Broken Rebel (Sparrow Sisters Book 2) Read online

  Broken Rebel

  Lora Richardson

  Copyright 2020 Lora Richardson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission of Lora Richardson, except in the case of brief excerpts included in a critical review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design copyright 2020 by Kris Hack at Temys Designs. temysdesigns.com

  For Ryan, who took me on motorcycle rides and stole my heart.

  Table of 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 1

  Audrey

  Keaton caught my swinging arm by the elbow and trailed his hand down, interlocking our fingers. His hand was sweaty, even though it was after eleven o’clock at night and the late June day had cooled off considerably. He squeezed my hand, smearing the sweat over my palm, and smiled at me. “Is this okay?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, because that’s what I always said. I tried my best to return his smile, and told myself to relax. This was Keaton, the boy I’d been friends with since I was a baby. For as long as I could remember, our names shared space in most people’s minds. Keaton and Audrey. Audrey and Keaton. My stomach twisted uncomfortably. Tonight, just one hour ago, Keaton outright confessed that he wanted to shift our relationship from friendship to dating.

  I wasn’t a complete idiot; I’d known he felt this way for a while now. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how I felt. I liked Keaton. He was a wonderful person. I should want this. I wanted to want this. But did I?

  Everyone thought I did. People had talked about how cute we were together from the time we were little kids. Keaton’s mom and my mom were best friends, and since Keaton was born the same year my twin sister Valerie and I were, we’d always spent a lot of time together.

  Keaton’s sister Ruby pushed me to be with him. She wanted Keaton and I to get married one day so she and I could be sisters. No pressure there.

  Pressure. I felt it on all sides of me, in all areas of my life, all the time, pressing, pressing, pressing me further inside myself. I felt like a car at a junkyard that had come out of one of those car crushers and was now a perfect cube of squished metal—I didn’t take up much space anymore, and I didn’t resemble my true self.

  Keaton pressured me, but I didn’t think it was on purpose. He spoke of the future often. After we graduated next spring, he intended to go to the University of Southern Indiana. He casually suggested that I could go with him, if I wanted. After college, he was going to move back to Alden and buy a house, preferably on Dahlia Street or Chrysanthemum Drive. He mused aloud, wondering if I liked those parts of town, but I remained noncommittal. His ultimate plan was to join his dad full-time at the accounting firm where he already worked during the summers. He asked me where in town I wanted to work.

  Keaton’s future was a tangible thing to him. He could see every detail. Mine was an amorphous blob. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to USI, even though it was the closest University to Alden and it was where my dad had gone for his undergrad. I didn’t know where on the whole entire earth I wanted to live—which country, which state, which town—let alone which street. I didn’t have a career in mind. Basically, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted for my life. Thinking too much about it made me antsy, so I put my head in the sand and coasted along, not thinking about it at all.

  I’d done the same thing in my relationship with Keaton. Was he my friend? Or was he more? I didn’t want to make the decision, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was because I knew the answer and I didn’t like it.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want a relationship. Oh my goodness gracious, no. I thought about falling in love all the time. I constantly had my nose in a romance novel, devouring love story after love story, imagining that someday that would be me. Since seventh grade, the mere thought of kissing a boy created stirrings in my belly.

  I wished I felt those stirrings now. It would make everything easier if I did. Maybe I could force myself to feel them. I closed my eyes, letting Keaton lead us down the sidewalk, and focused on my hand in his. His fingers rested against my knuckles, his thumb caressed mine, and his breathing was steady beside me. I waited, concentrating as hard as I could on our joined hands.

  Nothing. Truth be told, I felt a little sick.

  Maybe it was because all my romantic daydreaming was just that—a daydream. It all existed in my head, not in real life. Perhaps that was why I was anxious about being with Keaton. Reality would certainly be different than my imagination, and maybe I needed to give reality a chance. I chewed on my bottom lip, the only outward sign I was freaking out.

  I wished I’d known this was coming tonight. I could have prepared. I could have planned what to say, or taken the time to decide which direction I wanted to go. Well, that wasn’t quite fair. Though he’d never said it in words until tonight, deep down I knew how he felt. I’d had months to prepare. But I guess I thought he’d never press the issue, so the events of the evening had still surprised me.

  From the moment Keaton picked me up tonight, I’d known something was off. He acted strange at the movies—he held himself stiffly, and he looked at me a little too often. Then at the restaurant he ate too fast, and then he waited until our plates were cleared before saying, “I want us to officially be a couple. I want to be your boyfriend.” Well. Apparently he was done beating around the bush. When I asked if we could talk about it later, he said he didn’t want to wait anymore.

  Panicked at the thought of losing him from my life, I said maybe. Then he suggested we could start smaller. Maybe we could kiss and see how that felt.

