The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,132

hands at any moment. I would typically hide at this point, embarrassed and too overwhelmed by him, but I’ve been fighting that urge recently. I want to show up for these moments. I have to. There are people in this world who never have someone look at them the way Alex looks at me. I am one of the lucky ones.

“What? No, ‘It’s Alex,’” reprimand today,” I ask.

He pauses, his eyelids lowering just a little, and then he shakes his head. “No. Not today.” He speaks quietly, so only I can hear him. “She used to call me that. My mom. I’ve always hated it when someone else uses that name. Feels like they’re taking a razor blade and cutting down into me as deep as they can. But…not you, Argento. When you call me Alessandro…” He huffs, looking down at his hands, studying his own tattooed fingers that are interlaced with mine. “When you say it…it feels the same as when she said it. It feels like...” He seems to be battling with something too deep and too raw to process right now. He laughs, shaking himself out, shrugging out of the tense moment we just found ourselves in. “It feels good when you say it,” he says briskly. “That’s all.”

I know what he wanted to say, though. I know, because I know him, and I know how his heart works now.

When you say my name, it feels like love, Silver.

When he says my name, it feels like love too.

“She had a nickname for me,” he says, eyes casting around the gym. “She used to call me Passarotto.”

“Ahh, yes. That was in your email address. You promised you were going to tell me what it meant.”

A shy, rueful smile flickers at his mouth, there one second, gone the next. “It means little sparrow,” he says reluctantly.

“Little Sparrow?”

He bumps me with his shoulder. “Laugh and suffer the consequences. It’s common in Italy. It’s more like…precious. And I was a scrawny kid. All knock-kneed and weird looking. I think my head was too fucking big for my body.”

I reach up and run my fingers through the ends of his wavy hair, pretending to assess his head. “Hmm…”

He leans back for me to get a better look at him. “Well? What do you think? Did I grow into it?”

I angle my head to one side, squinting.

“You are skating on such thin ice right now,” he growls.

“All right, all right. Yes, everything’s in proportion now. You’re lucky. You would have looked real weird riding around with an extra, extra large motorcycle helmet.”

We quietly joke with each other, our shoulders and our legs pressed up against one another, neither of us able to get close enough to the other person. After a while, the atmosphere in the gym changes, the air vibrating with tension, and the smiles fade from everyone’s faces.

Principle Darhower enters and walks stiffly toward the small microphone stand that’s been set up in front of the bleachers. His face is pale, and his hands shake as he reaches inside his suit pocket and pulls out a square of paper. You could hear a pin drop as he unfolds it and begins to read.

“When I was a kid, my father was my idol. He was a stock car racer, and every weekend my Mom would sit with me in the stands, and we would watch him race. In high school, I decided I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be a Nascar driver, and that’s all there was to it. It was seriously all I could ever imagine myself doing.” His voice rings out, clear and loud, reaching every corner of the gym. “I didn’t care about math, or science, or history. I never paid attention in my language classes, and I didn’t care about my GPA. I didn’t need any of that to be a Nascar driver, so I didn’t even try. My father knew how badly I wanted to follow in his footsteps, so he suggested I get my GED and take an internship with his sponsor, learning how the industry worked, learning how to build and fix engines, and most importantly learning how to drive. But I decided not to get my GED.”

He pauses, taking a breath. His hands are shaking so badly now, the paper in his hands shakes too.

“I stayed in high school because I actually loved showing up every day. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers. I loved feeling like I