Rebecca Yarros is the No. 1 Sunday Times, New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over fifteen novels including Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. She loves military heroes and has been blissfully married to hers for over twenty years.

She’s the mother of six children and is currently surviving the teenage years with two of her four hockey-playing sons. When she’s not writing, you can find her at the hockey rink or sneaking in some guitar time while guzzling coffee. She and her family live in Colorado with their stubborn English bulldogs, two feisty chinchillas and a Maine Coon cat named Artemis, who rules them all.

Having fostered then adopted their youngest daughter, Rebecca is passionate about helping children in the foster system through her nonprofit, One October, which she co-founded with her husband in 2019. To learn more about their mission to better the lives of kids in foster care, visit www.oneoctober.org.

Also by Rebecca Yarros

Empyrean

Fourth Wing

Iron Flame

Flight & Glory

Full Measures

Eyes Turned Skyward

Beyond What Is Given

Hallowed Ground

The Reality of Everything

Renegades

Wilder

Nova

Rebel

Legacy

Point of Origin (Novella)

Ignite (Novella)

Reason to Believe

Muses and Melodies

A Little Too Close

PIATKUS

First published in the United States in 2017 by Embrace,

an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Piatkus

Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Yarros

Excerpt from Rebel by Rebecca Yarros Copyright © 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those
clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-349-44247-1

Piatkus

An imprint of

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

www.littlebrown.co.uk

To Chase—

There is nothing better in this world than hearing you laugh…

Except maybe seeing you smile or squeezing you tight.

You are a gift for which I am eternally grateful.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

LANDON

DUBAI

This place was surreal, a tiny slice of winter inside an eternal summer. Lights shone down, making the man-made snow inside Ski Dubai glitter, and giving me a twinge of longing for the crisp, clear skies over the Colorado Rockies. Aspen would be opening later this month, but we were half a world away in the Middle East and weren’t even due back stateside until Christmas.

I caught sight of the cameraman coming down the slope behind me and increased my speed. Most days I had no problem with cameras in my face 24-7, but today it was pissing me off. Maybe it was because we’d just finished our live show a couple of days ago, or maybe it was everything that happened—the incident that had nearly killed one of my best friends and put another one into police custody. Hell, maybe it was the inability to so much as piss without the cameras following me into the bathroom, but I just wanted a few moments to myself.

Shifting my weight, I took the curve along the run, careful to watch the bite against my snowboard as I hit the icy patch just off the edge of the lift track. The entire run took me a matter of seconds, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to help me prep for Nepal, but it was better than nothing, especially considering it was ninety degrees outside.

“I almost forgot how fast you are,” Paxton said as he skidded to a stop next to me.

“I’ve practiced a few times this week. I’m not as rusty as I feared.” I shrugged. We’d been docked in Dubai with our Study at Sea program for the last five days, and I’d been here almost every day. It had been my only opportunity to use my snowboard since we left Miami three months ago, and there was no chance in hell that I was passing it up.

“Want to go again?” Pax nodded toward the lift as the cameraman finally made it to the bottom of the run. Good thing we’d be doing most of the Nepal filming from the helicopter and GoPros, because this guy was never going to be able to keep up with me.

“How much time do we have?”

He lifted his jacket sleeve and checked his watch. “About an hour. Enough time to get in another run. Leah starts to freak if we’re not on board two hours before departure, so this has to be my last one.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re busy making out with your girlfriend in Istanbul and miss the ship.”

A slow smile spread across my best friend’s face. “Yeah, well, it was more than worth it. What do you say? One more?”

I looked up the hill at the separate runs Ski Dubai offered and nodded. “Yeah, may as well, right? I’m not getting this chance again for a few weeks.”

We headed over to the short lift line and waited our turn, sticking out like sore thumbs in our custom gear against the rented navy and red suits everyone else wore.

I was more than aware of the camera behind us but did my best to ignore it. This whole documentary—International Waters—was for Nick, and nine months of having a camera in my face was nothing compared to the rest of his life in that wheelchair. The movie would carry his name with equal billing as the rest of us Originals—those who had started the Renegades—and would put him on the map with his phenomenal ramp designs and stunt setups. So cameras it was.

“Hey, Nova,” a girl ahead of us said with a soft sigh in my direction.

“Hey, princess,” I answered with a wink. “You having fun?” I ran her face through my mental black book, wondering if I’d ever hooked up with her.

I felt the strength of Paxton’s eye roll next to me. He hated my habit—and had no problem voicing that opinion.

“Oh yeah! It’s nice to have a little something cold to bundle up for. It’s been so hot everywhere else we’ve been, right?” The blue-eyed girl batted her overly made-up eyes at me.