  We’d discussed it. We sat in the booth at Chambers Restaurant and discussed kissing as if it were an academic subject. A topic of regular dinner conversation. A thing to be debated and logically considered. Keaton was in favor of it. I was skeptical, but unwilling to close the door on him. I didn’t want to lose my friend. And what if kissing was the key that would unlock all my romantic feelings for him?

  I’d never kissed anyone, and I was so curious I could barely stand it. Most days, I felt like a grenade with a pulled pin, right on the verge of exploding. But I wanted my first kiss to be special. I wanted it to be spontaneous. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be with Keaton.

  On the other hand, I was close to Keaton. He was kind and caring, and he adored me in a way I wasn’t sure anyone else ever would. He knew all about me, and I knew all about him. We loved each other’s families. Maybe if we kissed, it would work out the way everyone wanted. I should kiss him. I should just do it.

  I turned to him. “Keaton?”

  “Yeah?”

  I tugged his hand so he’d stop walking. “I thought about what you said at dinner. I think you’re right. I think we should kiss.”

  His eyes went wide and
a grin lit his features. Before I could even process what was happening, he grabbed the sides of my head with both hands, and his face careened toward mine. His mouth was open, and his eyes were already closed.

  The thought that crossed my mind in that moment was that we were standing in front of the laundromat. I heard laughter from the gas station up the street. There couldn’t have been a less romantic place for a first kiss. But it was happening. I took a breath and prepared myself to become a changed woman.

  Keaton put his mouth over mine, and his tongue charged in with no warm-up, no warning at all. Then it retreated, and I thought it was over, but then it came back. I couldn’t get my bearings, couldn’t even manage to bring my lips together into a proper kiss formation. Keaton pushed firmly with his hands and tipped my head to the right, continuing to jackhammer his tongue in and out of my mouth. Then he pushed my head to the left, repeating the process.

  I couldn’t catch my breath, but it wasn’t because he made me breathless. It was because there was no rest in this kiss. He was moving his tongue so quickly, pressing so hard with his lips, and moving my head this way and that so forcefully, that my mouth slid off his and at one point I found myself licking his chin. My arms flailed at my sides in an effort to keep my balance. What on earth was happening?

  A loud, growling motorcycle revved its engine at the curb, only a few feet from us, and Keaton finally took his mouth from mine and let me go. I blinked at him, noticing his eyelids were at half-mast, and he had a satisfied grin on his face. I hadn’t even heard the motorcycle drive up, as hard as my mind had been working to understand what was happening to my mouth.

  The engine revved again and I stepped away from Keaton, wiping my lips with the back of my hand and feeling confused—and a little bit like I’d just lost something important.

  I looked toward the curb, and the motorcycle driver removed his helmet. I blinked. It was John Bright. Johnny, people called him. Not me, I didn’t call him anything. I’d never spoken to him in my life.

  Johnny set one foot on the ground, tilting the motorcycle a little, and glared at Keaton, his mouth a hard line. Then he turned his head to look at me, and his expression softened. “You okay?”

  I pulled in a breath, trying to think. Physically, I was completely and totally fine. My emotions, on the other hand, were an absolute wreck. My heart was cracking into pieces as I stood there. But that wasn’t Johnny’s problem. I repeated my standard line, words I’d said a million times in my life. “I’m fine.”

  Johnny glanced between Keaton and me, his eyes narrowing. “You need a ride?”

  A crazy, wild part of me wanted to say yes. I wanted to hop on the back of that motorcycle and let Johnny take me away somewhere I wouldn’t have to deal with anything that had just happened.

  “No, she doesn’t need a ride,” Keaton said, his voice rough and angry.

  That brought me back to myself. What was I thinking? I couldn’t get on the back of Johnny’s motorcycle. Johnny was older than me by a year, and trouble was attracted to him as much as all the girls were. Because of course they were—he was gorgeous in a way that made my head spin. He had jet black hair; dark, mysterious eyes; and a broad, muscular frame that towered over most everyone. But he didn’t hang around girls like me, and I didn’t hang around guys like him.

  “I wasn’t asking you,” Johnny said.

  Keaton made fists with both his hands and took a step forward. I jumped in front of Keaton and said quickly to Johnny, “No, thank you. I don’t need a ride.”

  Johnny watched me for a tense moment, and then nodded, his eyebrows drawn low over his angry eyes. He put his helmet back on and drove away.

  Behind me, Keaton’s breathing was rough. He sounded like a snorting bull. I spun around to face him. He looked very, very angry. “Keaton,” I started, thinking of ways I could calm him, but he put his hands up to silence me.

  “Don’t. I’m angry and I think I have a right to be. He sees us together, sees us kissing, and decides to ask you if you need a ride?” He huffed out a growl and clenched his jaw.

  I considered it from Keaton’s perspective. He’d been waiting for that kiss for a long time, probably building it up in his mind, and Johnny had driven up and interrupted us right at the height of it. For me, though, Johnny had come at exactly the right moment. I wasn’t angry. I was grateful, which made me feel like a terrible human being.

