Libby
I LISTENED FOR THE SOUNDS of Einstein’s talking when our apartment door opened and shut. She had a habit of walking in, already mumbling about things she needed me to know.
Or just mumbling to herself.
But it was silent.
I twisted on my bed and placed my feet on the floor, my movements halting and stomach dropping when the voice that sounded in the hall wasn’t Einstein’s.
“Why’d you say it?”
I sat there, frozen, watching in horror as Maxon rounded the corner to my doorway.
His whiskey eyes locked on mine, his expression a mixture of frustration and need. “Why, Rebel?”
Air rushed from my lungs like I’d been punched. “How are you here?” I asked, the words barely more than a wheeze.
He held up Einstein’s keys only to drop them on my dresser as he moved deeper into my room. “I heard you didn’t read or listen to any of my messages, so you’re going to listen to me now.”
My head was already shaking, my eyes filling with tears.
I didn’t want to do this with Maxon. Not now, not six months ago, not ever.
“That’s not my baby,” he said slowly, like he wanted to make sure I heard and understood every word. “That girl? Jesus Christ, Libby, did you ever look at her face?”
I jerked at the frustration in his tone but didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My throat was so tight I could barely breathe.
I’d seen pictures of them. They’d been everywhere.
Pictures of them walking with Maxon’s arm hooked around her neck. Pictures of them hugging. Another of him kissing her cheek. In every one, she had a very clear baby bump and a diamond on her ring finger.
But I couldn’t recall her face.
Maxon dropped to a crouch before me so his face was directly in front of mine. When he spoke again, his tone was soft. “The media lies, Libby,” he whispered, echoing words I’d heard thousands of times from him. “That was Ava.”
“What?” I choked out, my head shaking and mind racing.
I knew Ava. Knew who she was to Maxon. She was in the foster home with him and Lincoln.
“She lives just outside LA now with her husband . . . remember? Lincoln and I see her sometimes.”
I already knew that . . .
My stomach ached and twisted with guilt.
I tried again to remember the girl in the pictures with Maxon, but there was nothing.
I never looked at her face. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the woman he’d chosen over me. Just as I couldn’t stand to hear his words.
There’d been too many photos over too many years, and I hadn’t been able to go through it again.
I felt like the worst kind of idiot.
“Those pictures were taken when we met up to have lunch with them. Her husband and Lincoln were right next to us, but just out of the shot, in every picture. Her husband called me laughing when he saw them, and . . . God, I was positive you would’ve recognized her and done the same. I had no clue you actually thought the girl and the baby were mine. None, Libby.”
I blinked quickly in a vain attempt to stop the tears that were steadily slipping down my cheeks, then dropped my head into my hands when a sob broke free. “Oh God.”
I’d been sure he’d thrown our life away without a single thought. It had slayed me. Wrecked me. Because nothing in my life had ever felt as right, as perfect, as Maxon.
To know I was the one who ruined us . . .
He grabbed my hands and pulled them down so he could look into my eyes. “Why’d you tell me you were engaged?”
“I wanted you to know what I’d been going through. To feel what I’d felt.” I laughed weakly. “It’s the same reason I always left before you woke up. I wanted you to have a taste of what it felt like when you left me.”
“Fuck, Libby.” He curled his hands around my neck and pressed his mouth to mine in a slow, passionate, claim.
And it was just like it always had been between us . . .
Right.
Perfect.
My body buzzed beneath his touch and my soul sang. I was finally whole. It was a feeling I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of.
“What about the rest?” he whispered before raking his teeth across my bottom lip. “Was everything else you said a lie?”
I pressed my forehead against his and released a stuttered breath. “I said a lot to you tonight that I didn’t mean.” When he only looked at me, prompting me to go on, I said, “That we were a mistake. That I wasn’t yours.”
“Settling down . . . the family?” he asked as he slowly pushed me back on the bed.
My face pinched with grief.
Because I wanted that, but I knew I would never find someone I wanted to give my life to. Not like the man currently kneeling above me, reaching for the band of my sleep shorts.
“I do want that,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t change the reality of our situation. That doesn’t change that you’re on the other side of the United States or that I want a family here.”
He stilled, his eyes searching mine. “You really want to be here?” When I dipped my head, he blew out a stuttered breath and nodded resolutely. “We’ll figure it out. Whatever you want. Ask me to leave Henley, and I’ll do it.”