“It has,” I said. She’s on the ship with us.

“Well, it’s good snuggling weather,” she said with a bite of her lower lip, then waved as she got on the lift ahead of us.

“Don’t start,” I warned Paxton when I saw his mouth open.

He shook his head, and we walked forward for our turn.

“I got the confirmations on the Nepal trip,” he told me as we sat on the lift chair.

“Yeah? It actually worked out with the school stuff?” We’d been trying to set up a ski trip to get some snow time in preparation, but since we’d been everywhere around the Mediterranean and Africa the last three months, there hadn’t been a lot of opportunities for the white, fluffy stuff.

Our trip to Nepal—the one ride I was focused on for the documentary—all hinged on our school schedule, just like everything else this year.

The chair jolted forward, and we were on our way up the man-made incline.

“It comes during the week of the optional shore excursion. So it’ll cost us a week in India, but we’ll swing it. We have ten days total, and we’ll have to write papers on it to make up for the lost cultural excursions.”

I shot him some skeptical side eye. “And Leah was okay with this? Your woman is notoriously anal about school stuff.”

That lovesick grin appeared on his face again, and I swallowed the irrational flare of jealousy that erupted in my stomach. Pax deserved happiness, love, the whole damn fairy tale. I was just a little bitter that shit wasn’t in the cards for me.

I’d fucked up my only shot at love a long time ago.

“She was until I promised we’d stop for a day at the Taj Mahal. Plus, I booked a heli flight up to the Everest base camp.”

“So romantic.”

“Hey, Leah sure as hell isn’t complaining.” He stared ahead for a second and then cocked his head to the side. “But yeah…if you have any suggestions for the girls while we’re up there, I’m all ears. I don’t exactly see Leah heading to the slopes.”

“True. We’ll find something they’ll enjoy. It’s going to kill Penna that she can’t ski this time.”

“Yeah,” Paxton said quietly, and we descended into thoughtful silence.

The air was cold on my face, the joyful sounds of those skiing beneath us echoing off the steel walls of the facility. Leave it to Dubai to build a badass indoor ski resort as part of a mall. Penna should be here with us, not hiding away on board the ship. Pax was right—she was going to wither over the next couple months until that cast came off. “I’m worried about her. She’s been damn near silent since she got out of the hospital, which is anything but normal.”

“She blames herself,” he said.

“She shouldn’t,” I replied without pause. “Her sister lost it. I love Brooke just as much as you do, but you know it’s true. None of what happened the last three months—not the accidents, the sabotage, the fucked-up head games—was Penna’s fault.”

“How are we going to get her to believe that?”

“By making sure she knows she’s part of this team,” I answered. “It’s always been the four of us—you, me, Nick, and Penna. That wheelchair Nick is in might be permanent, but the one Penna’s riding in sure as hell is not. She’ll be back raising hell in a few months.”

“Physically, maybe. But she’s going dark, man. I don’t know if we’ll get her back in the right head space to compete, and you can bet the X Games are off the table for her. She’ll barely be out of a cast in time, let alone in competition shape.”

I blew my breath out slowly, watching it steam. “Yeah, well, if anyone is going to get there, it will be Penna. She’ll be out of that cast in no time and back on her bike before the docs tell her it’s a good idea.”

“That’s our Rebel,” Pax said with a grin, giving a little nod to her stage name.

Wilder, Rebel, Nova, and Nitro…the Original Renegades. We might have started in Paxton’s backyard and the local skate park, but we were bigger now, with at least twenty Renegades on the ship and more than a few fledglings. No matter how big we got, it would always come back to the four of us. After a decade of risking our lives together, we were a closer family than my biological one. I would give up anything for them.

You already have.

The lift came to an end, and we jumped onto the luscious snow beneath us. God, I missed the crunch, the flow, the way my body was pushed to its limits with only a board beneath my feet. Not that I didn’t love skateboarding, but snowboarding was always going to be my number-one love.

“Did you smooth everything out for Gabe and Alex?” I asked as we studied the options beneath us.

“Yeah. The program wasn’t too happy about taking them on at second term, but I leaned pretty heavily on the issue.”

I snorted. “Since you own the ship and all.”

“That may have helped,” he admitted. “I know you need them, so it had to be done. They actually flew in this morning, so they’ll be ready to start class with us.”

“They’re the best big-mountain riders of our generation.”

“You’re the best big-mountain rider of our generation,” he corrected.

I shrugged. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. But I knew that there was a difference between cocky and confident, and I needed those guys with me in the Himalayas. I needed their judgment and experience to temper my own.

