REBEL, a New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) (35 page)

“Get a room.”
 
Quin’s youngest brother is giggling with his friends off to our left.
 
I guess the smokescreen isn’t as awesome as I thought it was.

Rebel pulls his mouth away but hugs me tight, whispering in my ear.
 
“Raincheck.
 
You’re mine later.”

I hug him tight around the neck, burying my face into his shoulder.
 
“I’m yours now.”

My arms freeze and my body goes tense.
 
I’m embarrassed that something sounding very much like a pledge just slipped out like that.
 
I meant to play around with him and be all sexy, but now it’s like I’ve asked him to marry me or something.
 
I hang on like a leech because I’m afraid to see the look on his face.
 
I wait for his withdrawal.

But instead of letting me go, he squeezes me around the middle a little tighter and lifts me up off my feet.
 
“You make me really happy.” His whisper comes into my ear and spreads warmth throughout my entire body.

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, my heart settles down.
 
Maybe I haven’t screwed everything up by being a complete lovesick idiot. Maybe he likes me back as much as I like him.
 
Maybe, maybe, maybe…

“All right, all right, break it up,” Quin says, coming back over.
 
“Defcon five averted, my eyebrows are as perfect as they ever were.
 
Tea, you either need to get some serious glasses or kiss my ass for saying that.”

Rebel puts me down, and I feign innocence.
 
“Saying what?”

She rolls her eyes and stops in front of me, hands on hips.
 
“Not to change the subject or anything, but I looked at those financials your dad sent you.” She snags my cup out of my hand and then stares down inside it, disappointed to find it empty.

My mood immediately deflates.
 
“Way to bring me back down to earth.”
 
I look around, trying to spot the punch bowl.
 
I seriously need a refill.

“Sorry, but it needs to be said.
 
There’s some serious shit in that stuff from the thumb drive.”

“Serious as in …” Rebel waits for the answer to his question as I chew my lip.
 
I’m not sure I want to know what she found.
 
Would it be rude to leave them standing there to get more alcohol?

“Serious as in book-cooking, serious. Like Betty Crocker of the accounting world, next-level bullshit serious.
 
And I read the memos he had in there, too.” She lowers her voice.
 
“Want to know what I think?”
 
She looks first at Rebel and then at me.

“Yes,” he says.

“No,” I say at the same time.

She puts her hands on her hips again, knocking the cup out of her own hand in the process.
 
I watch it fall to the ground and keep my eyes glued to it. I cannot look at Quin right now, and I know for a fact I don’t want to hear what she’s about to say.

“Teagan, why don’t you want to know?
 
What’s wrong with you?
 
It’s not like you to hide from things like this.”

I’m too mad and confused to answer.
 
I don’t know what to say.
 
I can’t look at her.

“It’s her father,” Rebel says.

In that one small sentence, he sums everything up pretty nicely.
 
My chest feels not quite so full and heavy as I realize that this is the real reason I don’t want to know.
 
I don’t want to know why the man who ignored me most of his life and treated me as an afterthought suddenly decided to entrust something that was obviously so important to my safekeeping.
 
I finally look up.

“Yeah, but that’s why she needs to know.”
 
Quin takes me by the hand.
 
“Come into my room.
 
I want to show you some things.”

I dig my heels in, but she yanks on me pretty hard. “Stop being a pussy, Tea.”

“Go on.
 
I’ll wait here,” Rebel says.

“You come too,” I say, hating how weak I sound.

“No, you go and you can tell me after if you want.”
 
He walks away and goes over to where the beers are waiting on ice in the cooler.

I glare at Quin as she tries to drag me off again.

“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she says, changing positions so she can drag me by my waist.

I stop trying to resist as much.
 
I still don’t want to have my eyes opened to my father’s world, but now that Rebel is pretty much expecting me to woman-up, I feel obligated.
 
Damn him for making me be a grown-up. Where’s an asscar driving boyfriend when you need one?

Less than a minute later I’m sitting in front of Quin’s computer while she flicks between different pages and points to different things.
 
I become sicker and sicker with every piece of her stupid slide show.

“This is like, hardcore, man.
 
See this?
 
If you just look at the balance sheet, it all looks fine.
 
But when you line it up with this memo from your dad, you see that
this
expense should not have been capitalized like a long-term investment would be.”

“So?” She’s speaking Greek as far as I’m concerned.

“So … it means that they’re kind of tricking people into thinking the company is healthier than it is.
 
More profitable than it is.
 
If they had taken these things here and a few others like it and showed them as expenses on the P and L like they should have, it would have made the company look worse-off.
 
Get it?”

“Not really.”

She sighs heavily.
 
“Do you want the nutshell?”

“God, yes.”
 
I drop my face into my hands.
 
“You’re giving me a migraine.
 
Just give me the final episode cliffs-notes.”
 
I wait in my self-imposed darkness to hear my fate.
 
Why this feels like my fate, I don’t exactly know, but there’s no denying the fear that’s eating away at me right now.

“Okay, here it goes … it looks as though your father’s company was about to go public.
 
And in the process of getting the financials ready for the investment bankers, his accounting department cooked the books to make the company look more profitable … more financially healthy. If they get away with it, it’ll bring an asking price up about fifty percent higher than it should.”

I pull my head up.
 
“But what does that mean?
 
I mean, for me.
 
For my dad?”

She snorts in disgust.
 
“What it means is that your dad was a good guy. All those memos?
 
Those were him calling his accounting department on their bullshit.
 
He was telling them to fuck off, that he wasn’t going to be a part of their lies.
 
