Page 66 of Heart of a Rebel

She opens her mouth but stops herself from saying whatever she was going to when she looks at my face.

“I understand that it’s not my fault directly, just like Sam wasn’t.” I can’t stop rubbing my hand over her cheek, her throat, her chest, waiting for reality to slip away from me. “But I wasn’t there for you, and irrational or not, it’s hard to forgive myself for that.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Somewhere in the back of my nostrils I still smell the smoke, even if it’s just my imagination.

“With Sam, I should have tried harder to talk her out of enlisting.” I shake my head. “Her parents had the money to send her to college. But she always got these ideas in her head and just couldn’t fucking help herself. I made it sound like an adventure, and Sam… well she lived for that shit.”

“She sounds like someone I would have gotten along with.” The corner of Eloise’s mouth ticks up.

I can’t help but smile. “Most definitely. She was a lot like you. Cautious on the outside but the heart of a rebel.”

“And that’s me?” Eloise’s face pinches.

“When I met you, I knew you were gonna do something big.” I brush my finger over the soft skin between her eyebrows and it smooths her expression. “Because as wild as the rest of the band was, they had you, thinking clearly, getting done what needed to get done. But also, breaking barriers. Even when it drove me fucking insane.”

For some reason, that makes her frown.

“What?”

“I was a fraud. All this time these women have been looking up to me and little do they know that I’m just a victim myself.”

“You’re asurvivor.” Planting my hand on her cheek, I turn her face toward me. “And not talking about it doesn’t make you a fraud. It’s what gave you your fire in the first place. They don’t need to know your story to be inspired by you.”

“But maybe they should.”

I shrug. “That’s up to you.”

She lets out a deep breath, but I still feel the tension of whatever’s on her mind weighing heavy.

I’m not sure Eloise sees the same thing the rest of the world does when they look at her, and it baffles me. She never needed to tell her story for women to be able to relate to her. Whatever place it was her passion burned from was so hot they felt it anyway. I assumed it had to do with how she grew up, and her mostly strained relationship with her mother. But after learning the truth, I realized it went deeper.

Words are cheap. You can say just about anything. But to feel it—to believe it—takes bravery. And whether Eloise likes it or not, before she ever admitted to her pain, she carried the truth in her eyes and spent her whole career using it to help others.

“How do you do it?” Eloise presses her forehead against my chest. “How do you move on?”

“Don’t know. You just do.”

I don’t tell her that it doesn’t mean it actually fixes anything. I don’t tell her that it doesn’t mean you’re not still broken. I don’t tell her that up until a year ago I still considered that it might be easier if I just put a bullet in my brain.

Not helpful.

Besides, I’m still here, so that’s got to count for something.

Eloise looks up and cups my face in her hand, almost nose to nose with me. The imaginary smoke from my dreams is replaced with the scent of flowers at her closeness.

Life.

Beauty.

Eloise.

She makes me feel in a way I no longer thought possible. Warms through the ice I was certain had claimed me all the way through.

Pressing her onto her back, I slide my body between her legs and dip my mouth over hers. She wraps her legs around my hips, digging her heels into the backs of my thighs, and winds her arms around my neck. Parting her mouth, I take everything she’s willing to give with her kiss.

Her air. Her heart.

“I need to feel you,” she whispers against my mouth.

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