“Hey, let’s hit this run,” Pax suggested as the cameras caught up to us, nodding toward the black-labeled slope. “It goes right by the place where Leah’s watching.”

I laughed. “Sure, we’ll go show off for your girlfriend.” We traversed to where the black run started while I mentally cursed the camera crew. Try to keep up on this one. “Speaking of Leah, did her roommate get here? We probably need to include her on the Nepal shit, right?” There were a ton of moving pieces to get that trip perfect, and now I’d need to add one more.

Paxton stiffened next to me. “Yeah, she’s here.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, slapping his back. “Her friend cramping your solo time with the missus?”

He shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

“Hey, Nova,” the same sweetly feminine voice called as she skied over to us. The blonde was back. “We have a little time before the ship leaves port. Want to grab a drink at the bottom of the hill?”

Want to fuck me so I have a story to take home? That was what she was really asking. Usually I wouldn’t mind, but something about watching Pax and Leah lately was getting to me.

Which really sucked.

“I think we’re pretty tight on time here, but maybe if you grab me back at the ship?” I suggested with a smile and hoped I didn’t hurt her feelings.

“I’ll be on the pool deck.” She grinned. “Oh, and I’m Erin,” she offered.

“Nice to meet you,” I replied. “I’m—”

“Nova,” she answered for me, her girlfriend behind her twittering.

Landon. “Right.” She wasn’t interested in who I really was, just the persona, which was fine. But it’s not. Besides, it was better than the girls who thought they’d be more than a one-night stand, be the one to reawaken my iced-over heart.

None of them stood a chance.

None of them were her.

I shoved the thought back as far as I could get it in my head—and slammed the door shut. The minute I opened it I was useless, barely functional, and I wasn’t going back there anytime soon.

“Well, we’ll see you on board,” Erin said, giving me a pretty obvious once-over before heading back to the easier slope with her friend.

“You didn’t seem too interested,” Pax said as he pulled down his goggles.

I did the same, the world taking on the sharpened hue that my specialized lenses gave it. “It’s because I’m not.”

“Ah.” He nodded slowly, like he understood.

He didn’t understand shit.

“Ah, what?” I asked, briefly checking around us to make sure the camera crew was out of mic range.

“Maybe you’re ready to stop fucking around?”

“Hardly,” I snapped.

He shrugged. “She was pretty.”

Blond hair. Blue eyes. Yeah, she’d been an eight.

Problem was I wanted an eleven, and I only knew of one in the entire fucking world. One with hair blacker than night, a tight, toned body that had fit mine to a T, and almond-shaped chocolate eyes that made me forget my name, but never hers.

“Yeah, well, she isn’t what I want.” Let it go.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I said, okay.”

“That’s not what you meant.”

“Stop reading into shit. If you don’t want the girl, I really don’t care. I wish you’d stop self-medicating, because it’s eating you up. But that’s none of my business, right?”

My jaw locked. “Let’s just go.”

“You’re a pain in my ass,” he said, then rocketed down the hill.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm my mind, but once she was in it there was no going back.

I tried to think of the blonde, to fill my head with her face, her offer, the same way I could use her body later to fill the hole in my soul for a good hour or so, but it was no good.

My head swam with her face, her eyes, her incredibly smart mouth. She would have tossed me a kiss and headed down the hill with Pax. She would keep up with me move for move, pushing me farther, faster.

Two and a half years and my chest still felt like it was caving in whenever I thought about her.

Rachel. I let her name roll through me, allowing her in for just a moment. Just this ride, I promised myself as I launched down the run. If I gave myself these thirty seconds with her memory, I could shut off the tap once we hit the bottom.

I moved with the run, wondering where she was, what she was doing. Did she still hate me? I hoped so. I deserved it.

Lord knew I hated myself enough for the both of us.

The problem with love was that once it was gone, there was no filling that hole, no substitute for that euphoria. Losing love came with withdrawal symptoms for which there was no known relief.

At least none that I’d found, anyway.

I crouched on the board, gaining speed.

At least sex dulled the pain momentarily, but maybe… Damn, maybe Paxton was right. I was no closer to moving past her than the day I stupidly walked away from her.

Maybe it was time to man up and deal with the shit hand I’d dealt myself.

Just ahead of me, Paxton waved up at the glass, and I looked up, doing the same as I neared where Leah stood watching. She waved to him and then to me as someone came to stand next to her.

Holy shit. It can’t be.

Her hair brushed her delicate shoulders, the streaks of purple evident from down here. My head swiveled, trying to keep her in view as I passed.

