The Rebel - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,17

walked into your bar, huh?” he joked.

I clenched my jaw. I hated how close to correct he was.

“Sorry. Shit. Too soon to joke about that, I guess,” Liam said. “I just thought we had moved into the... joking-around stage by now.”

“I was trying to talk about anything to distract you from the blood,” I said, applying two Band-Aids to his hand.

“Right,” he said. “Well, thank you.”

“It’s a shallow enough cut,” I said. “Should close up just fine. Feeling okay?”

He nodded. “It’s better. I wish I wasn’t such a wuss when it comes to blood.”

“You don’t have to apologize for that. Blood should stay inside where it belongs. You’ll be fine in a few days as long as you don’t go around rubbing your hands in dirt piles.”

“Well, there goes my weekend plan,” Liam joked. “I mean it, Red. Thank you. You were always better at these things than I was.”

“Back in the day, you wouldn’t have had disinfectant or Band-Aids, so you’re doing well.”

He snorted. “I would have made you clean the cut with vodka.”

All in all, my relationship with Liam had only lasted for about a year, back in the day. But I couldn’t count the number of times I’d had to help him out of situations like this. He was almost always drunk, and it was always one of the same problems: he’d lose his cell phone in a drunken haze, or he’d get a gash somewhere, or he’d forget to pay months of electricity bills even though he had the cash. Fill in the blank with whatever Liam problem it was on whatever day.

Liam was peering at me like he had a sense that I was mentally cataloging all of the times I’d helped him out of fucked-up situations. He looked guilty, almost.

I noticed dark circles under his eyes for the first time.

“I leaned on you too much for help back then,” Liam said. “I know that. I was a dumbass twenty-year-old.”

“You were young,” I said. “You weren’t a dumbass.”

“And you seemed crazy old to me, even though you were twenty-eight at the time,” he said. “I had no idea how life worked.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Yeah, but I liked being able to help. Taking care of you. It just…”

“It just got out of hand,” Liam said. “I know.”

I really had loved being there for him when he needed me. I liked being somebody’s rock, and I’d always seen that Liam was a diamond in the rough. His light would shine through, even during the darkest moments.

But he was right. I had only been able to withstand so much.

“Remember when you called me up frantically worried that you couldn’t get hard anymore?” I said.

“God, yes, I remember that,” he said. “I was terrified. Getting hard is literally the most important part of a porn star’s job.”

“You were practically crying,” I said.

He grinned. “And then you came over, wearing that black cowboy hat, and within a minute of your hand being on my cock…”

He trailed off and his words hung between us in the silence. Suddenly the air felt tighter, and the small bathroom felt like it was closing in on me.

Our bodies were way too close to each other. My heart was pounding again, so hard I was afraid Liam would be able to hear it. I couldn’t stop glancing down at his lips, berry-red and so plush.

I knew exactly how good it would be if I stopped resisting and let myself lean down and kiss him.

Being this close to him made me want to stop resisting. I kept thinking about kissing the top of his head, breathing in his scent, telling him that everything was going to be okay. Pressing my lips to his, feeling him open up to me. Having his tongue slide on my own. Showing him that it was going to be okay as I gave my body to someone who knew exactly what it needed.

The faint sound of the dogs playing in the living room carried through, and it snapped me out of my trance.

I gathered the Band-Aid wrapper and shoved it into the trash.

“Anna. Elsa. Are you two being nice out here?” I said, heading back down the hallway. My heart was still pounding, but it was easier to breathe as soon as I was back in the living room.

“Fuck, that is adorable,” Liam said from behind me. He pulled out his phone and snapped photos of the dogs, who were currently in a big couch cuddle-pile with