Page 6 of Heart of a Rebel

“He should get that looked at.”

“The car?”

I nod.

“Car is code for girlfriend,” Eloise shakes her head, laughing so sweetly I’m tempted to taste it. “She’s not our biggest fan.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It’s something, all right.” Eloise presses her lips together. “He’ll be here… Eventually.”

Having met this girl only once, I’m not sure why I care that the guys bailed on her. Or why it grinds my gears that she’s solely responsible for setting things up for them, but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s that she’s alone, or maybe it’s the familiar darkness in her eyes, growing like ivy climbing my ribs. Either way, it’s a feeling I can’t escape.

“Let me help.” I tip my chin toward the van and open the front door further.

Eloise’s dark eyes skim me over like they did when she first arrived. “You don’t have to. The stuff is light. Besides you’re already giving us the space to do this—”

“It’s fine.” I slip on my shoes and walk past her before she can argue.

At the bar, she was sitting down for the majority of our conversation, so I never got the full effect of her height compared to mine. But walking ahead of me, I realize she’s taller than I remember, even if I still tower over her with my six-foot-three frame. She’s five seven or five eight, at least, and mostly legs.

She’s thin, but curvy at the hips, and I have to fight my instincts to not stare at her ass swaying from side to side as she makes her way in front of me. She’s a pendulum swinging. Because she moves like she acts—elegant, graceful, careful.

But with all her softness, there’s a buried strength underneath Eloise Kane. I just can’t put my finger on where it roots from yet.

Eloise opens the back of the van, and it’s filled with big foam sheets that look a lot like egg cartons.

Sebastian might not have texted about Eloise showing up early, but he did mention they’d be hanging shit up to absorb sound—or whatever the fuck he was talking about. I was only half listening and don’t really care. I’ve got too many rooms in this house and nothing to do with them. If it makes the band happy to make one look like a padded cell and sing in it, then they can have at it.

“This is really nice of you.” Eloise grabs a couple of the pads and holds them in her arms.

I take a stack and we head back toward my house. “It’s no problem.”

“You live here alone?” Eloise’s eyes dart over her shoulder as she watches me move around her to open the front door and let her in.

“Do now.” I open it and she walks past me.

This wasn’t what I pictured for myself when I joined the military straight out of high school. I assumed if I ever came back home after I got out, he would still be here. I was young, naïve, unaware of what eight years could do to two people.

Him, his disease.

Me, my sanity.

“My dad passed a little less than a year ago,” I say. “This place was his.”

Usually, I’m not one to bring that kind of shit up unprompted, so I’m not sure where it came from.

“I’m sorry.” Eloise frowns, and it seems genuine.

“It’s fine,” I lie. She doesn’t want to hear me spill my guilt about how I wasn’t here for him in the end. “He left the house to me when he died. I didn’t have anywhere else to go after eight years in the military. So, here I am.”

I stop at the doorway to a large den that sits on the opposite side of the house from the living room. “Here we are.”

“It’s perfect.”’ She looks around the room, and the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her crosses her face. It’s hypnotizing, making me realize for the first time since meeting her that this might be a terrible idea because she draws something strange out of me.

In the eight years I was gone, most of my childhood friends moved away. Either that or moved on. They got married and started families. So when I met Sebastian outside a convenience store a month ago, and he invited me to chill with a few of his buddies, it sounded better than spending another night sitting at home trying to forget the fact that my life is shrapnel flung all over the place.

I thought it would be a distraction filling my time with the band. So I offered them a space to record their demo while I figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with my life. What I didn’t expect when I invited the band into my house was to be blindsided by their bass player, Sebastian’s sister.

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