2. Rebel
Chapter 2
Rebel
Eventually, every part of my body goes numb. The fizzy tingle in my arms fades. The burn in my throat disappears. The throbbing ache in my chest—the one Celia fucking put there when she left —finally lets up, and I can breathe for the first time in days.
It’s when I roll over onto my stomach and peer out the open doorway to see her curled into a ball and covered in blankets that everything comes rushing back.
The hurt.
The anger.
The sorrow.
The pain.
But the alcohol has done its job—every feeling fizzles out one agonizing second later, and I drop the empty glass bottle to the floor. Celia flinches, letting me know that she’s awake. My music stopped playing an hour ago when my playlist ran dry, and we’ve been sitting in silence ever since. Ruin ran off to his dungeon upstairs—is it still a dungeon if it’s on the third floor?—and left me to babysit.
Two weeks ago, I would have jumped at the chance to spend all day alone with Celia. Just the two of us with every flicker of desire my brothers have been stoking inside of her, all ready and waiting for me to ignite.
I would have fucked her hard. Soft. Gently. Rough. Flipped her over the side of the couch and bucked my hips into hers, or backed her against the wall and wrapped those perfect thighs around my hips to punch up inside of her, or laid her down gently on my bed and carved a place for myself so deep that she could never get rid of me.
Because that’s exactly what she did when she ran away—she threw me out like a boyfriend she didn’t want or need anymore.
Boyfriend. I scoff, rubbing the back of my eyelids. Yeah, right, like we were ever boyfriend-girlfriend. I scowl at the memory of how it felt to consider such a thing—that fluttery excitement when she’d text me back, or the anticipation of seeing her once she got off work and made it home.
How fucking stupid.
I’m twenty-eight years old, and somehow, she makes me feel like I’m a teenager all over again, horny as shit and craving whatever scraps of attention she’ll give me. I scratch my chest and the wad of keys around my neck clink together, the metal warm on my skin. Yeah, I took her stuff, so what? How did she think I was getting into her house every day? And that second house, the one she kept a secret from us so that she could disappear once she decided she wasn’t having fun anymore?—
I scowl harder. Thanatos sent us the body cam footage from when he picked her up. The house itself was deteriorating, like it hadn’t been maintained in years, and Celia… she actually looked frightened when he burst through the front door .
Of what, Thanatos being rough with her, or of coming home to us?
The former, I can understand, but the latter pisses me off.
What the fuck does she have to be scared of?
I think back to when Rage finally arrived at Celia’s house after the break-in. He walked into her bedroom completely put-together, but the moment he noticed that little purple box torn open on her bathroom counter, he lost his shit .
“Do you know what the fuck this is?” He tosses the box to the floor and stomps on it, his jaw clenched tightly shut.
I hadn’t bothered dissecting her belongings today, so I wait to pick up the empty box until he starts pacing her bedroom. Turning it over in my hands, I decipher the torn logo.
It’s a fucking morning-after pill.
Jealousy courses through me hotter than hell itself, but then relief immediately settles in. If she and Rage have finally had sex, that means that it’s on the table for the rest of us.
Then reality hits and I’m crumpling the box in my fist.
She doesn’t deserve anything from me until I get a goddamned apology, and even then, I might throw her rejection right back in her beautiful fucking face. Everything feels gnarled and twisted inside my chest, the knife in my back cutting deeper than I realized.
My brother feels the betrayal, too, maybe even harder than me. Once Rage figures out how to speak again, he snarls a half-sentence, “like I’m going to fucking let her.”
The cage was Rage’s idea, born from a need to keep Celia somewhere we can monitor her at all times. I suggested a tracking chip embedded in her neck—which is still on the table, as far as I’m concerned—but he wanted something bigger and louder so that it’s impossible for her to ignore. A microchip, she could pretend doesn’t exist.
But a cage?
She’ll be as trapped as the rest of us are, unable to escape each other.
I pull a box of smokes from my pocket and pinch one between my teeth. Rage hates when I smoke indoors, but fuck it , he isn’t here. I light up, taking my first hit of nicotine, and try to relax. Celia hasn’t said a word since Ruin traipsed upstairs to his bedroom, and the quiet feels like a buzz of its own, thrumming between the two of us. I’d usually chalk that up to sexual tension. Even my dick twitches, like it knows that she’s nearby.