“I don’t want that,” I said quickly and struggled to sit up on the bed. “I’ve never wanted that. Those guys are your family. You said it earlier.”
“They’ll be my family if we aren’t a band, but they know what you mean to me. They know what it’s been like for me since we left here and how much the last few months have nearly destroyed me.”
I lifted a hand to his face, pressing the tips of my fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry.”
He grabbed my wrist to put more pressure to his lips, then pulled my hand away. “They know my life doesn’t make sense without you.”
“I would never ask you to stop playing, and I don’t want you to.”
“But you’ve been waiting for me to come back and stay,” he said, recalling my earlier words.
I smiled sadly. “I never claimed to be easy to handle.”
The corner of his mouth curled into a smirk that made my stomach swirl with need. “I think I handle you just fine,” he murmured. “I also think Henley needs some time off . . . after that I can figure out the fucking long commute to LA from here.”
I barely had time to register his words before his mouth was on mine again.
“Are you serious?” I asked against the kiss, my tone a mixture of disbelief and pure joy.
“Rebel,” he said with a soft laugh. After brushing another kiss across my lips, he laid me back on the bed, his mouth moving across my jaw and down my throat. “I’ve always known I wanted forever with you. Just been waiting for you to get there with me.”
Our next kiss was a slow claiming. Our touches nothing more than faint, teasing brushes as we unhurriedly removed clothes. When Maxon spread my thighs at an achingly slow pace, those faint brushes became hard and demanding, our kiss rough and pleading.
I clung to his muscled forearms as he shifted his body to kneel between my legs, and tried to follow him when he pulled away from the kiss.
“From now on, you don’t leave before I wake,” he said in a low, serious tone.
My head dropped back, and my mouth opened with a whimper when he pressed his thumb to my aching clit.
“If you see something that bothers you, you ask me about it. Don’t fucking ghost me.”
I started to nod but cried out when he pushed two fingers inside me, pumping me roughly, thoroughly, exactly the way he knew I liked it. “Oh God, Maxon . . . yes.”
“The next time you tell someone you’re engaged, you’re gonna have my ring on your finger.”
My lips twitched into a smile, excitement swirling in my chest just as his mouth covered me, sucking and licking and teasing me while his fingers fucked me. I secured my fingers in his hair, pressing him closer and shuddering when he groaned against me. The heat in my belly suddenly intensified when he raked his teeth over my clit, my back arching away from the bed as my orgasm tore through me.
My mouth opened with a silent moan as wave after wave of pleasure rolled through me until I was nothing more than a trembling mess weakly attempting to cling to what I’d almost lost.
A shiver ran down my spine when he swiped his tongue against me one last time and then pushed himself up to press his mouth to my stomach.
“If they want to print about me being a dad, it’ll be because this belly is round with my child.”
I pulled him close and whispered, “Yes. Yes, to everything.”
“About damn time.”
A laugh rolled up my throat and turned into a whimper when his thick length pressed against my entrance. “Please,” I whispered, my fingers tightening in his hair and legs wrapping around his hips. “Maxon, please.”
My head fell back when he slowly pushed into me. His mouth and teeth trailed up my neck at the same torturous pace until he was fully seated inside me, bare for the first time.
This was how it was always meant to be. Us. Together. Completing each other in a way only we could.
How I ever thought I could live without this—without him . . .
And then he moved.
Each roll of his hips was powerful and demanding. Each thrust pushed me to a high I was sure I would never come down from.
I moaned when he pressed his mouth to mine—devouring me—begging me for everything I was. Making me crave more of the intoxicating mixture on his lips and tongue of whiskey and me. A silent proclamation. A heady claim.
This man was mine.
I whimpered in protest when he moved back to sit on his knees and pulled most of the way out. He gripped my hips and lifted me so only my upper back and head were touching the bed, a wicked grin playing on his lips when I tried to move against him and wasn’t able to. A frustrated cry fell from my lips and ended with a sharp whimper when he roughly forced me onto his cock, sending me spiraling into a bliss that pulsed from deep in my core.
“Fuck, Libby,” he growled as I trembled around him. Each shudder had him tightening his possessive grip on me. Each ripple of pleasure through my body silently urged him faster and harder until he found his release inside me.