That pixie face, those angled cheeks, that pert nose, those perfectly curved lips—I’d know them anywhere.

Her hands pressed against the glass—

Wham! My legs were jarred a millisecond before I slammed into the wall. I bounced back, landing on my ass.

“Watch out!” someone yelled in English right before they hit me with their pole.

I’d seriously fallen in the middle of the surface lift—the only ski lift in the park that pulled the riders up the slope by rope and pommel.

I pushed back, getting the hell out of the way, and looked over to where Leah stood at the window. Alone.

“Are you okay?” she mouthed, her eyes wide with worry.

For fuck’s sake, was I hallucinating now? The moment I let my memories rule me for a few seconds, she started appearing?

I nodded to Leah and got to my feet. Was I so far gone that my brain was seeing what it wanted?

“You okay?” a girl asked as she slid by me on the pommel, her skis coming within a foot of my board.

“Yep, thank you,” I said, tipping my head. That’s right, ladies, I have four X Games medals, three of which are in snowboarding, and I ran into a goddamned wall.

Get a grip. I headed down the slope and met up with Pax at the bottom of the slope.

“You take a detour?” he asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” I replied, knowing he hadn’t seen me make an utter ass out of myself. No doubt he’d see it later when Bobby—the director of our documentary—got his hands on the footage.

Pax didn’t question me, just gave me a what-the-hell look. “Time to get back. You game? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

They were the only words I spoke while we got out of our gear.

“Landon, are you okay?” Leah asked, racing over to me as we walked out of the frigid air into the dry desert heat.

“What happened?” Pax asked as he wrapped his arm around her.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I answered, giving her a smile. At least, I think I did. I wasn’t sure, since I felt numb just about everywhere.

That numbness didn’t go away as we were driven back to where our ship was docked. It didn’t go away while Pax told me all about our new numbers since he’d just pulled off the first-ever triple front flip on a motocross bike a few days ago during our live exhibition. Our YouTube subscribers were way up and so were Instagram and Snapchat, but our video views were through the roof.

It didn’t go away when they scanned my ID card as I boarded the huge cruise ship we’d called home since August. All I saw as I walked into our massive, three-bedroom suite at the back of the ship was the replay my brain wouldn’t shut off: the glimpse of the woman I’d seen next to Leah.

“Landon!” Pax shouted, breaking through my brain fog.

My head jerked toward him. “What? Damn, you don’t have to yell.”

“Apparently I do, since I called your name about three times first.”

“I said, I’m fine.”

His eyes narrowed. “Right, but I asked if you wanted to go to the pool?”

I blinked. “I need to work out.”

“You just finished boarding. Skip the gym for one day and come hang out. I know you’re prepping for Nepal, but one day isn’t going to kill you.”

He was right. I could skip one day. Besides, I was so distracted that I was liable to go flying off the treadmill or some stupid shit that was on par with running into a wall.

“Okay. Pool. The pool is good.”

“Hey, maybe you’ll find the snow bunny,” he teased as he headed up the stairs to his room.

“No snow bunny,” I said quietly to myself as I went into my room. Another girl wasn’t going to help me in this situation—not when she was all I could think about. I’d been through it before; I just needed to clear my head. I stripped out of my clothes and changed into trunks before I met Pax in our living room. Bobby had the camera crew in a meeting at the dining room table. If we hurried we could get some undocumented time.

“Seriously, you’re being weird,” Pax said while we took the elevator to the pool deck. “Leah said she saw you hit a wall while we were boarding. Do you think we need to get your head checked out? She’s already up at the pool saving us some lounges, but we can meet her later.”

“I’m fine,” I repeated.

“So you keep saying.”

Music was blaring on the pool deck as we stepped into the ninety-degree heat. The sun beat down onto my skin, but it did nothing to warm the numbness that I couldn’t kick.

Maybe Pax was right and I’d hit my head.

The crowd was thick, and the music was loud—it usually was as we were leaving port—and Pax disappeared to find Leah. I surveyed the gyrating masses and wished I could feel a little of their excitement.

First term was over, there were two more to go, and we were headed toward the Indian Ocean. It was all pretty overwhelming if I stopped to really think about it. Then again, stopping to think about anything was what had gotten me into this situation.

“There you are!” The blonde from the slope bounced over, her tits hanging out of her triangle top.

“Hey.” I forced a smile as she looped an arm around my waist.

“Want to get a drink with me?”

Not really.

“You know, I think I’m going to—”

“Oh, come on. The bar is right over here!” she said, turning us around.

Ice hit my bare chest and slid down my abs to my trunks as I sucked in a lungful of air. Holy shit, that was cold.

