times worse. This time I didn’t only feel like I’d been rejected, I felt like an utter fool who’d been played.

  And everyone knew Nova was the ultimate player.

  “Rachel—”

  “Sweetheart—”

  I threw out my hand and warded them both off.

  “Fuck you both.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Landon

  Los Angeles

  My chest lost the ability to process oxygen, no matter how badly my brain willed it to breathe.

  She looked at me from the other side of her car, and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to jump the hood of the car and force her to stay—force her to listen.

  “Rachel, please,” I begged.

  Everything that had softened about her hardened, from her posture to the now stone-cold set of her brown eyes. Fire, I could fight. Fire, I could arouse, ensnare, draw her out and fight back.

  But apathy? I had no chance.

  “You told me that we would always be what we decided. That our relationship wasn’t in anyone else’s hands.”

  “I remember.” Memories of Fiji hit me, holding her, loving her, finally letting myself believe that we could be together what we’d never managed to be apart: happy. But the woman before me had changed. In seconds she had rebuilt her walls that had taken me months to break down, and once again it was me who’d sliced her to the quick.

  She nodded once, businesslike. “Well, I’ve decided that we’re done. You obviously got what you wanted. You have your funding.” She looked over to her dad. “And I went to Dartmouth. And now I’m done being controlled by both of you.”

  She slid into her car, her head held high, the perfect example of class and elegance, but the way she gunned it out of my driveway told me that under that cold exterior, my Rachel lurked.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” her dad said to me.

  I clenched both my fists and reminded myself that I couldn’t afford an assault charge at the moment. “Me? Look what you did to her!”

  “Rachel will bounce back, and she’ll be safe. Away from you and your reckless, girl-destroying ways. You don’t think I know your reputation, Casanova? You picked the wrong daughter to go after. I’ve spent my entire career around selfish assholes like you, and she’s entirely too good for you.”

  “You’re right. She is, but I love her. If you don’t believe me, then that’s not my problem, it’s yours. I will get through to her. I will get her back. I might not be the best man for her, but there’s no one in this world who loves her like I do.”

  “It will be interesting to see you try. But you need to realize that there’s nothing I won’t do to protect my daughter. You go near her, and I’ll withdraw your sponsorships. And maybe you can do without mine, but what about when the other sponsorships fall? All it takes is a simple phone call and a hint at scandal. Are you telling me there’s not one skeleton, one girl, that would come out of your closet?”

  I stared at him in stunned silence. Gremlin was our biggest sponsor, but not our only one. If they pulled out, the others would question it, and us.

  He sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “You’re not good enough for her. You never were. Just let her go. She’ll learn to be happy, and she deserves it. There will never be a day on your circuit where she’d not be confronted with some woman you’ve slept with, some mistake you made. Give her a chance to find a future with someone who didn’t ruin his with his past. Let her go, and I’ll make sure your sponsorships remain intact.”

  Without another word, he turned and got into his car, taking the driveway out.

  Ten minutes ago, I’d held her in my arms. She’d trusted me to hold her together when the rest of her world came apart. Ten minutes ago, my lips had brushed her forehead, and she’d clung to me, knowing that I would keep her safe.

  Ten minutes ago, she’d loved me.

  Just like the mudslide, the avalanche, the moments she’d broken down crying in Fiji, it happened so fast and altered everything.

  Ten. Fucking. Minutes.

  …

  “Where is he?” I shouted as I walked in the front door of Paxton’s house in Aspen the next day. It had taken me all evening to explain to my parents why I was leaving, and when they wouldn’t stop arguing about how to stop me, I finally decided not to give a fuck and packed a bag.

  “Who?” Alex asked, coming out of the kitchen, his mouth full of pizza.

  “Wilder,” I snapped.

  Alex’s eyes widened, and he pointed toward the rec room. I took the steps at a near run, finding the rec room inhabited by at least six of the Renegades. Pax put up his pool cue and turned to me with a giant smile.

  The rage I’d kept carefully bottled exploded.

  “Landon! To what do we owe this—”

  I swung my fist and laid my best friend out on the ground.

  Paxton rotated his jaw and looked up at me like I’d lost my mind.

  Three of the guys rushed me, but Little John put up his hand and they all backed down, putting us in the center of a makeshift ring. Not that I cared. I was pissed off enough to kick all of their asses.

  How could he do it? Hell, he’d gotten her there in the first place.

  “What the fuck was that about?” Pax asked, getting to his feet.

  “Did you know?” I asked. G
od help him if he did.

  “You’re going to have to be a little bit clearer than that.”

  “When you sat next to me on that airplane, telling me to come clean to her, to get everything in the open, did you know that the only way for me to secure our sponsors would be to give her up? Did you?”

  “Landon, I have no clue what you’re asking me.”

  “When you orchestrated everything, from getting her on board to doing everything you could to get us back together, did you do it for leverage?”

  Pax put up his hands. “No. I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Rachel’s dad, Paxton. He’s pulling the strings at Gremlin, and not only did he out what happened two years ago, he’s going to cut all of our funding if I don’t walk away from her again. Why the fuck would you go back to Gremlin for sponsorship knowing he was there?”

  Pax shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “What?” I barked.

  “I did,” a voice called from the other side of the pool table. Nick wheeled around the table in his chair until he was right in front of me. “You’re not going to hit a guy in a wheelchair, are you?” he tried to joke.

  “Don’t tempt me. I love you like a brother, but what the hell?”

  “Pax put me in charge of the X Games shit while you guys are tooling around the globe,” he explained. “Gremlin was the natural choice—they’ve been our biggest sponsor. I had no clue you were back with Rachel. None. You never told me, even when you called to start arranging the Nepal shit. I get that you like to keep your personal life personal, but in this case, you bit yourself in the ass. In fact, when I checked in for info on how that was going, I was assured that you two didn’t have a chance in hell and weren’t even speaking.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Oops,” Zoe said, hopping down off the bar.

  Every Renegade turned to look at her. “What the fuck do you mean, oops?” I snapped.

  She shrugged. “You weren’t speaking at that time. Besides, Gremlin has sponsored us every year since you left Rachel. How was I supposed to know you’d actually get back together with her? By the time you two were…whatever it is that you are, I wasn’t about to call up Nick and let a piece of ass ruin our sponsorships. Team first, right?”