I’m hungry for her. I always have been.
But the tension between us now isn’t sexual. It’s something I can’t name. An energy that’s tight and uncomfortable, like an itch I can’t scratch.
My life wasn’t great before we dragged Celia into the mix, but now it feels unbearable in the worst fucking way. Rage might be okay with possessing her like his favorite pet, but I’m not.
I don’t want to force her to be with me.
I want her to want me, no matter what our future together looks like. Isn’t that what partners do? They stick together through whatever life throws at them?
Celia turns her head to look at me as I blow smoke in her direction. It wafts through the doorway and dissipates once it reaches the main room. Now that I’m numbed to the turmoil brewing inside my chest, I can look at her without feeling like I’m falling apart.
Slowly, it dawns on me that she doesn’t look like her usual self. Her hair is a mess, the waves unraveling into a frizzy curtain over her shoulders. There are dark circles under her eyes, and if my own aren’t deceiving me, hers are bloodshot, too. There’s a pallor to her cheeks that can’t be healthy, and I can’t find a single trace of makeup on her skin. Not that I’d know what the fuck to look for when it comes to makeup, but despite the drying tear- tracks on her cheeks, her mascara hasn’t run, so she must not be wearing any.
Somehow, she’s still beautiful to look at. Maybe it’s the alcohol talking. Or the light playing tricks on me. Or the sudden, inescapable distance between us, or whatever the fuck that saying is. Distance makes the heart grow fonder? Time does?
Fuck it—she looks good, even all mussed up inside of a cage.
I let cigarette smoke pass my lips in a lazy cloud that obscures her from view. When it clears, she’s standing up, no longer hiding beneath a quilt, and I get the full-body experience of seeing her tanned skin wrapped in the scarlet lace I chose for her.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
The bra doesn’t stop just beneath her breasts. A band of lace continues down her ribs, ending where the curve of her waist begins. Then there’s the panties—boyshorts, technically, but with how thick Celia’s thighs are, they ride up her legs and let her ass hang out the back. The lace, although mostly sheer, bleeds in full color where it’s bunched between her thighs and across her tits, the peaks of her nipples hidden behind an intricate rose design. It’s not bright red, but a maroon that’s even sexier.
A mental image of Celia wearing bright red panties beneath a pleated skirt blips into mind, but unlike the woman standing before me, it’s pure fantasy that I conjured up while missing our girl. Rage couldn’t keep his mouth shut about the red fucking panties she wore to breakfast with him, but I bet she really wore them for me.
I was supposed to be on that date with her, not my brother. She chose me.
Something’s been nagging me since that day, though, before everything went to shit. I flick cigarette ash onto the ground before taking another drag.
She opens her mouth to speak. “Rebel, I?—”
But I beat her to it. “Why’d you ghost me?”
“—what?” Her eyebrows scrunch together, the little divot between them driving me crazy. Were things better between us, I might run my thumb across her forehead to smooth it out, press a tender kiss against her skin, atop each of her cheekbones, then finally on her lips.
But I can’t see myself doing that anytime soon. My chest twinges, and I scratch my pec distractedly. “That morning. I was excited to see you, and you ghosted me after I sent you that pic.” I lick my lips, picturing the one she sent me. I’ve stared at it for hours by now, memorizing the way her skin glistens in the shower mist and her smile brightens the whole goddamn world.
My world.
Fuck, I’m such a goner for this girl.
Realization washes over her features. “Oh, Rebel.” She grabs the bars and presses her body against them, the tips of her breasts and her kneecaps fitting between the gaps.
I bet I could suck on her nipple if I got close enough.
“I dropped my phone in the shower, and it broke. Rage bought me a new one right before we—” She cuts herself off at first, but then she straightens her spine and looks me dead in the eyes. “Before we had sex.” Brushing a frizzy strand of hair behind her ear, she continues, “but I want you to know that I would have chosen you , Rebel, not Rage. I wanted to go to breakfast with you. ”
If this were a normal day and I hadn’t drank nearly an entire bottle of vodka, I’d feel a twisting ache beneath my ribs right about now. The alcohol is fucking bliss, though, numbing me to it. “You would have fucked me, then, right? I would have been the first?” I cling to the idea that Celia still wants me more than my brothers, no matter how foolish that idea is.
