At Sea
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked Paxton as I slammed the door behind us, leaving the cameras in the hallway. I didn’t give a shit if our producer, Bobby, fined us for banning him from the suite—it was either that or I have this conversation with Pax in the fucking bathroom.
I loved Nick, and for him, I would endure the cameras for stunts, preparation, classes, hell, even at the bar where I scored my hookups. But Rachel? No one got to drag her out and air our shit for a documentary.
“Okay,” Pax said, putting his hands up like he was under arrest. “Don’t kill me.”
“Don’t kill you? How the hell can I kill you if I need you to give me answers?” I shouted, uncaring if our neighbors heard us. Given the parade of women I’d had in and out of here, they were used to far worse sounds coming through their walls.
“Let’s have a beer,” Pax suggested.
I silently seethed while he popped the tops on two Coronas and shoved lime wedges through the bottle openings. Then I chugged half the bottle. Seeing Rachel up close had hit me like a punch to the nuts. She was still so damn beautiful, her frame and face perfect, delicate porcelain, but she had a steel core that I more than admired. She was a tiny piece of dynamite, smooth and pretty but capable of blowing your damn head off.
God, I’d loved that about her.
She was a puzzle I’d never figured out. She’d never bored me, always left me craving her, wanting more, and chasing her down. Given the physical reaction I’d had the minute I’d realized it was really her—the way my heart lurched toward hers like a damned magnet—it was safe to say that hadn’t changed.
But the pure hatred shining from those deep brown eyes of hers was definitely different.
“You calm?” Pax asked from behind the bar, using it as a shield, no doubt. Even the bar wouldn’t save him from me. He was more built than I was, but I had a good four inches and twenty pounds on him.
“Barely. Explain. Now.”
He nodded and took a swig of his beer. “Okay. Remember when we started this idea…”
“A year ago?” I clarified.
“Yeah, once the ship was purchased and UCLA agreed to sign on for the academics, and we knew it was going to work, we were sending out invites to apply, right?”
“Sure,” I answered. “That time period was a blur. We were contemplating dropping out of UCLA, prepping for the Winter X Games, so I guess I don’t really remember.”
He nodded. “Exactly. We needed to fill the ship, so I sent out thousands of flyers to colleges as well as individual invites to apply. I may have sent that invite to Rachel and her roommate…Leah.”
My head snapped up from where I’d been peeling the label on the bottle. “You targeted Rachel?”
He didn’t flinch. “I did.”
“How could you? Why would you? How did you even know where she was?” The questions fired out of me faster than he could answer. Did he want her back after all this time? Now that he was with Leah?
“She went to Dartmouth.”
I shook my head. “She declined the acceptance.” Because of me.
“Her father has a friend in the admissions office. He figured you’d leave her—”
“Be careful what you say here, brother.” The warning was more of a growl. “There is a line, and you’re about two seconds away from crossing it.”
He didn’t back down, probably because he knew I’d wronged him way worse than he’d wronged me. “So they left her spot open for an additional month. During that month…”
“I left her.” You proved her father right.
He nodded, his mouth tightening into a grimace.
We both knew why I had—the ultimatum Pax had thrown down: I could have Rachel or I could have the Renegades, but I couldn’t have both. I’d chosen my brain over my heart, and the latter hadn’t worked since.
We walked a tightrope, knowing that if we wanted to remain friends, there were things we could never talk about. After all, Rachel had been his girlfriend, but she’d been the love of my life. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was that while I’d been blocking every thought of her in my head, he’d been tracking her down.
“And you know this how?”
“Leah. They met at the orthopedist’s office the week after you showed up in Vegas. Then they roomed together at Dartmouth and have been best friends ever since.”
“How did you know how to send the invite to her?” I asked. “I couldn’t find her.”
“You didn’t look,” he said quietly.
“Because of you!” I shouted, slamming my fists into the bar. The sting radiated up my arms, and I welcomed the pain. “I fucked you over. I stole your girl. I know that. You gave the ultimatum, and I came back to the Renegades.”
“But you left your heart with her,” he said.
“This isn’t up for discussion. We agreed on that a long time ago.” Emotions were too tangled when it came to Rachel, to what we’d done to Paxton, to what I’d done to Rachel to return to the Renegades. He was prying open the door I’d been leaning against for over two years, and the shit escaping from the blackened area that used to be my heart was ugly. Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? Rachel had blown the roof off that lockbox the moment I looked into those endless brown eyes.
“We have to talk about it. I know you don’t want to, but you are my best friend, and I’ve watched little pieces of you die off since you came back. You’ve fucked every girl you could get your hands on, and it’s not for fun—don’t give me that bullshit. And that’s not even the worst—the risks you take…you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“You should be one to talk,” I accused.
“Right, only because we haven’t been near the slopes for you to kill yourself on that board. I agreed to the Nepal excursion because I know it’s what you need for this documentary.”
