Foolish Games: A Brothers Best Friend Fake Dating Romance

The Rain King （excerpt）

“Time to collect.”

I glower at the plain brick townhouse as we cruise by. A light is on in an upstairs window, and her shadow moves inside the room. Low light filters through the blinds over the living room windows. A mixture of fury and finality simmers inside me as Reggie pulls to a stop.

“Sure you don’t need backup?” he asks, leaning forward to pull his gun from the back of his jeans.

“I got it,” I say, throwing open the car door. “This shit’s personal.”

“Just because he’s a pussy, that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous,” Reggie calls as I climb out. I circle the car, and he cranks the window down and reaches out.

“He’s still my brother,” I say, clasping his hand and pulling us in close.

“Nah,” Reggie says. “The Crows are your brothers.”

“The Crows don’t exist anymore,” I remind him.

We all know it’s bullshit. We will always belong to something greater, something deeper, a brotherhood that transcends blood.

“You got too much faith in the malparido,” Daniel says from the back seat. “Mess with a guy’s bitch, and he doesn’t think straight.”

“Learned that the hard way,” I say, cracking a grin and leaning down to speak through the open window. If you can’t joke about that shit, it’ll drive you insane.

“We’ll be here,” Reggie says. “Give us a signal if you need us.”

“I’m going around back to have a smoke,” Billy says, pushing the empty passenger seat forward and climbing out. “In case he’s still a little bitch, and he tries to run.”

“He won’t run,” I say, the urge to defend my brother coming automatically.

There’s no use with these guys, though. They are my boys, and he’s not. He’s not one of us anymore. He made that choice, and in their eyes, he deserves no respect. He’s a rival.

But I know he made it for her. And hell, maybe I’d have done the same if she’d chosen me.

The thought makes the old rage rise inside me, a phoenix of fury that turns to ashes when I don’t think about it but is ready to burst into incinerating flames the moment I do.

Reggie sets his gun on his lap and grabs his cigarettes off the dash. “No reason to live with unfinished business,” he says. “Go take care of it.”

“Gracias, parce,” I say to him, then nod to the rest of my crew who rode with me tonight. Straightening, I tuck my gun in at the small of my back before heading for the door.

I haven’t seen the inside of my twin’s place since he moved here. He cut ties with more than the Crows when he dipped.

I’ve driven by, though. Imagined cruising by and scaring them, making them wonder if we’re coming for them. If we’re biding our time before payback. I’ve imagined sliding down the window, hanging my arm out, shooting him in the back while he carries in groceries for her.

It’s a pussy move, but then, he knows all about those.

I’ve thought about putting a bullet in her head when she’s in the yard, maybe a few years down the road, when they have kids and he’ll be stuck with them.

Mostly though, I think about seeing them fucking. If the windows are open one day, the white curtains fluttering, and framed between them, I’ll see his hands on her bare back as she rides him, her head thrown back and her long, dark hair tumbling down as she moves, so lost in her own bliss she doesn’t remember I exist.

Or maybe he’ll have her bent over the bed, pounding into her from behind like a man possessed, the way he used to fuck the initiates, so lost in his own lust he doesn’t remember she exists.

After the crew girls, it’s hard to fuck a girl normally, but I guess they worked it out. Rae wouldn’t stick around if she wasn’t into his game. She’s a runner, after all.

Which will only make it that much sweeter to catch her tonight. To let her cry and beg, and make her think I’ll have mercy, only to take what I’m owed in the end.

I don’t have to worry about treating her right or having her stick around.

I’m not the one marrying her tomorrow.

I’m just here to take what I was promised last year, when things were simple and she was just a piece of ass. When I still had a brother.

Tonight, he’ll pay for what he did.

And she’ll pay for making him do it.

*

Two Years Before

Rae West

I look up from my book at the sound of a hard, insistent tap on the window startling out of my fictional world. I’m on the second floor, so there’s no way a person could be tapping, but before my rational brain can supply that information, my heart lurches into my throat and I almost fall out of the window seat. My eyes don’t meet that of a person or a tommyknocker from a nursery rhyme, though. They meet the solid black eyes of a crow.

“Poe,” I say through a startled laugh. “You scared me.”

I rise carefully, and the bird hops back a few steps and caws demandingly. After only a few weeks, she’s barely afraid of me.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m hungry too,” I mutter, crossing my room to grab the sandwich waiting on my plate for when she—or he—came back. I’m not really sure how to tell a male from a female crow. In fact, I named her after Edgar Allen Poe thinking she was a raven. By the time she cawed at me in her bossy, impatient way, it was too late. I figure Poe’s a good name whether male or female, but I’ve decided she’s a female looking for a place to make a nest.

