Page 64 of Rebel
“Not a fan of getting sewn twice in one night.”
“Good,” she says, voice gone low. “Then let me… help.”
“Rebel,” I groan.
“Let me,” she repeats, and there’s no bravado in it. Noperformance. Just the clean, stubborn truth of a woman deciding what she wants.
Consent is easy. It’s yes with my mouth and yes with my body. It’s yes with the way I shift back on the pillows so she can take her time, map my edges, test the places that ache and the ones that don’t. We kiss until I forget which of us is keeping the rhythm.
Rebel trails kisses down my body, mapping every inch of my skin with her tongue. When she reaches the waistband of my jeans, I shift my hips so she can slide them down. My erection springs free, and her hot, wet mouth is on me in an instant. She smiles around my length when I choke on her name. She hums approval, and the vibration of her throat as my shaft slides down it sends me over the edge.
I make promises without words because I don’t deserve the spoken kind, but she hears them anyway. We keep it quiet. We keep it gentle. The room stays ours.
After, she tucks herself along my good side, face pressed to my throat, heartbeat finding its place against my ribs. My arm goes around her on pure instinct, palm spread between her shoulder blades, keeping her from any world that isn’t this one. The ceiling has a crack that runs corner to corner like a route we might take when we’re done pretending we rest.
She breaks the quiet first.
“I have the dream,” she says, voice so small I almost miss it. “Not every night. Enough. The gate hits the asphalt. The van rams through. The sound isn’t a sound, it’s a split. I’m on the wrong side of the parking lot, andmy legs won’t work fast enough. I know how it ends, but I keep running like I don’t.”
I don’t move. I don’t fix it. There’s nothing to fix. I give her the one thing Marines and Harlots both forget how to offer, silence that holds.
“I hate sleeping,” she continues. “I hate waking up more. I count the women. I count the kids. I count the money so the books don’t surprise me. I keep the door cracked so I can see the hinges. And I pretend that makes me safe.” A beat. “Mostly it makes me tired.”
I angle my head and kiss her hair. It tastes like rain and a little bit of whiskey. “You don’t have to earn sleep,” I say.
“That sounds fake.”
“It is,” I admit. “But you don’t have to.”
Rebel smiles without humor. “Says the man who hasn’t slept since Fallujah.”
“Afghanistan.”
“Figures.” Her hand curls in my shirt, the knuckles brush one of many scars. She doesn’t look up when she asks, “What about your dreams, soldier?”
“They’re louder,” I say. “But shorter. Teeth and smoke and doors that don’t open. The ones with Alex… those are quiet.” Rebel stills, waiting. “The night at the clubhouse,” I add, and my tongue feels like sand. “He saved me. Not the other way around. I had the angle wrong. I would’ve caught the second burst. He shoved me into the vent casing and took it in the chest. By the time I dragged him out of sight, help was coming, and I was already gone.”
Rebel’s breath snags like a thread catching. “You were there.”
“Yeah. I’ve never told anyone that.”
“And you didn’t tell me because…?”
“Because you deserved a brother who didn’t die in a story that ends with me.”
She lifts her head. Her eyes are wet, her mouth set like she’s ready to argue until one of us breaks. But she doesn’t argue. She just studies me like she’s collecting a truth she can’t ledger. “Say it again,” she whispers.
“He saved me.”
She shuts her eyes. A single tear slips, small and traitorous. I catch it with my thumb before it can travel. Her lashes shiver against my skin, then settle.
“You’re allowed to be the one who lives,” I tell her. “That doesn’t mean you left him.”
“It feels like I did,” she says, barely a sound.
“Me too.” I let the two words sit. A matched set, heavy and honest. “But I’m still here. And I’m not running.”
Her laugh is shredded at the edges. “You really picked the wrong club if you wanted to run.”
