Page 59 of The Rebel's Guide to Pride

“Don’t you ever say that again.” He cut me off. “You told me everything I need to know about him in our messages…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Our messages?” I asked, gawking at him.

“Um.” He flushed, the moonlight giving away the sudden blush across his cheeks. “On Instagram…”

The synapses in my brain were misfiring as I tried to make sense of him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It was me, okay?” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I thought you knew the whole time, but then you said I was Mason—”

“Y-you?” I sputtered in shock.

He looked away, tongue licking at his bottom lip. “I really wanted to talk to you after I was an asshole at the rec center, so I sent a DM on Insta…”

He has been messaging me this whole time.

The artsy photos, the fact that I hadn’t followed Cohen since freshman year, how he asked about my father after I’d revealed too much to him at the rec center—it was beginning to add up. And it pissed me off so much that I got to my feet.

“What theactualfuck, Cohen?” I hissed, throwing my hands up. “How the hell was I supposed to know ‘bedmas’ was you?”

“Does it matter?” He scrambled to his feet. “Because I meant everything I said to you.”

I didn’t know how to begin processing his confession, but I knew one thing for certain: I’d meant everything I said in the DMs too. I’d confided in him and shared secrets I’d told no one, secrets he didn’t deserve to know. Now…

“Yes, it matters,” I answered. My voice came out tight, likeall the air had been sucked from my lungs. “You could’ve, I dunno”—I tried to breathe—“texted me if it was so important.”

He nervously ran a hand through his cowlicked hair, ragged breaths matching my own. His eyes were trained on his shoes as he toed the gravel. “I couldn’t do that, Zeke. I didn’t want to see our old texts.” He gulped and cut his gaze up to me. “I didn’t want to be reminded of how much of a dick I was to you. I thought if I DM’d you, it’d be like a fresh start.”

I never want to talk to you again.His last text still hurt, still burned in my memory. No matter how many times I tried to delete the thread, I couldn’t.

“Why…why did you want to talk to me?” I asked, blinking away the past.

His laughter was broken, a chokedha-ha. “I spent the last three years hating you, and it wasn’t fair. When you told me about your dad, I thought maybe we could be friends again. The longer we talked, it felt like maybe we could go back to before. Now that I know everything—”

“You’re not supposed to know!” It was a strangled cry echoing into the night. Traitorous tears fell, and I wiped them away. My voice lowered to a rough whisper. “And I can’t go back to how it was before.”Who I was before.

“I’m sorry.” He looked at me helplessly, shoulders slumped. “When I found out you thought I was Mason at the last speakeasy, I tried to tell you…but I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“You said there was so much pressure with your dad and Sawyer”—his throat bobbed as he swallowed—“and having Mason to talk to made it bearable. I just…Zeke, I didn’t want you to be alone in all that.”

He looked up at me through his long eyelashes, and it took me back to all those quiet moments we’d shared. I couldn’t separate the implications of the raid and his revelation. It was dividing me into a disagreement of emotions: shock and anger and panic and hurt and embarrassment.

I was so goddamn embarrassed by everything that’d happened tonight.

My hands balled into fists, and the gravel scattered as I kicked at the ground. As I stomped over to the dirt bike and threw the helmet at him without another word. Everything was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

My skin crawled, like bugs were burrowing just underneath. I couldn’t scratch the feeling away no matter how much I tried. That unnerving squirm started at my feet and moved up my legs to my stomach, wriggling around my neck as I took in the damage.

Roaring Mechanics was a mess. Most of the decorations had been destroyed in the mass exit, cast aside like garbage on the art deco floor. I stood in the middle of the shop watching the morning sun glisten off the green shatters of the mirror ball. Its pieces covered the same spot where we’d been standing when the raid started. When Buchanan and his homophobic cronies had come rushing into the one place that felt safe.

The dread that weighed me down after the raid had followed me back to the shop. Cohen had given me an awkward wave goodbye and left me standing at the entrance, my angerover his deceit drowned out by worry. Unable to go inside, I’d gotten on my dirt bike again and ridden until daybreak.

The back of my neck itched, and I raised an arm to scratch it. The waft of adrenaline from my sweat-caked shirt made me want to go upstairs and shower. Fall into bed and close my eyes and forget. But I couldn’t. This felt exactly like being up on the billboard catwalk all over again. Lonely and terrifying. I could hear the yells from the mayor’s rally between every deep inhale, see the faces of his supporters when I blinked.

Everything had fallen apart so quickly, and I needed to put it back together.

The number one priority was to clean before Mom got back.That I can handle,I assured myself.Then I can worry about how much trouble I’m in and what will happen…My thoughts spiraled as I forced my feet toward the supply closet in the back. Every step crunched over debris, memories ricocheting through me. Bodies thrashing to leave and shouts echoing off the shop floor, the mayor’s twang plucking at my insides and my father’s warning to keep my head down.

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