I set the plate down and heave the window up with both hands. It was painted shut and doesn’t have a screen, so I know it’s not meant to be opened. But what my parents don’t know won’t hurt them. The porch roof extends under the window, so it’s not like I can fall. Which might not be their number one concern if they knew that my only friend in Faulkner is a bird that eats carrion as well as my bread crusts.

Holding the window with one hand so the impossibly heavy thing won’t fall shut and behead me like a guillotine, I quickly stack up a dozen fat paperbacks to hold it. Poe hops closer, giving me an impatient caw and cocking her head like she’s trying to figure out my methods. She’s a smart bird. I bet if she had hands, she’d show me an easier way to keep the window open. At this very moment, she’s probably thinking how ridiculous I am.

Picking up my sandwich, I lean down and slowly push the plate out so as not to startle her. She hops onto the edge and caws angrily at me before I’ve even released the plate.

“Hungry little thing, aren’t you?” I ask softly, tearing off a crust and dropping it onto the plate. She snatches it up with her beak right away. The poor bird always acts like she’s starving.

The first few days, she stood on the porch roof and stared at me while I ate my sandwich in my reading nook. I felt bad eating when she had nothing, so I started to throw out the crusts and close the window before she arrived. But within a week, she knew she could trust me to put food out while she was at the far edge of the roof. Now, after only two weeks in the big new house, I’ve gained her trust enough that she’ll eat off my plate while I’m so close I could touch her.

I’m working up to that, but I don’t want to scare her off. For now, we share our lunch in companionable silence. I tear off each bread crust and toss it out when she finishes the last one. I hear other crows in the neighborhood, but she’s the only one who visits.

Maybe she’s new and without a flock, alone like me.

“Honey?” Mom calls, her voice a soft plea as she taps on my door. “Can you come downstairs? Your father wants to talk to you.”

I quickly toss out the last crusts of bread and pull the plate in, close the window, and brush the crumbs off my cushion. Then I pick up the book I left open, keeping a finger in the yellowing pages of the battered paperback. Until I get a library card, I’m rereading the handful of books I snuck here in the bottom of my box of clothes before the move. My parents think books are not a necessity and should be left behind.

I hug The Tommyknockers to my chest like it might hear those ugly words echoing in my memory. “What does he want?” I call back.

“You need to get outside,” Mom says. “You haven’t left the house since we got here.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” I mutter to myself. I know it’ll just piss off my stepfather if I don’t obey, though. I quickly tear off the corner of a page in my composition notebook and slide it between the pages of my novel to mark my spot. I leave it in my window seat—the best thing about the new house—and join Mom in the hall. She smiles nervously and tugs my shirt straight, picking at me like a nervous little bird, nothing like Poe’s assertive demands. If Mom was a bird, she’d be one who was scared of shadows. Her thin face is tense, her mouth drawn into a thin line and her eyes drooping with exhaustion.

I return her smile with an equally tight one of my own. She’s not an ally, but she’s also not the enemy. I try not to shoot the messenger more often than I can help it. I just have to survive one more year until I turn eighteen, until I graduate and move the fuck out of here.

“’Late last night and the night before,’” I sing under my breath as I follow her down the stairs, pressing my fingernails into my palms to steady myself before facing Lee.

I step into the living room where my stepdad sits smoking and squinting at the little boxy TV that looks too small for the room. I don’t know how my parents could afford this place, though in all honesty, it’s a dump. Or “fixer upper” as my mom said when she told me we were moving here. It’s not a mansion, though it might as well be after our last place. It’s at least twice as big as our house in Ridgedale, probably more like three times. It’s also probably a hundred years old.

“You know we got a pool out back, or you been too busy holing up in your room with your nose in a book?” Lee asks.

“I didn’t figure you’d want me bringing pies to the neighbors,” I say with my sweetest smile.

“You getting smart with me, girl?” he asks, glowering at me from under grey brows on his protruding forehead. The asshole looks like a caveman elder, but I’m saving that little insult for when I walk out the door for good, flipping him the bird as I go.

“No,” I say. “Just stating facts.”

“Get your ass outside and start cleaning it,” he snaps.

“I don’t know how to clean a pool,” I point out. “Do I just skim it or…?”

