Free Rebellious by Gillian Archer

long enough, you’ll pick up some amazing blow-job tips.”
    My mind flashed back to the clubhouse and the girls under the table in the bar. “So that’s a regular thing? The girls just…”
    “Yup.”
    “In front of everyone?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    I digested that particular piece of information. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a prude, but I’m not an exhibitionist, either. “Do you and Zag—”
    “Hell no. We only
you know
in private. And he doesn’t partake of the skanks, either. He knows exactly what’ll happen to his dick if he does.”
    I laughed heartily at that. Jess would like to pretend that she was hard-core, but she really was a pussycat. Or maybe not. I’d noticed she’d developed a harder shell since Zag. Was that what would happen to me? I was dying to ask but afraid to know the answer.
    Instead I asked her something else that had been bugging me all morning.
    “Can I trust him?”
    “What?” Jessica blinked as if she was shocked by the question. “Of course you can. Did you hear the part I said about him giving you the shirt off his back? And you’ve seen him with his son.”
    “Yeah, but…” I avoided her eyes and took a long slurp of my now cold caramel cappuccino, then made a face. “I dunno. There was a point last night when I was worried about my own safety.”
    Jessica leaned close to me and lowered her voice. “With Reb? You were worried about your safety with Reb? Really?”
    I nodded as tears blurred my vision. “When I was with him in his office and told him what was going on with Rhonda and Tuck…he hit the wall.”
    “And?”
    “He hit it hard, Jess. Like bashed a hole in it and everything.”
    Jessica leaned back in her chair, her brow wrinkled. “And that’s it? That’s all he did?”
    I looked at her in disbelief. “What more does he have to do? He broke the wall. Sheetrock rained down on my head.”
    “Do you remember that year and a half you lived with my family?”
    I nodded.
    “Do you remember how my brothers were? Half the time they were trying to kill one another and the other half they were taking their aggression out on the walls, doors, or anything else in their path. It’s a guy thing. Some of them grow out of it, but not guys like the prez. Not guys in the club. They’re built for fight, not flight.”
    “You’re not exactly selling him very well, Jess.”
    “Yeah, but he takes out his aggression on
things.
Or on scumbags who deserve it. Assholes who I’m not gonna shed a tear over. But not women or children or random strangers. He’s not built that way. Plus my guy told me some stuff about the prez’s past…” Jessica trailed off when the door jingled as someone entered the coffee shop.
    I waited until they passed by our table. “And? Are you seriously gonna leave me hanging? Spill!”
    “Okay, but you can’t tell him you heard this from me. It’s just…I guess, like you, he had a shitty childhood. His dad knocked around his mom, and him, too. It got bad. Real bad. His old man came back from ’Nam kinda screwed up and took it out on everyone around him.”
    I leaned back into the booth and tried to process Jess’s bombshell. It was hard to merge the two very different versions of this man in my mind. I honestly couldn’t picture him as a child. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember seeing any pictures of a young Reb at his house. But maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe, like me, he had a past he didn’t want to remember.
    If his childhood was half as dysfunctional as mine, this was a match made for some screwed-up reality show. Or a therapist’s wet dream, at the very least.
    “You know, now that I think of it, you guys would make an awesome couple.”
    I blinked at Jessica in disbelief. “What are you smoking? You just told me that he’s every bit as screwed-up as me. And considering
my
history, how is this ever gonna end well?”
    “If he could go through all that shit with Rhonda and not fuck her up, you don’t have