And some guy … hold on, I’ll tell you his name …”
 
She searches through pages until she stops on one that looks like a scanned letter.
 
“Hen Henderson …”
 
She pauses to smirk.
 
“What a name right?
 
What a freak.
 
Anyway, this turd mobile was insisting that your dad shut his pie hole so they could go through with the offering.
 
I get the impression they weren’t friends.”

I stand up so suddenly, the chair I was sitting on flies out behind me.
 
“I’m going to be sick.”
 
I put my hand on my mouth to keep from spewing all over her keyboard.

“Bathroom!” she shrieks, pointing to the hallway.

I run out and barely make it to the toilet before I vomit the purple punch I had earlier.
 
All I can think is,
Thank God I hadn’t eaten any hotdogs yet.

I’m alone for long enough to flush before the bathroom is crowded with both Quin and Rebel.
 
She closes the door and locks it behind them seconds before one of her siblings is banging on the door.

“Fuck off!
 
I’m busy!” she yells.

“I’m telling Mom you’re in there with two other people!” says the little voice.

“Go ahead! I’ll tell her you have condoms in your purse!”

Silence.

Quin grins.
 
“Pays to snoop. All right, so what’s up?
 
Why the vom attack?”

Rebel sits down on the edge of the tub and rubs my back as I struggle to get up off the floor.
 
I close the toilet lid and sit on it, leaning over to rinse my mouth out in the sink and adding a dollop of toothpaste to freshen up before I speak.

“I know that guy.
 
Hen Henderson.”
 
I can actually feel the blood drain from my face as I say his name.
 
I hate what this could mean and the dangerous territory that my mind is straying into.

“Uh-oh,” Quin says, a look of panic appearing.
 
“She’s gonna blow!”

I wave her off and rest my forehead on the cold countertop.
 
“No, I’m fine.
 
I just feel dizzy.”

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Quin says, laughing for a second.

I look up to shoot her daggers of hate-filled awful.

“Oh, shit, did I just say that out loud?
 
Sorry.”
 
She has the grace to look embarrassed.
 
Pointing to her mouth she half-grins.
 
“It’s on auto-pilot right now.
 
Motor mouth.
 
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

“God, would you please shut up?” I say, resting my forehead on the counter again.

Rebel acts like the last thirty seconds never happened.
 
“Who is he?
 
Henderson…”

Quin steps in to explain, which is good because I’m still battling my churning guts. “Hen Henderson is the CFO of her father’s company.
 
He was bad news, apparently.
 
He wanted to misrepresent the financial health of her dad’s company for an IPO.
 
Her dad told Henderson in those memos he sent copies of to Tea that it wasn’t going to fly, that he wouldn’t let it go down like that.
 
Now he’s gone and the company is going ahead with the IPO, as far as we know, with her former step-mother at the helm.”

I twist my head so I can look at them while also still feeling the cold porcelain on my cheek.
 
“Hen Henderson is my step-mother’s brother.
 
Now she’s the CEO and he’s the CFO.”

Quin’s smile disappears and her face goes pale.
 
“Oh, fuck me …”

I finish her sentence for her, “… with a whole box of fuck.”

“Yeah.
 
Two boxes of it.”

She and I stare at each other.

Quin reaches out and squeezes my upper arm.
 
“I’m so sorry, Tea.
 
That is just the worst news you could possibly get.”
 
She takes me in a hug and just keeps at it, even though I’m mostly falling off the toilet and on my knees on the tile.

“Come here, babe.”
 
Rebel’s hands go around my waist and lift me from the floor.
 
He sets me on his lap so I’m facing out towards Quin.
 
She finally lets me go so I can sit somewhat like a normal person again.

I look down at Rebel’s legs beneath mine and then at his arms draped loosely around me. “Thanks, Santa,” I say, trying to be flippant.
 
But it’s not exactly working since I feel like crying and barfing at the same time.

Life was so much easier when I was six years old and really sitting on a man’s lap just to wrangle some kickass presents out of him and his elves.
 
Everything in my life feels like a big lie in this moment.
 
Santa.
 
My father.
 
Hen Henderson.
 
All of ‘em.
 
Bastards.

“We need to do something about this,” says Quin, her face getting that determined expression on it.
 
I’ve seen it many times before, usually about an hour before I’m shit-faced drunk or trying to escape from a really terrible party I knew better than to attend.

“No.”
 
I shake my head, pressing my lips together.
 
“No.
 
I’m not going to do
anything
.
 
I’m going to get up every day, go to work, and then go to sleep at the end of the day.
 
That’s it.”
 
I’m desperately trying to convince myself that this is a good plan, that I’m okay with just letting my father rest in his grave. I figure with practice, I’ll eventually be able to own the idea in my heart.
 
So what if it makes me feel like a traitor to his memory right now?
 
Time heals all wounds, right?

“You don’t mean that, Tea.
 
You don’t want to walk away from your legacy like that.”

I stand up, finding the bathroom way too claustrophobic for my taste.
 
“Legacy?
 
Are you kidding me? The only legacy I have is the Golden Legacy, okay?
 
That’s my life right now.”
 
I look at Rebel.
 
“No offense.”

He just looks at me and it sends a spearing pain through my heart.

I can’t take it anymore.
 
Escape is the only solution I can come up with that doesn’t make me totally sick.
 
“I have to go.”
 
I walk around Quin, maybe a little hurt that she doesn’t bother to stop me.
 
At the door I pause and turn around.
 
“Rebel, can you take me back home?”