The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,46

will come a day, maybe years from now, that I can no longer remember what she sounded like at all. I fucking dread that day’s arrival, it’s my worst nightmare, but I can’t lose myself in dark memories right now. I have no choice but to banish them from my mind. Later. There will be time for remembering later, when I’m alone, back in the trailer, when I’m grateful for the company of the dead.

“Might as well follow us over to Harry’s, Moretti,” Cillian Dupris calls across the locker room. “We’re grabbing burgers before we head over to Leon’s.”

Fuck. I was hoping I’d have a moment to slip away between the end of practice and the start of Leon’s party, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to escape.

As we drive over to Harry’s diner, my head’s spinning. Connections are being made, pieces of a plan slowly coming together. In the background of my mind, images of Silver present themselves to me, one after the other, my subconscious thrusting memories of her to the forefront of my mind. These memories are recent, though. Unlike the echoes of my mother, the girl with the haunted blue eyes burns vividly in my head.

She's there, sitting beside me in the booth as I make short work of a burger, the guys tossing fries at each other, chugging milkshakes that Jake spikes from a scuffed hipflask. She's there, silent, judging me morosely as I make a point of joking and laughing along with my teammates. On the way over to Leon's place, she's sitting next to me in the Camaro, her head resting sadly against my shoulder. I can feel a resigned sorrow pouring from her and into me as I pull down a driveway after Jake's tricked out Jeep Cherokee, and I know she thinks this is a bad idea.

Except, Silver isn't really here. She's probably locked away in a bedroom I've spent a considerable amount of time imagining in great detail, studying, her head buried inside a textbook, hair gathered in a messy ponytail, her quick, bright eyes devouring the information on the pages before her. She's probably playing her guitar. She's probably not struggling to shove the memory of me out of her head. She probably hasn’t even thought about me at all since last night, when she told me I’d tasked myself with the impossible challenge of pulling down the moon.

Leon's family are predictably wealthy. The driveway turns out to be a mile long. From the outside, the house is a sprawling jigsaw puzzle of a building, all odd angles and jutting overhangs; an architect designed this building to mimic the shape of the land that surrounds it, complementing the steep, unforgiving buttress of the cliff face that forms the western wall of the valley the house is nestled into. The soft, liquid lines of the sloped roof seem to open themselves to the sky. Everywhere, vast stretches of glass reflect the green of the trees that gather around the structure. The subtle grey-blue of the slate exterior blends into the landscape with artistic precision. That’s how the whole place feels actually: that it wasn’t just designed. That it emerged or was wished into existence, right out of an artist’s dream.

“Pretty badass, right?” Jake asks, jerking his chin toward the house. “Leon’s dad’s rich as fuck. He’s a defense attorney in Seattle. He’s never here.” Jake shrugs. “Leaves Leon alone with his platinum Amex and the keys to his jag most of the time. Leon’s basically the luckiest bastard in the world.”

“Where’s his mom?” The question comes out unbidden.

“Dead.”

I flinch away from the word.

“Oh, it’s okay, man. Leon was just a kid when she offed herself. You ask me, he’s better off without her. My mom’s a major pain in the ass. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I wish she’d kill herself of anything. That’d be super fucked up. But…you can’t deny it. Leon’s got it fucking easy here. And he wouldn’t be able to throw such killer parties if he had a bored, self-medicated yoga instructor mom hovering over him, prying into his shit, right?”

It feels like the gold chain around my neck is choking the life out of me. Thank fuck it doesn't seem like Jake actually expects an answer out of me, because I don't trust myself to speak right now. I ignore the heat rising up the back of my neck, giving Jacob a tight smile. If he were concerned with