The Rebel - Raleigh Ruebins Page 0,5

gay porn superstar was born.

In fact, I saw at least four guys over by the pool table right now who were staring right at him, practically drooling like salivating dogs. Every single one of them had likely jerked off to a video of Liam at some point. Maybe dozens.

When I looked at him, I saw so much more than that.

Liam was twenty years old when we’d met. The place I was bartending was one of the shittier dives in Los Angeles, and after the first night we fucked, Liam became a regular. Liam was the reason I had ever since had a rule about never sleeping with regulars, actually. Because I had been swept up in him like a damn wildfire. He used to lean over the bar and kiss me, deeply, like nobody else in the bar even existed.

Kissing Liam, holding Liam—talking and being around him and being driven crazy by him—had always been just as good as the fucking sex. Sometimes better. It’s strange when you don’t know if you’re claiming someone or if they’re claiming you with a kiss. We were constantly pulling each other in deeper, and neither of us ever resisted.

Every night that first week, he’d slept over at my place. Zero to sixty in a fucking snap. We devoured each other. We drank whiskey every night. We made each other come so much we had a running joke about who would “run out of cum first.”

He’d told me about his life, too. He was fresh to LA, still reeling from his abusive childhood. He’d been so sweet and eager. Brimming with energy, never knowing where to put it. He was like a bird with a broken wing who wanted nothing more than to fly.

And then I’d watched as Liam learned to fly. I watched as he mustered the confidence to start doing porn, then as he became more and more popular and the money started pouring in. People loved him. Gay men wanted to be him or fuck him. It felt like the whole world was finally seeing Liam how I saw him: a beautiful, lost soul who also happened to be a god in bed.

But the minute he had money, the partying began. He was sucked deep into the world of drugs and alcohol.

Any confidence he’d gained with his popularity quickly became a mask he wore over his pain.

I had to bail him out of jail for public disturbance more than once. I picked him up at the hospital for alcohol poisoning three times. I’d come home to find him passed out on the floor all the time.

Every time, he would shower me with kisses and apologies the next morning, promising to make it right.

It was always a lie.

He’d broken my heart over and over again, and after a while, I stopped trying to repair it.

My stomach turned. “Get out of here, Liam,” I said, keeping my voice low.

“Red, please,” he said. He was uncharacteristically pleading. He never usually showed a hint of vulnerability, at least not in public.

“Get out of my bar, or I’ll remove you from my bar,” I said.

I had to remind myself that it was better for both of us to stay far the fuck away from one another, but even now, his eyes were staring right into my soul. My instinct was to help Liam at all costs.

I wanted to know what had gone wrong for him in LA.

Fireproof. Don’t let him burn you.

“Can’t we just talk?”

“We both know what happens when we try to talk.”

“I mean, sometimes really good things used to happen,” he said, quirking up an eyebrow. “Conversations with no clothes.”

“Good until it wasn’t,” I said.

I could feel more and more eyes turning our way, and my skin was starting to crawl. I always kept a level head, especially in my bar. I had made Red’s Tavern through blood, sweat, and tears, and I never wanted to cause a scene here. People needed to feel comfortable. The tavern was the only gay-friendly bar for miles and miles.

Of course Liam was the only person who could test me like this.

“Red,” he said again.

That begging tone was the reason I could never keep my cock away from him. It went straight to my core, hearing him ask for me in that way. It was the reason he always pulled me into his orbit, like some sort of irresistible quicksand.

He was the only drug I’d ever wanted. But I refused to go back to a life where rescuing