The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,32

off to college and left him here alone with our absentee parents.

Max wriggles his toes, digging his feet underneath my legs—something he’s always done when his feet are cold. “Do you think Greg and Lou’s mom’s going to die?” he asks. He’s still fixed on the television screen, still scooping melted ice cream onto his spoon and ladling it into his mouth, but I can feel that his attention is now on me. This question’s obviously troubling him.

I squeeze his calf, and he grumbles, jerking his leg away. Turns out physical reassurance from his big sister isn’t cool anymore. “I don’t know, Maxie. I don’t think the doctors know, either.”

“How can the doctors not know? They know everything.”

I remember still believing that doctors were infallible, all knowing, all powerful beings that never put a foot wrong. It wasn’t too long ago that I still believed that, if someone was sick and they went to the hospital, then they were sure to get fixed and be just fine afterward. It came as a shock to me to realize that, just because it was a doctor’s job to fix people, didn’t mean it was possible every single time.

Sometimes, there’s nothing that can be done. Sometimes, people just fucking die and no matter how hard we object, or fight, or battle with that, it can’t be changed.

I don’t want to be the person to tell Max any of that. Our parents brought Max into the world. They need to be the ones to break it to him that occasionally it’s a cruel, hurtful, horrible, fucked up place, where sometimes Moms get hit by cars, and they don’t wake up from comas.

“I don’t know all the answers, Maxie,” I murmur. “Things are complicated sometimes. Would it make you feel better if I called Mom?”

He blinks owlishly at the T.V. “No. It’s okay. It’s just really sad for Greg and Lou. That’s all.”

I move his legs and scoot across the sofa, drawing him into my side. He doesn’t shrug me off this time. “I know, Bud. It is, isn’t it?”

9

ALEX

The bar’s heaving, packed to the rafters, the smell of damp lying heavy in the air. Every time a new customer walks in through the door, a good-natured roar goes up inside the Rock, the patrons already parked at the bar and crowded around the pool tables hurling a shower of peanut shells at the offenders guilty of letting the heat out.

The jukebox has been cycling through White Snake and ACDC all night, sporadically interrupted by the sounds of The Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Behind the altar, the name the Rock’s locals call the huge, sticky slab of mahogany that forms the length of the bar, Angela and Maisy have been busting their asses for the last six hours, working their hardest to make sure everyone has a drink in front of them at all times.

And me? I’ve been clearing tables, running food, watching the drunkest guys for any signs of hostility, and fielding the unwelcome advances of at least three middle-aged women who all seem intent on ‘making me a man.’ This always happens when I’m working at the Rock. Women get it into their heads that, because I’m young, I’m still a retiring wallflower virgin who’s never had his dick touched. Little do they know I could spend the night teasing them into fits of hysteria if I wanted to. They’d forget their own fucking names and lose all motor function if any of them could coax me to slide in between their bedsheets. They won’t, though. Unlike other guys my age, I’m capable of maintaining focus once the subject of potential sex comes up, and besides…I don’t shit where I eat. I have nothing against older women. Older women can be sexy as hell. But I like my job, and I like bringing in a paycheck, and I’m not dumb enough to risk any of that for one night getting my dick sucked.

“Hey, Alex! Alex, Montgomery’s asking for you!” Maia hollers across the bar. She’s in the middle of pouring three different drinks but she still somehow manages to hold up a black, corded handset to show me that the owner of the bar is waiting for me on the other end of the line. I spit out the toothpick I’ve been toying with between my teeth and vault over the altar, accepting the phone from her.

“Hey, man. What’s up?”

“Got a girl out back. Wants to try out,” a gruff voice informs