Lee grinds his cigarette out in the ashtray sitting on the arm of his worn chair, his eyes boring into me with such intensity I’m pretty sure he’s imagining putting it out on my face. “I don’t pay the bills around here for you to sit on your ass like some pampered princess, reading whatever nonsense is in those books of yours,” he seethes. “You don’t know how to do something? Fucking figure it out, Rae, or I swear to God…”

An involuntary quake goes through me despite my efforts to be brave, and I shake my head, my bravado gone. “I’ll figure it out. Just sit tight while I get my shoes on.”

I race back upstairs and shove my feet into my tennis shoes, my heart pounding. The minute my shoes are on, hugging my feet like a pair of familiar, comforting arms, the craving to run almost overtakes me. I glance up and see the roof empty outside my reading nook. A pang of loneliness goes through me.

If I were a bird, I’d fly away too.

Not really. People who say they want that for a superpower are crazy. Flying sounds terrifying to me—being buffeted by the wind, careening out of control, maybe caught up in storm if you weren’t careful. I prefer my feet on the ground.

Lee is right, anyway. He does pay for everything, since Mom doesn’t have a job and won’t file for disability because then she’d have to explain all the mysterious injuries she never went to the doctor about. I haven’t rushed to get a job, either, looking the way I have for the past few weeks. Not that Lee would have let me. He has to keep up appearances. But maybe I’ll put in some applications now that I can leave the house without people staring.

Mom meets me at the back door, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Make yourself useful for an hour, just to get your father off your back,” she says, giving me an apologetic smile.

“It’s fine, Mom,” I say, pushing her hands away when she starts picking at me again. “I could use the fresh air, like you said. I might even go for a run before I come back.”

“What are you two hens squawking about?” Lee demands.

Mom cowers. “Don’t be out too late,” she whispers to me, darting a glance back to the living room. “Remember, Faulkner has a city curfew.”

“I’ll be in way before ten,” I say, pulling open the door and then pushing the screen door beyond. It creaks on its hinges, the wood old and wobbly, probably rotted through.

I step out onto the porch and take a deep breath of the sweltering May heat, letting the steamy air fill my lungs as I take in my surroundings. Though the grass isn’t uniform like it might be in a fancy neighborhood, the backyard has been mowed in neat stripes. Of course Lee had to take care of his lawn first thing. The man’s obsessed.

Apparently the next door neighbor is, too. I can hear their mower running, though it’s a damn sauna out here even at six in the evening. I catch a glimpse of a tall man through a hole in the privacy fence where three or four of the grey boards have been broken out to let neighborhood kids in. I can tell by the graffiti along the fence, mostly penises, swear words, and gang signs. There’s also a giant bird painted across one whole side of the wooden fence, each feather detailed in black paint. Its impressive wingspan stretches wide, as if to encircle the yard in a hug. I know instantly that someone else has gotten a visit from Poe. Did the person who lived here before us paint this? It’s not like the other graffiti.

I trot down the four steps, noting that the boards on the second step are loose, the nail heads sticking up half an inch. There’s a shed at the far end of the pool that looks like it might collapse in the next gust of wind, and a big old oak at the far end of the yard. But the swimming pool is front and center, unshaded by trees or the shed. That’s the main attraction. I cross the grimy white tiles to the pool.

And groan.

I pictured a scene from 90210 when Lee said we had a pool. Skim a few leaves and some tree pollen, and it would be a sparkling blue rectangle where I’d lay out and work on my tan while reading, like a rich girl.

This is… Not that.

The urge to run pops back up, wheedling for attention. It’s not like Lee cares if I work or run first. Okay, maybe he’ll care, but he won’t know. He’s off duty, and he’s planted himself for the evening. He won’t budge until dinner. As long as I stay out of the house, he won’t complain.

Probably.

I weigh the risks, then turn and cross the yard to climb through the hole in the fence, only then realizing I’m in the neighbor’s yard. He’s gone around the back of his house with the mower, so I hurry along the fence until it ends and step into our front yard before he sees me. Then I stop to gather my thick, dark waves into a high pony. I stretch for a minute, taking in the other houses in the neighborhood. I’ve seen these from my window, unlike the back yard.

Our house sits on the northwest corner of our block, where Mill ends. The other houses on the street are basic, drab rectangles. Ours sticks out like a sore thumb, the only two-story house within eyesight down any of the streets I can see from the windows. It’s big and white and shabby, with grungy white paint peeling away in places. The wraparound porch surrounds the entire lower level, and latticework hangs from the roof over it. It’s completely out of place among the ranch-style brick boxes in the surrounding area.

I finish stretching and take off, turning off Mill and jogging the first block to warm up. Humidity lays over the town like a damp blanket, along with an occasional whiff of the paper mill that blows in on the hot breeze, but late afternoon sun slants through the trees, turning the leaf edges golden. I like this time of day, even the heat.

