REBEL, a New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) (7 page)

“My friend is none of your business.
 
Will you please tell your boss to give me my ID?”

“My boss?
 
He ain’t my boss.”

“Whatever!” I scream.
 
I’ve lost it, the words tumbling out without being reviewed by my brain first.
 
“Give me my fucking ID, you old-as-shit ape!”

Mick starts laughing.
 
“I think she just called you old-as-shit, bro.”

Rebel stands up from the stool he was sitting on.

I’m not going to lie; it’s intimidating as crap.
 
I have to look up to see his face, but I hold my ground.
 
No way am I leaving this place without my license.

“You have thirty seconds to leave the property or I’m calling the police.”

“Yo, he
really
doesn’t like being called old,” says Mick from behind him.

Rebel reaches back and grabs Mick by the neck, yanking him forward.
 
“Get … to work.”

Mick gives Rebel a half-hearted punch in the ribs before walking back into the club.
 
He goes in backwards and eyes Quin the entire way.
 
“See you inside, sweetheart.”

She snorts.
 
“Yeah, right.
 
Dream on, twig.”

The shocked look on his face is classic.
 
I can’t help but laugh.
 
Quin is the best friend of all time, ever.

The guy in line behind us gets bold enough to step in front of me as he’s holding out his ID. Rebel barely gives it a glance before motioning the guy in.
 
He does the same for the next girl in line who looks like she’s maybe twelve years old.
 
Quin and I find ourselves on the outside of the entrance, watching asshole after asshole enter the club in front of us.

“I cannot believe this is my life,” I say, watching as my heart turns into stone.
 
I feel totally dead inside.
 
I’m too angry to cry and too sad to scream.

And then a woman who’s about a foot taller than me walks up and stands next to Rebel.
 
As she takes in the sight of me and Quin standing there, she puts her hand on Rebel’s shoulder, a smug, humorless smile moving across her face.
 
A curtain of white-blonde hair falls over her shoulders and skims across her ample chest as she turns and leans in closer to him.

“Is there a problem here?” She looks up at us again and narrows her heavily darkened eyes.
 
She could very possibly be a cover model from a foreign country, she’s so pretty.
 
Calling her looks perfect would not do them adequate justice, and that just pisses me off more.
 
Now I’m not only ID-less, but I also immediately compare my looks to hers and feel like the old cat-pee couch you put out on the curb. I hate feeling like an old cat-pee couch.

Rebel answers her question.
 
“No.”
 
Everyone in line is staring at the woman like Quin and I are.
 
Rebel seems to be the only one unaffected by her stunning beauty.
 
For some reason it makes me mad that he’s pretending like she isn’t the most beautiful girl here.
 
Like he’s so awesome, she doesn’t even register on his radar.
 
Just like I don’t register on his radar.
 
Stuck-up pile of man whore.

“Hell yes, there’s a problem,” I say sharply, fired up by my imaginings of his character and the whole cat-pee thing.
 
“Tell him to give me my ID.”

Her arm slides over until it’s lying across his shoulders.
 
“Do you have it?”
 
She leans over to look at his face.
 
The intimacy between them is hard to miss.
 
Ugh.
 
I instantly despise her while at the same time knowing that it makes no sense.
 
She’s nothing to me, a stranger who probably makes a perfect couple with this stone-cold bouncer car mechanic guy.

He lifts his hand up to take the next person’s ID.
 
Two seconds later, he waves the person in as he hands it back.
 
The girl he just let in looks young enough to still be wearing a training bra.

“Come on,” says Quin, taking my arm.
 
She pauses to flip Rebel off, but he’s too busy letting people in the door to notice.

The blonde lady sees it, though, and sneers at us.
 
“Have a good night,” she says with saccharine sweetness.
 
She leans in more heavily against Rebel, threatening to smother him with her boobage.
 
He continues to take IDs as if she’s not there.

I want to slap that smile off her face so bad right now, but Quin is dragging me away.
 
I try to push away the images of him sitting there and that woman draped all over him like a mink coat.

“Let’s go get a Philly sleezesteak,” Quin says, steering me towards the neon lights of a deli still open down the street.

“Are you sure you want to spend your birthday money on that garbage?” I ask. “You could go into the club and let me go home alone.”

“Don’t even.
 
I wouldn’t go in that club if you paid me in rubies.”

“What about diamonds?”

“Don’t push it.
 
You know how I feel about diamonds.”

We link arms and giggle as we walk down the street.
 
“You are such a ho,” I say.

“I know,” she says.
 
“But at least I admit it.
 
Diamonds will get you anywhere with me.
 
Fact.”

The brief glimmer of happiness disappears at the idea of having diamonds.
 
“My life sucks, Quin.
 
What am I going to do?”

“Your life doesn’t suck.
 
You’re healthy, almost college-degreed, and you’re sexy.
 
The world is your oyster.”

“Oysters are gelatinous, salty muck that people only eat because they think it’s cool.”

“Right.
 
The world is not your oyster.
 
The world is your bitch.”

“I think that’s worse.”

“Okay, fine,” she sighs out as she stops and faces me.
 
She takes me by the shoulders and shakes me a couple times.
 
“The world is
yours
, Tea-Tea. You can make it whatever you want.
 
Get
whatever you want.
 
You just have to try harder to make it happen.”
 
She drags me across the sidewalk and pulls open the door to the deli, glaring at me.

“So I’ll just walk into some business tomorrow and tell them they have to give me a job because I own the world and that’s that?”

She nods once.
 
“Exactly.
 
That’s what I’m talking about.
 
Take the world by the balls and make it beg for mercy.”