I exhale until the tight feeling in my chest dissipates. “I would have made it good for you.”
She blushes like a fucking schoolgirl, and I hate how much I enjoy it.
“It was good with him, too.”
“That why you tried to kill him?” Shaking my head, I can’t help but laugh. “It was so good, you had to strangle him? Or what, you’d fall in love?” I wish I had another bottle to throw back. In fact—I do. Sliding off the bed, I shuffle into the kitchen and grab an unopened bottle from the cabinet. Cracking the top, I take a swig of vodka and hop up onto the island, sloshing a little liquid past the rim. It drips onto my jeans, staining them black, and I itch to take them off. I’m rarely dressed while home, so this is a rare exception on account of how fucked up everything is. I stare at Celia as the burn settles in the back of my throat, the heat quickly fading into a drunken numbness. “Nothing to say?” A bitter chuckle catches in my chest, and I scratch it again, my fingers catching on the silver chain and every single one of those keys.
Celia turns to face me and crosses her arms over her chest. “What do you want me to say? That I regret it?”
I lift an eyebrow. “Do you?”
Her eyes narrow. “No.”
I tilt the bottle back and swallow as much as I can without throwing it all back up. My eyes water, my chest burns, and goddamn it all, I just want to feel better. I gasp for air once I’ve killed half the bottle, then slam it down on the granite countertop with a heavy clink of glass on stone.
Celia pretends to be unaffected by either our conversation or my drinking, but I can see through her mask as if it were made of glass.
“Something on your mind, baby?” I lick the vodka from my lips and hold the bottle out toward her. “Want a little liquid courage to make this easier?”
“Nothing about this is easy,” she mutters, frowning.
I gesture broadly, throwing my arms out beside me. “Hence the alcohol.” Hopping down from the counter, I cross the short distance to the cage and slip the neck of the bottle through the bars, high over her head. “Open up.”
To my surprise, the tilts her head back and pops open her mouth, allowing me to pour vodka past her lips. She swallows as best she can without choking, but a trickle slips down her chin and drips into her chest.
I’m still staring at those soft, pillowy tits when she reaches her fingertips through the cage and wraps them around mine. I barely notice, suddenly too caught up in the warm depths of her eyes. They aren’t brown, not really. They’re hazel, shifting colors depending on the slant of light.
Her voice ghosts across my skin like a lover’s caress. “Why are you mad at me, baby?”
A shiver runs down my spine. I call her baby—not the other way around. We’re crossing into new territory, talking like this with each other. I shouldn’t let it happen. I should back the fuck up and lock myself in my room—except, I took my door off its hinges after Rage unkindly barred me inside, so I literally can’t escape from her. Fuck. Fucking fuck.
I press my forehead against the cold bars of cage and close my eyes. “You know why.”
She exhales, our breath mingling. “I wasn’t running from you , Rebel. I was running from this. ” She taps the gold bars with her fingertips. “Do you really think this is what I want? To be nothing more than a possession?”
My chest tightens. I’m not sure that I want that, either, but I don’t have a choice. “This is me, krosotka .” The Russian nickname falls from my lips before I can stop it, reminding me of how this all began.
One little dance turned into so much more.
“It’s not you,” Celia insists. She struggles to hold onto my hand, her fingertips slipping from mine every few seconds. “This is Rage’s doing. You wouldn’t lock me up like this.”
I tear my body away from hers, breathing hard as I fight her siren’s call. Sweet words and an even sweeter voice, but I can’t trust her after what she’s done. “Not everything is about Rage.” I swallow more vodka and wipe my mouth on my forearm. “Until you learn that, this —” I gesture between us—“goes nowhere.” I carry the vodka back to my bedroom and strip, not caring if she watches me get naked. I’m not doing it for her. I need some goddamn air.
Flopping onto my bed and kicking all of the blankets to the floor, I turn my music back on and drown out the noise.
The kick drum beat of my heart.
The echo of her voice in my head.
The whisper-sweet way she calls me baby .