I’d been wondering the same thing too and always noticed a shift in Rebel’s mood after he’d had any sort of interaction with him.
“It’s not like I have a lot of friends,” Rebel said. “Not real ones, anyway.”
“And you thought he was?” I asked, cutting Kit off when he snorted and started to say something.
“He’s always been a dick,” Rebel admitted. “Back when his band was headlining, they pulled some pretty hardcore pranks on some of the bands they toured with. For whatever reason, he sort of took me under his wing, would get me up on stage with him for sets, that kind of thing.”
“Is that what he meant when he said you owed him?” Kit asked.
“Yeah. The wholeAcoustic Hellscapething sounded a lot like him wanting to recapture his glory days, and I’d have been fine with that, seriously, like working with him and Cole and Davy on an album would have been pretty badass if he hadn’t gone about it the way he did. All the stuff he was yelling last night, about the money he’d already spent on the project and how he wasn’t going to get any of that back, coupled with what Cole said about the lyrics being rough, strikes me as being rushed and poorly planned out.”
“He sounded desperate,” Kit said.
“He’d have to be to come at me like that,” Rebel replied.
“Do you think he’ll keep coming?” I asked.
He shrugged, patting down the pockets of his parka, looking for his vape.
“Here,” I said, passing him mine after he’d checked a couple zipped pockets without answering me.
“Thanks.”
“Thank me by telling me the truth,” I said. “Is he a danger to you?”
“Look, I’ve never seen him act like that before,” I admitted. “I’ve seen him heated in the past, and yeah, we’ve exchangedwords a couple times, but it’s never come to blows the way it almost did last night.”
“Still didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out.
He shrugged again and took another puff. “Because I don’t have one. I don’t know if he’ll turn up at another event or if he’ll drop in when I get home. I never know what to expect when it comes to him. We won’t talk for a couple weeks, then he’ll send a dumbass meme or dick pics and a message asking if I want him to meet me at one of our upcoming stops. Most times, I tell him no, because he never knows when the fuck to leave and always winds up pissing the rest of the band off.”
“Like he did with me at the bar,” Kit mused.
“That was a bit much, even for him. He’s usually a bit… subtler when he’s trying to talk people into something.”
“Something tells me he’s sweet-talked you into a lot of things,” I said.
Sighing, Rebel squirmed, took another puff, and handed my vape back.
“He and I, there was a time when I…” Rebel began, words trailing off.
“You know that there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me stop loving you, right?” Kit asked, framing his face with his hands so Rebel couldn’t look away.
I felt him shiver before sliding gloved fingers through Kit’s hair, gripping the strands as he tugged him in for a kiss.
“I love you too,” Rebel murmured against his lips when they finally broke the kiss.
Sweet, gentle, the two of them went back to kissing and clinging to one another while I held them. Then Rebel squirmed enough for me to loosen my hold and turned in my arms so he could kiss me too.
“You, I’ve been in love with since the night you growledpatiencein my ear and proceeded to rock my world. I’m sorry it took almost fucking things up irreparably for me to figure it out.”
“It’s all forgiven,” I replied. “I understand way better nowwhy you did what you did, and what I could have done to salvage the moment for both of us. I love you, too. No matter what you tell us about Knightly, that isn’t going to change.”
He sighed then, holding my gaze as his smile wavered.
“Knightly helped me figure out what I liked,” Rebel finally admitted. “In the bedroom and beyond. Sex was always fun and all, but it was more about feeling good, getting off, and forgetting about everything else for a little while. He showed me how to make that last longer. How to give up control and just be absolutely one with the moment without second-guessing and getting all in my head and muddling things up. We, uh, I don’t know if it was ever official or anything, but yeah, I guess you could say that we were dating at one point until our bands got pulled in different directions. Then his broke up a couple years back, and I started hearing a lot more from him again. That first year, he’d pop up a lot, but the last time we hung out, he and Dash nearly got in a fistfight.”
“I’d ask over what, but having experienced his levels of douchbaggery firsthand, I’m sure it was a variety of things,” Kit said.