The Rebel - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,3

right now. I mean it.”

“I promise,” Liam said. “Just five minutes.”

“You’ve already been back here for a good chunk of that five,” I muttered, tossing another bill on the mounting stack. “You better start talking really quickly. Chipmunks style.”

To my surprise, Liam laughed. “God, I missed you.”

I clenched my teeth. “Don’t say that,” I told him.

“Even though it’s true?”

“Just don’t, Liam.”

A memory of the first time we met flashed through my head. I had been a bartender at a shitty bar in LA and he was just another customer. He was cocky and gorgeous, and he’d been the first person to ever tell me I was pouring beers all wrong. I told him off, but inside I knew he was completely right.

He’d stayed at the bar all night, flirting with me until I was wrapped around his damn finger. After a good few drinks, he bet me twenty bucks that he could make me come in under five minutes. I rolled my eyes, but later that night, he won the stupid bet.

He had always been unafraid to challenge me, to be real with me, to work himself into every piece of my life.

And he was the king of my fucking world before everything had fallen apart.

I tried not to think about that.

I shoved the pile of bills into the overstuffed organizer on my desk and turned to walk out of the office. I brushed past Liam in the doorway, my body momentarily right up against his. He smelled impossibly good. Leather and a hint of some woodsy cologne, mostly washed away by the rain outside.

“Sam?” I called down the hallway. “A little help?”

Sam’s head peeked around the corner, and he gave me a half-hearted shrug. “I tried! I can’t tell Liam Hardy what to do!”

Unfortunately, he was right. I was well aware that Sam wasn’t going to be able to wrangle Liam. Nobody really could.

I furrowed my brow, turning back into my office. Liam was now sitting on my desk chair, leaning back like he owned the place. Like some sort of smoldering, dark-haired, rebel porn star prince. He had a tendency to look regal like that no matter what he was doing.

He was still every bit as pushy as I remembered. The difference was that I wasn’t weak anymore. I’d spent ten years building up a thick skin for a reason.

“The whole cowboy thing is really going well for you,” he said, nodding at the western movie posters I had framed on my walls. “You always looked good in those boots. Better out of them, of course.”

My skin heated. I could remember times when Liam had requested that I fuck him wearing nothing but my cowboy boots and hat. But that was a long time ago.

“What do you want, Liam?” I asked. I could feel him trying to crack my defenses. It was like watching someone hold a match right next to a pile of dry paper, inching it closer and closer.

Liam didn’t know that I was fireproof now, though. There was nothing he could do.

“You know what I want,” he said.

“I really don’t.”

His expression faltered for a moment. The swagger and bravado fell away, revealing a tenderness.

He really was sad, though he was doing his best to cover it up.

“Did you get my emails?” he asked. “Did you listen to any of my messages?”

“I read exactly one of your emails. As soon as I got to the part where you asked me to do porn again, I closed it, and ignored all the rest.”

“There’s your mistake,” Liam said.

I shook my head, taking out my phone from my back pocket. I navigated to one of the many emails from Liam, opening one of them up for the first time.

“Why would you write me something like this? Red. I’m going to come see you. I’d be overjoyed if you did a solo video for me, but I’m open to other things as well. If you don’t want to be on film again, I understand. But I have to get out of LA, Red. To say things have gotten bad would be an understatement.”

I paused for a moment as I was reading his email out loud. I met his eyes and found that his expression had softened again.

“Sorry. I never read the whole thing before now,” I said. I kept reading, more slowly now. “I can’t be here anymore. It’s not that I feel unsafe, but, well… I don’t exactly feel safe, either. Colin is out of his mind. Sometimes I