“I’m so sorry!”

Her voice hit me with the force of the hurricane that she was, and as she looked up, I lost what breath I’d managed to take in.

Her eyes widened, panic running across her beautiful, so-familiar face.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

The purple streaks in her hair rested against the smooth line of her chin, and her lips were parted in a look of shock that I was sure mirrored mine.

My entire world narrowed to the woman standing in front of me. Even my heartbeat stilled in reverence to the moment. How was she here? After all this time, she was close enough to touch, and all I could do was stare at her, like if I blinked she would disappear.

A thousand emotions crashed through me, fast enough to give me whiplash, long enough to sting me with the force of a billion needles, and none were able to steady me. Unadulterated joy and wonder at seeing her after all this time, fear that she was going to toss what was left of those margaritas in my face, and the most overpowering urge to kiss her, to beg her to forgive the mistakes I’d made as a stupid kid and forget the last two years we’d been apart.

But the biggest was sheer and utter relief that I could breathe again, that the numbness I’d felt since the slopes was gone, my skin tingling everywhere as if the blood had finally rushed back into the starving capillaries.

It all came down to one word.

“Rachel?”

Chapter Two

RACHEL

DUBAI

I had thought I was prepared for the inevitability of this moment.

I was so wrong.

Breathe, I told myself—not to calm down, but to push oxygen into my lungs before I passed out. Planning on seeing Landon and coming face-to-face with him were two completely different things. One was purely logical, and the other…well, there wasn’t a single nerve in my body that didn’t come alive at his nearness.

Now say something—anything.

“Hey, Landon,” I said quietly, looking up into shocked hazel eyes. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful they were, how the color changed with his mood or what he was wearing.

Which wasn’t a lot at the moment.

Well, he was wearing my margaritas. They were currently dripping down the insanely hard lines of his abdomen, paying no mind to the myriad of tattoos that colored his skin.

Did he cover up the one he got for me? Not that I could see it under all that bright green muck sliding down his body.

I jerked my eyes back to his, but he was still just standing there…staring. Okay, maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. “Well, it’s good to see you,” I said with a shaky smile, taking in every detail of his Hemsworth-worthy face. He’d lost what little softness he’d had since I’d seen him last, leaving the strong lines of his nose and chin, but those lips still looked as soft as ever and just as practiced at smooth lines and smoother exits.

I tried to block out the barrage of memories, but they assaulted me, pelting me with the low timbre of his voice when we would spend hours locked in conversation, the look in his eyes the first time he’d told me he loved me, the feel of his hands on my skin. No matter how hard I’d tried to keep everything locked up tight, it all came rushing back, overloading me with emotions I couldn’t afford to explore. Ever.

I’d been on board for a week, known he was here—known the incredibly sneaky lengths Paxton had gone to get me here—and avoided him like the plague he was. I was here for Leah, for me, to touch my own history and find my birthplace, for a hundred different reasons that didn’t involve Landon.

“What…how…?” His normally smooth lines were absent.

A thousand times I’d practiced this in my head. How cool I was going to be. How dismissive. How I’d show him that maybe he’d wounded me, but I wasn’t broken. My imagination had nothing on this moment, or my physical reaction to seeing him.

Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Why couldn’t you choose me? Why wasn’t I enough for you? Every question eighteen-year-old me had cried into my pillow reared its ugly head, and I beat them all back down, swallowing past my suddenly dry throat that had zero to do with the desert heat.

“Um, do you know each other?” the blonde he had his arm wrapped around asked. I wonder if he even knows her name.

A wry smile twisted my lips. Different year. Different country. Same Landon. “We used to.”

He was still shell-shocked, and I took what little advantage I had. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.” I ripped my gaze away from him, my chest aching like he’d left me yesterday instead of two and a half years ago.

I managed to turn and walk away, dropping our margarita cups in the trash. I’d find Leah and explain later, but right now I had to get the hell out of here. The elevator was ahead, maybe only ten feet away when he caught up with me, no blonde in sight.

“Rachel!” he said, his fingers brushing my upper arm like he’d changed his mind midreach.

So close, I thought as the elevator doors closed ahead of me.

I turned slowly, trying to visualize locking up my emotions with a row of dead bolts. He wasn’t getting through. “What can I do for you?” I asked his pecs. His chest was safer than those soul-melting eyes.

“Rachel,” he whispered.

Inch by inch, I drew my gaze up until I met his over a head above me. Landon’s light brown, finger-tousled hair towered above my five-foot-two frame, but the difference had always made me feel protected, like he was a mountain no one could move. Turned out I couldn’t really move him, either. “What?”