His body tensed, his muscles straining as he slowly pumped inside me once . . . twice . . . and then shakily set me on the bed and lowered his body to mine.
I laced my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer and pressing his forehead to mine as our chests moved with our ragged breaths. “I love you.”
A brilliant smile pulled at his mouth before he was brushing it across mine. “When are you gonna let me give you my last name, Rebel?”
The high I’d been on immediately dipped.
Maxon’s smile faded when he saw my expression. “Libby . . .” he began warily. “What—I thought—”
“No, no. It’s not that. It’s not what you think,” I hurried to say when he moved to sit in the middle of the bed. I pulled the sheet over my chest and licked my lips as my mind raced. “If you ask me to, I will leave with you in the morning and take your last name.”
His face fell into an unreadable mask. “I’ve been waiting to hear that since we were eighteen . . . but I know there’s a but coming.”
“You started calling me Rebel so long ago. That name fits me better than you realize.” I hesitated for a second, my tongue darting out to wet my lips. “I never wanted to leave my family, Maxon. I was just rebelling from what they were—what I was. But I couldn’t tell you.”
“You mean the mafia?”
I stilled, my breath catching in my throat when Maxon said the title so casually. “How . . .”
Maxon laughed softly, his face cracking with relief. “Jesus, Libby. I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember. You think I wouldn’t catch on that something was going on with your family?” When I stared at him in shock, he asked, “Is that what you were worried about me finding out? Is that the but?”
“Well, yeah . . .”
A fuller laugh left him as he placed me on his lap. His eyes searched my face, amusement dancing in them. “This?” he murmured, passing his fingers across the tattoo on the back of my neck. “You told me about it when we were in second grade. You drew it and said, ‘This is me. I’m a rebel.’” Maxon’s smile stretched wider. “You rebel against everything, Libby, but I call you Rebel because of that day.”
I automatically reached back to touch where his fingers had just been.
Four horizontal lines, each shorter than the one above it, with a vertical line slashing through, longer than the others. All centered in an outline of a circle.
It was our family’s symbol. We adopted it when they rebelled from a different mafia family long before I was born. Now every Borello member had it tattooed or branded on them to show their allegiance with pride.
I’d never been proud of what we were, but the blood pounding through my veins had marked me a rebel from birth.
I just couldn’t believe I’d told Maxon.
“But I didn’t really know what you were until your dad was murdered,” he continued, his tone solemn. “No one in town seemed to know or talk about it. Your brother immediately dropped out of school, and you acted like it wasn’t a big deal. And whenever I saw him over the next few years, he had adults straight out of a mafia movie hanging on his every word. But I’m pretty fucking positive I wasn’t supposed to see any of that since I was usually sneaking in or out of your window.”
A breath of a laugh escaped my lips, and my head shook in disbelief. “I just—I can’t believe you knew all this time.”
“Would it have changed our relationship before?” When I only offered him a pained smile and shook my head, he shrugged. “Then what does it matter?”
“Doesn’t it matter to you?”
He placed a teasing kiss on my lips. “Is Dare gonna have me killed if I marry you?”
I tilted my head to the side and pretended to think about it before leaning in for another kiss. “No. He’d just do it himself.” My chest shook with a laugh at Maxon’s stunned expression. “He wouldn’t. Dare dissolved the gang over a year ago. He doesn’t want anything to do with that life anymore.”
“Really?” he asked, surprise coating the word. “Why?”
“That’s another story, and it’s not mine to tell,” I whispered against his lips. “Knowing all you know, you still want to marry me?”
He nipped my bottom lip then pressed his mouth to mine, kissing me tenderly. “Always, Rebel. I’ll always want to marry you.”
Sorrow and grief still pulsed through me from how much the probability of losing him had affected me. My heart still felt bruised from the months of believing there was no hope.
But it made my love for him undeniable. It left me assured our lives were irrevocably intertwined.
And I felt whole for the first time in so long.
He twisted me around so I straddled his lap, his eyes burning with need when he gripped my hips to position me over his hardening length.
My head dropped back, a low moan building in my chest when I sank down onto him. I rocked against him slowly, letting my head roll forward to hold his heated stare. “So, Maxon James, about my last name . . .”