  Keaton closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he released it, he looked at me again, and now his expression was much more calm. “Let’s forget that happened and try again. We’ll erase that kiss from our memories and have a new first kiss.”

  When he closed the distance between us, I yelped and jumped back. His brow furrowed. I wrapped my arms around myself. “I think, well, I think I should go home now.”

  He blinked, confusion and burgeoning despair clouding his eyes. In that awful moment, I saw what it would do to him if I told him the truth about how that kiss made me feel. He cleared his throat and looked at his watch. Quietly, he said, “There’s still an hour until your curfew.”

  I pressed my lips together. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. And I avoided Keaton’s eyes.

  “You want to go home?” he asked.

  I nodded. I was fighting tears. I wanted to be home. I needed my sisters and I needed some space from Keaton so I could think.

  “Okay. I’ll take you home.” Of course he would. Keaton always respected my wishes. He was a perfectly perfect gentleman. So why couldn’t I love him like he wanted? Why hadn’t that kiss made everything right between us?

  We turned around and, in total silence, walked a few blocks to where we’d left Keaton’s car. He opened my door and I climbed in. The drive to my house was only a few minutes, but because we said nothing the entire ride, it felt like years.

  Keaton pulled into my driveway, but he didn’t shut off the car. He made no move to walk me inside, like he would have any other night, to say hello to my parents. Well, to my dad. Mama wasn’t home tonight, because she was at Keaton’s house, watching a movie with his mother. I swallowed down the sob that tried to escape my throat.

  This was terrible. This was truly awful. I didn’t want to upset our parents, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I did love Keaton very much. He was one of my best friends. His pain and confusion was breaking my heart. I cared so much for him, and I didn’t want him to be upset. But I didn’t know what to say that would make it better. When my hand touched the door handle, he spoke. “Did I ruin everything? Did that kiss ruin it all?”

  The urge to comfort him, to reassure him, was too strong to deny. “No, Keaton. It’s okay. Really. I need a little time to process it, that’s all.”

  His lips curved in the tiniest of smiles. “Good night, Audrey. I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

  “Good night, Keaton.” I climbed out and shut the door behind me, fighting the impulse to run to my front door and lock it behind me. Once inside, though, I did run. I ran up the stairs and straight into my sister Cat’s room, not even slowing down to knock. I slammed the door behind me and took in the startled faces of my sisters.

  Valerie immediately stood from where she sat on the floor and came to me. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Johnny Bright offered me a ride on his motorcycle.”

  Valerie’s eyes bugged out. Cat stood from her desk and grabbed my arm. She led me to her bed, and we all sat in a circle facing each other on top of her bedspread. “Are you okay?”

  I looked into her worried eyes. She thought Johnny had hurt me?

  “I hope you said no,” Valerie said before I could respond. “He’s dangerous, Audrey.”

  I blinked. Dangerous? She thought Johnny was dangerous? He’d been in trouble before, sure, but I didn’t think of him as a danger to me. Why had I brought Johnny up, anyway? I was upset about Keaton and that kiss. “Of course I didn’t go with him. Let me start at the beginning.”


  So I told them about my talk with Keaton at dinner. I told them every single thing he said, and every single thing I said in response. I told them he suggested we kiss, and that I thought it might be the right thing to do.

  I told them how his face looked as it came at me, and how he shoved his tongue in and out of my mouth. I told them I’d been shocked and had almost gagged, and was about to push Keaton off me when Johnny interrupted us with his loud motorcycle and asked if I needed a ride. The only detail I left out was the crazy moment when I wanted to say yes and let Johnny take me away.

  They listened intently, leaning forward with concern on their faces. When I was done, we sat quietly. I bit my lip as Cat and Valerie exchanged a glance. Cat turned back to me and said, “He really did that with his tongue? He really thought that was the way to go?”

  “He did. Are all kisses like that? That’s not how it looks in movies, but I thought maybe real life was different.” I crossed my arms and scowled. “And well, if that’s what kissing is like, I want no part of it.”

  “Audrey, I feel terrible that this was your first kiss. No, that’s not how it is.” Cat brought my hand to her mouth and gave the back of it a gentle peck. “That’s what Keaton should have done to your mouth for your first kiss, not that other weird thing.”

  Valerie nodded. “Cat’s right. He blew it.”

  I drummed my fingers on my leg. “Do you think if we tried again, and did it differently...do you think then I’d feel something?”

  My sisters exchanged another glance, and I knew the answer before they said a word.

  “You didn’t feel anything?” Valerie asked. “Nothing at all?”

  I felt shock. I felt confusion. I felt dismay and disappointment. “Nothing good.”

  “What about that moment before the kiss?” Cat asked. “You know, that moment when you know it’s about to happen, and he’s moving in, but it hasn’t happened yet. That’s my favorite part—the anticipation. Did you feel anything good during that part?”