“I…don’t know what to say,” he admitted, a look of awe and fear on his face.

Me, either, eighteen-year-old me called out from where I’d locked her away.

“Wow. I have to admit that I expected some smoother lines from you.”

He shook his head a little and blinked, like he expected me to disappear, like I was some figment of his imagination. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“That’s pretty obvious. Look, we don’t have to see each other. You stay to your classes, and I’ll stay to mine. I’m sure we’ll have some overlap with the whole Leah/Paxton thing, but my plan is to generally ignore you.” I had to in order to survive.

His eyes narrowed. “Leah/Paxton thing?”

I arched an eyebrow and tried to calm the pounding of my heart. It felt like the damn thing had wings, and it was hammering against my ribs to get out of my chest and back to the one person it had always belonged to. Hell, no. “They haven’t told you?”

He stepped forward, and I retreated. “Told me what?”

We continued our dance—I backed up and he followed. Each step took me closer to the elevator, closer to getting the hell away from him.

“Rachel, would you stop? I’m not going to stalk you into the elevator.”

“Yeah, you’re usually a walk-away kind of guy.”

He winced. “Really?”

The horn blew, and the ship launched from the dock. “I have some pretty personal experience with that side of you.” I looked behind him, where the blonde was staring at us with her arms crossed under her breasts. “And from the looks of things, nothing’s changed.”

“Rachel…” He reached for me, and I stepped back, turning slightly to hit the down button on the elevator.

“No. You don’t get to Rachel me. You don’t get to anything me. You get to be all Nova-y, and I get to stay the hell away from you for the next six months.”

“Well, your tactics have worked pretty well, considering this is the first time I’m seeing you and we’re three months into the trip.”

Did he have to look wounded? Like I’d done something dastardly by hiding away from him? “I only got here last week.”

His forehead puckered, and I fought back my urge to smooth those lines with my fingers like I had when we were together. He wasn’t mine to touch. He wasn’t mine in any form of the word.

“Last week? Funny, that’s when Leah’s roommate…” His eyes widened to a nearly impossible size.

“Put that together, did you?” The elevator dinged open behind me, and I shamelessly retreated into it, seeing the camera crew heading our direction. I needed space, and I needed it now.

“Wait.” He lunged forward, stopping the elevator door with his arm. “I don’t understand.”

“Paxton will fill you in,” I said and pushed the close-door button.

“Paxton?” He shook his head again.

I blew out a frustrated sigh, realizing there were other students in the elevator. “Paxton Wilder. Your best friend. Come on, Nova—”

“Landon,” he snapped. “I’ve never been Nova to you. Not in that way.”

You’re like a supernova—an explosion so bright no one can see past you, I’d told him once after he’d won a competition. But like my love, that name had been twisted into something entirely different. Now he was Casanova…and no longer mine.

“What we were to each other sure as hell doesn’t matter anymore,” I countered. “Me being here isn’t some act of fate, or God. It’s an act of Paxton. If you want answers, go to him. Once this door shuts, my plan is never to speak to you again.”

“You think that’s possible? That I’m just going to ignore you?”

“It’s worked pretty damn well for the last two and a half years.”

Someone behind me coughed to hide a laugh.

Landon glared over my shoulder, and then that arrogant Nova smirk appeared, which twisted my insides in opposite directions—one wanting to smack him and the other inconveniently remembering what this man was capable of doing to my body. “Rachel.”

“What?” I shouted. I would pay money to make him stop saying my name like that—like he still knew me, still wanted me, still loved me. Like the last two years had just evaporated and we were still talking about our future in the apartment he’d left me holding the lease for. He didn’t get to say my name like he hadn’t drastically altered the very fabric of my being—I wasn’t that girl anymore.

“We’re at sea for the next four days, so it’s not like you can leave the ship. This isn’t over.” He leaned back, removing his arm from the door.

The doors started to slide shut, and he held my gaze, something heating there. Guess the shock of seeing me had worn off.

“This was over a long time ago,” I said quietly.

He flinched as the doors shut.

I closed the door to our suite and leaned back against it, letting my head thump on the barrier. It hurts. God, it hurts so badly. My hand rested under my heart, praying it would find some semblance of a normal rhythm, but it kept up with my lungs, which worked overtime, bringing giant gasps of air into my chest. Even my throat was on fire from this lump that wouldn’t go the hell away. My face scrunched as I fought back tears. God, I hated crying. What was even worse was that it wasn’t that I was sad. No, my eyes were prickling from anger, from embarrassment, from the pain in my chest from seeing him, from…the myriad of emotions that my body didn’t know how to process.