“You really scare me sometimes, Quin.”

“I scare myself sometimes too.
 
Come on.
 
Let’s go eat some meat smothered in squeeze cheese.”

For once in my life, that doesn’t sound entirely disgusting.
 
I really am losing my grip on reality.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I TRY AND TALK MYSELF out of what I’m doing all the way there.
 
I have one eye on the road and one eye on my side mirror, praying a cop doesn’t pull me over and ask me for my license and for the location of my rearview mirror.

Ass monkey, fucknutter, dickwanker
.
 
Who knows what Rebel’s done with my ID, but I’m sure as crap not just going to walk away from his stupid ass and let him get away with stealing it.
 
A replacement license costs twenty-six bucks I don’t have, and the gas to get here?
 
About a buck.

Pulling into the parking lot of the warehouse, I wonder if the place is closed down for a holiday I don’t remember being on the calendar.
 
My car is the only one here.
 
I sit inside after turning off the engine, staring at the door that leads to the inner sanctum of awful.
 
I wish I’d remembered to bring a can of spray paint so I could totally graffiti his whole stupid building.

“Oh, well.
 
No better time than the present for total mortification.”
 
I haven’t allowed myself to think through what might happen in here.
 
Maybe Quin’s non-stop pep talk while I was ingesting pressed loaf of meat byproducts smothered in squeeze cheese somehow brainwashed me into thinking I do actually own the world.
 
That seems to be the only explanation for why I’d come over to this place to suffer more abuse.

But whatever.
 
I need my license or I won’t be able to apply for jobs, so this is what’s going to happen: I’m going to go inside Rebel Wheels, confront this muscle-bound ape Rebel person, and insist he give me back my license.
 
I’m going to beg and cry if necessary.
 
I’m going to give him the most intimate details of my sorry life if I have to, so that he’ll realize how awful having my ID taken away really is.
 
I’ve brought my transcripts so he can see I am who my license says I am.
 
My hope is that tears, a sob story, and my name on that paper are going to be enough to crack his hard, brittle, mean-ass shell.
 
I just pray that the Barbie doll who was at the club’s entrance isn’t in here with him to reduce me down to the cat-pee couch again.

The front door creaks as I open it and step inside.
 
I don’t know whether I’m happy or panicked that it’s not a holiday today.
 
No one is in the office, but I can hear a lot of noise out in the warehouse area.
 
Someone sounds cranky, like maybe he’s tossing things around or possibly a bunch of cardboard boxes are being thrown against the wall.

I tiptoe in.
 
A hint of a smile breaks over my face as I see the inner office is still mostly clean.
 
Someone’s gone through some of the boxes I collected files in, and a few papers are scattered around, but for the most part, my work remains awesome.
 
Rebel was really stupid not to hire me.
 
That makes me kind of bitter-happy, and I’ll take that over sad any day.

I stop in the other doorway, looking out at the cars under the big fluorescent lights.
 
A bunch of booming sounds in the far corner of the room bring me out farther so I can see better what’s going on.

Rebel is the only one in the room that I can tell, and he’s shirtless, doing a serious amount of damage to a punching bag that hangs from a metal frame above it.

My heart stops beating for a few seconds as I think about what that amount of muscle and energy could do to a human face.
 
Maybe I shouldn’t have come without backup.

I turn to bolt out of there, but my foot catches on the threshold.
 
I go down in a heap, and it isn’t pretty.
 
In my effort to stop my fall or slow my descent to the earth, I take the blinds hanging in the door’s window with me, making a huge clattering sound.

Trying to get up, I realize I’m tangled in the metal slats and the string that holds them together.
 
I’ve somehow managed to work them up my arm so that I look like I’m trying the whole mess on as a backpack.

Rebel steps around the corner just as I’m getting to my feet.
 
He’s heaving breaths out of his lungs, and sweat is rolling down every inch of his exposed body parts.

My mouth opens at the glorious sight before me, but no words come out.
 
Only sounds.
 
“Uhhhh … ahhhh … Iiiiii …. Maaaaa …”
 
The window blinds slide down my arm and land at my feet with a clatter.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, wiping his mouth off with a dark terrycloth hand towel.
 
He doesn’t even glance at the remains of his window covering.

I kick the blinds to the side so I won’t trip on them and take a few steps back into the office.
 
Ten more lunging strides and I could make it out into the parking lot.
 
Maybe there someone could hear me scream.

“Stay back,” I say, trying to sound threatening and confident, which I’m totally not right now.

He frowns.
 
“What?”

“I said, stay
back!
 
Don’t come near me.”
 
Two steps in reverse and I’m almost in the middle of the office.

“You’re the one who came in here.
 
What do you want?”
 
He remains in the doorway, leaning one hand on the frame.

I take a calming breath.
 
Maybe he’s not going to beat me to a juicy pulp.

His abs flex as he shifts his weight to his other foot.

Oh lordy, lordy, lordy, get in my shorties.

I stand as straight as I can, gathering my thoughts and my attitude.
 
“I would think that’s obvious.
 
I came for my ID.”
 
Struggling with my small backpack purse, I pull out the paper folded inside.
 
My hands tremble a little as I unfold it.
 
He’s so fucking intimidating standing there all sweaty and big.
 
I hate that I can’t keep steady with him around.
 
“See?”
 
I hold it up so he can look at it.
 
“My transcript with my name on it.”
 
It flutters with every one of my heartbeats, so I wave it around to hide my fear.

“So?”
 
He wipes his face again.
 
His cheeks have bright pink splotches on them that would be cute if he wasn’t such an assmunch.