“It’s for Nick,” I argued. Boarding that ridgeline we’d mapped out would put the documentary over the top and he’d be able to write his own ticket as a consultant in our industry. Since it was a stunt for our team that put him in a wheelchair, it was our team that would make sure his future was whatever he wanted it to be. That’s what family did for each other.
“Bullshit, it’s for you. That level of danger…it’s like you don’t care if you live through it. You’re numb, detached, and I’m sick of watching you take recklessness to another level.”
“And you thought getting Rachel here would fix that?”
“Yes, since she’s what you’re looking for, right? I didn’t understand it years ago, when you two were sneaking around behind my back, but now that I love Leah, I get it. There’s nothing and no one that could have stopped me from going after her. You loved Rachel, and I realize now what it must have cost you to walk away from her.”
I braced my hands on the counter, my fingers digging into the wood. “So Leah’s scholarship, and all that shit about keeping her close when we first got on board…”
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his black hair. “When Rachel got mono and didn’t show up in Miami, I knew I had to keep Leah close and happy. If she left, there was no way Rachel would show up for second term. I also needed Leah to help me with my grades.”
“So you used her?” A dark feeling I didn’t like rolled through my stomach.
“At first,” he admitted softly. “But I fell in love with her, and everything changed.”
“And then she found out, right? When Rachel showed up? Jesus. That’s why you were such an asshole last week. That was why you altered the trailer for the documentary to be all about you falling for her. So she’d see it at the expo and give you a second chance.”
He nodded.
“You’re a manipulative asshole.”
“I have no regrets,” he said. “I brought Rachel here for you to get a second chance. I know she blocked you on social media, and I know you haven’t gone after her because of us—not just me, but the Renegades. And I know now how wrong it was to ever give you that stupid fucking ultimatum.”
For the first time since I’d stolen my best friend’s girl, I felt like there was an open, honest line between us, and as pissed as I was at him, I was also blown away that he’d gone through all of this for me, especially since it involved the one person we’d both agreed to never talk about. Him, because I’d hurt him so badly by going behind his back with her. Me, because I couldn’t bear to hear her name from his mouth. I didn’t care that they’d been together for five months—she had always been mine.
“You’re seriously pushing me at your ex.”
He shrugged. “She was always more of your ex. I…” He took a deep breath. “I was never that heartbroken over Rachel. I liked her, but it was what happened between you and me that broke me.”
“And now with Rachel here? Everything we’ve worked for?” Was he risking the Renegades by bringing her here? Our friendship?
“I’m honestly okay. I have Leah, and there is no one on this earth better for me than she is.”
“You would walk away from the Renegades for Leah,” I said as fact, not question.
“In a heartbeat.”
I fidgeted with the label. “I walked away from Rachel. It decimated me, but I did it.” And she would never forgive me. I’d seen it in her eyes.
“You had your reasons.”
“She doesn’t know them.”
“Then tell her. It doesn’t have to be today, or tomorrow. You’ve got six months with her living right down the hall.”
“She hates me.”
“There’s a fine line between hate and love, my friend.”
I nodded slowly.
“Unless you don’t want her anymore?” Paxton asked quietly. “If that’s the case, then mend your fences as friends and we just…move past this.”
“That’s not it,” I fired back, my stomach in knots. “I’ve never stopped wanting Rachel—missing her. There’s no one who knows me better than she does. No one challenges me like she does or gives me the peace she can. Hell yes, I want her. But it wasn’t like I could really talk about it with you guys.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
I looked up in surprise. Paxton never apologized. Ever.
He met my gaze. “I am sorry that you were hurt, and that I was too selfish and too pissed to realize it. I’m sorry that it took me this long to try to fix things, but you are my best friend, and you deserve to be happy. If Rachel is that happiness, then I’m all for it.”
“She won’t even talk to me. That ship sailed a long time ago.”
“This ship is still at sail, and will be for the next six months.” He smirked. “You’re called Nova for a reason, Casanova. You’ve wooed every woman who comes within fifteen feet of you.”
“Except Leah and Penna,” I clarified.
“Penna would punch you in the face,” he said with a smile. “And I’d kill you if you went near Leah.” All trace of humor was gone for a second.
“Yeah, I know.” Not that Leah wasn’t beautiful, she just…wasn’t Rachel. No one had been Rachel. No matter how hard I’d tried to move on, she was the woman I measured everyone else against. They all came up short.
“My point is, if you want her, woo the fuck out of her.”
“And when she shoots me down?”
He grinned. “Woo her even harder.”
Woo her. Rachel had never fallen for my crap. She thrived on honesty, passion, and a little danger.
My head was still reeling from seeing her, realizing that she was less than two hundred feet away, but I wasn’t stupid. Even if nothing happened between us, if all I could do was make her understand why I left, then it would be worth it.
I just had to start by getting her to talk to me.
Good thing I was a persistent kind of guy.