I drew air into my lungs in a steady stream. You’re stronger than this. You are iron. You are concrete. You are invincible.

All true, but he was my one stupid weakness.

Somehow in the span of those few minutes, he’d managed to slice open my soul and set me back years. How was this fair? He was the one who’d walked out without a word, leaving me collegeless, with a pissed-off family I had to go crawling back to and a lease I couldn’t afford, but from the looks of it, he was fine. More than fine, really, and I was the one trying to get over the newly opened fissure in my heart…again.

“Rachel?” Penna’s voice came from the living room, and my stomach sank. If there was one person on this ship who hated me more than Wilder, it was Penna. She’d despised me for years—since the moment she’d realized that while I was dating Wilder, I was deeply in love with his best friend.

She’d also become my roommate when Leah moved to Pax’s room a couple of days ago. I understood why—Penna needed time to heal out of the public eye, and our suite was off-limits to the rabid camera crew, but man…it was awkward around here at times.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered, walking down the hallway of our suite as I composed myself. The marble floors, double bedrooms, and full amenities were way overboard, but I wasn’t complaining. Wilder had gone to a shit ton of trouble to get me here. I just hated that he’d used my best friend to do it.

But he’d fallen in love with her, so I guess it all worked out.

“Hey,” Penna said from her wheelchair. Her leg was casted to her thigh and elevated by one support of the chair, and her superlong blond hair was piled onto her head in a knot. Injured or not, she was ridiculously model-worthy beautiful but still rode a motocross bike better than most of the guys.

“Hey,” I echoed, sinking into the plush leather sofa and stretching my legs out onto the coffee table.

She turned her attention back to her book, settling us into an awkward quiet.

Nervous energy coursed through me, and I sat up, leaning my elbows on my knees to hold my head. God, this was stupid. This was ridiculous. I had six months here with him. Watching him seduce everything in a skirt. How the hell was I going to handle that? Handle him?

“You saw him,” Penna said quietly, putting her book into her lap.

I nodded. “I ran into him. Literally. There were margaritas involved.”

“Did the alcohol help?”

I looked up. “It ended up all over him.”

She snorted, the first laugh I’d heard from her since I got here last week. “Good. Not that he needed it. He’s salty enough as it is.”

I laughed. “That he is.”

“How are you?” Her words were choppy, and I knew how much they cost her.

“Are you honestly asking? Because I’m pretty sure if you weren’t in that wheelchair you’d have no issue throwing me overboard.”

Her head tilted. “I’ve considered it.”

The last thing I could handle right now was Penna’s obvious disgust with my presence, and this was the only place on the ship I was safe from running into Landon. Fantastic.

The door flew open, hitting the wall. “Rach?” Leah yelled down the hall two seconds before she barreled in. “Oh my God! Landon and Pax are going at it right now. What happened?” She plopped on the couch next to me, her legs bare, revealing the parallel scars down the fronts of her legs that she’d kept hidden until this trip—until Paxton had brought out the brave in her. Her whiskey-colored eyes were wide, her brown hair in windblown disarray. Man, I’d missed her every day that she’d been here while I was back in L.A.

“I may have run into Landon.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

She laughed but stopped when I glared at her. “I’m sorry, but after he saw you today on the slopes, that’s all he kept saying. ‘I’m fine.’”

“He saw you on the slopes?” Penna asked, her book forgotten in her lap. This was the longest I’d seen her engaged in any conversation since the accident—since her sister broke her heart.

“He did,” I answered with an involuntary smile. “He looked up to wave to Leah, and I’d just gotten there. I had no clue he’d actually see me. But he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“And then he ran into the wall,” Leah said, her laughter rolling through her shoulders.

“No way!” Penna exclaimed, another laugh tumbling out. “Like into the wall wall? The side of the slope?”

“Exactly,” I said. “And then some girl ran over him on the lift.”

I wasn’t even near him, and his luck was already turning to shit.

“Oh my God,” Penna said, her laughter even louder. “Then what did he do?”

“He looked for you,” Leah said to me. “I mean, you were gone by the time he pulled himself out of the lift path, but he looked.”

My laughter died as that kaleidoscope of emotion turned in my chest.

“But what was weirder was that he didn’t ask about you,” Leah continued. “When I saw him, he never asked who was standing next to me.”

“He doesn’t care,” I said out of habit and defense.

“No, it wasn’t that. He was shaken. It was almost as if he thought he’d hallucinated you…like it had happened before.”

I met my best friend’s level stare. “That would imply he ever thought about me to begin with.”

“Rachel—”

“No!” I snapped. “He left me without saying good-bye. Left me standing there like an idiot in that ER with five rejected calls, ten unanswered texts, a shredded acceptance letter to Dartmouth, a fractured wrist from falling off our brand-new kitchen counter, and a broken heart—all while the ink on our lease, that I couldn’t afford on my own, was still wet. I sat in that apartment for days, knowing he’d gone back to the Renegades but just hoping he would still come home to me, too. Hoping Wilder had reneged on his goddamned ultimatum, or that I would at least get an explanation, or a good-bye. Do you have any idea how that feels—to be ghosted? Abandoned? Treated like you aren’t good enough for his love, his time, or even a fucking phone call? Leah, you of all people know what it was like for me to go back to my parents—to grovel and plead for help when I’d thrown my independence in their face. I gave up everything for Landon, and it wasn’t enough. So please don’t imply that he ever gave me a second thought.”

“You should let him explain,” Penna said softly.

“You can’t weigh in on this,” I told her. “Not if you want us to have a quasi friendship.”

She struggled with keeping quiet. I could tell by the set lines of her mouth, the way her hands gripped the sides of her book. “Okay,” she finally said. “But there are two sides to every story.”

Leah glanced between us and clapped her hands. “New subject!” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Pax arranged a trip to Nepal during the optional excursion week in India.”

Penna tensed, and my eyes flickered toward hers, which were pointed at her cast.

“Okay?”

“We’re all going! Well, if you want to. He found a great spa for Penna and me, and I hear there’s some fabulous skiing…”

My eyes narrowed at her. “You’re dangling the carrot. You know how much I love to ski.”

“I do,” she admitted.

“Landon will be there.”

“He will…it’s actually his trip. He’s hung up on boarding some ridgeline up by Everest, and this is his shot. He thinks it would put the documentary over the top.”

He couldn’t mean… I shut down my train of thought. For God’s sake. I’d been in his presence all of one time and I was already concerned about him. I had no business even thinking about him, or wondering if he was actually going to try to hit the Shangri-La spine wall he’d always talked about. It was impossibly high, impossibly steep, and offered a high possibility of death.

“Ugh.” I leaned my head on the back of the couch. “I can’t escape him, can I?”

“Not if you want all the perks that come with traveling with the Renegades,” Penna said. “And if I recall correctly, you were always ready to jump in on anything we were working on. Hell, I think you were more fearless than Landon some days.”

She said it softly, without malice. Maybe this roommate stuff would work after all.

“I do love it,” I admitted.

“Do you think you can handle being around him so much?” Leah asked. “I’m still willing to leave if you need to. I love Paxton, but I hate what he did—tricking us both to get you on board.”

I squeezed her hand. She’d suffered so much in the last few years, and it wasn’t fair to take this from her. I could endure six months of hell for her—for the chance to touch a piece of my history after months of research, digging through my parents’ papers, looking for the location of that orphanage in South Korea, trying to be as covert as possible so I wouldn’t upset Mom… Was I really going to let Landon ruin that?

“I’ll be fine. I can handle being around him.”

A flicker of relief passed through her eyes, and she loosened her grip on my hand. “Okay. Then how do you want to handle things? Pax wants to include you on the trips.”

“Of course he does. He wants me accessible for Landon,” I snapped and then grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You can growl at my boyfriend all you want. He deserves whatever you want to dish at him for this.”

“It’s fine. I’ll only see him on shore excursions. I can duck him the rest of the time.”

“Well…” Leah started.

“What now?”

“This might not be the best time to tell you that you’re also in two of the same classes this term,” Penna answered. “So you’ll be around him for those classes, shore excursions, our trips, and any field studies those classes have.”

“Fuck my life.”

“I figured you would say that,” Leah said, squeezing my hand. “Still okay?”

I nodded slowly. “Just like you, I’m a lot stronger than I used to be. Besides, just because I have to be around him doesn’t mean I have to talk to him.”

“Rachel,” Leah cajoled.

“He can be pretty insistent…and convincing,” Penna said.

“Yeah, well, I can be as stubborn as he is, and I’ve had way more practice at ignoring him than he has at seeking me out. There’s nothing that guy can do to force me to talk to him.”

I didn’t miss the glance Penna and Leah shared.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“I know,” Leah answered. “Your stubbornness has never been up for debate.”

“If I have to be stuck in this thing,” Penna said, nodding toward her cast with a slow smile, “at least I’ll have something entertaining to watch.”

How hard could it be to ignore Landon Rhodes?

I had the feeling I was about to find out.