I let it wash over me, absorb me, and I let go. Sometimes I run to work out my fury, sometimes to escape, sometimes to think. Today, though, I run to move my body again after stagnating in the eggshell of my room for two weeks, to be free and shake off the lethargy, and leave behind the broken pieces of my home.

This is the kind of flying I do.

My shoes hit the pavement with satisfying impact, the ground solid and reassuring under my feet. It’s nice to know it’s always there for me, not shifting or disappearing on a whim. The earth is predictable and stable, there no matter what town I move to or what mood my stepdad is in. Needless to say, it’s something I can totally appreciate.

I lose myself in the rhythm, letting my feet take me where they will. I’m not worried about getting lost. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and since I’m in a new place, I take note of each street name when I pass. I see a girl in overalls skateboarding with a Walkman in her pocket, headphones over her ears, and I make a note to grab my music next time I run.

Before I know it, the sun has sunk behind the houses, and the cars speeding by have their lights on. Well, shit. I lost track of time. I turn and retrace my steps as fast as I can, fear increasing my pace but making me reckless. Just as I turn back onto Mill Street, I run smack into a guy. The impact sends me flying backward, literally bouncing off the wall of tight muscle. I slam down on the cracked sidewalk, the breath knocked out of me so thoroughly I can’t even cry out or cuss at the pain.

The guy towers over me as I lie on the sidewalk like an overturned turtle. From my vantage point, he looks like a giant, easily over six feet of solid muscle, wearing a pair of knee-length basketball shorts and running shoes. He’s shirtless, which means I have a full view of all that muscle straining under his smooth light brown skin, like it barely fits. Tattoos ring his arms, spread over his chest and shoulders, peek out from the top of his low-slung athletic shorts, and wrap around the front of his neck like a threatening hand.

He studies me with emotionless eyes, dark and fathomless. The asshole doesn’t even offer an apology or a hand to help me up.

I suck in a hideously ugly breath and scramble to my feet, brushing off my ass. “Watch where you’re going, jerk face,” I snap.

The barest spark of life flits through his eyes, which up close are a dark, deep, mossy green. The corners of his full, masculine lips twitch. Then he’s back to stony indifference, a muscle in his square jaw ticking.

“Watch how you speak to people in la olla, little girl,” he says, his voice a startlingly deep, annoyingly sexy growl with just a hint of an accent. His black hair is shorn on the sides but long enough on top to be a bit mussed by sweat and the wind. From the collision with his bare chest, I can tell he’s been running a while too.

Now that I’m standing, he’s not quite such a behemoth, though he still looms at least a foot taller than my five-foot-four frame. My instinct for self-preservation slightly outweighs my temper, and one look at this tattooed tower tells me I don’t want to mess with him. I give him a two-finger salute. “Noted,” I say. “Thanks for the heads up.”

He looks down at me like I’m a roach he’d like to stomp. The feeling is entirely mutual.

“Anytime, little girl,” he says, his voice dropping into a slow drawl as his gaze melts over me, taking me in from my messy ponytail to the loose strands sticking to the damp skin of my neck, my sweaty ringer tee, high-waisted shorts, and bare legs. Suddenly I do feel like a little girl, or at least an idiot who runs in jean shorts.

“Later, jerk face,” I say, turning and starting up the walkway to our house. I’m on the porch before I remember I was supposed to clean the pool. Shit. I wanted to slam the door in that guy’s face, but not as much as I want to avoid Lee’s wrath. I veer around the side of the house, following the wrap-around porch. When I spare a glance over my shoulder, the guy is still standing there, watching me with a frown. Double shit. I thought he’d be gone, continuing on with his run. Now he saw me look back at him, like I wanted to know if he was watching me walk away.

I dart around the house and take a minute to gather my wits and examine my elbows, which are scraped to hell from biting the dust so hard. At least I didn’t crack my skull open.

I sigh and head down the back steps to survey the job ahead. As I stand there listening to the drone of a weed eater next door, excitement starts to replace the dread at such a huge undertaking. So, it’ll take more than a quick skim with a net before I’m enjoying a California-blue teenage dream. So what? It’s not like I’ve never gotten my hands dirty or done hard work before. This time, I have something better than money waiting at the end. My stepdad just takes all my money anyway. He can’t take this. Hell, he probably won’t even use it much.

But I’ll use it.

I can barely contain myself as I close my eyes and imagine it, something I’ve never even hoped for, it was so far out of the realm of possibility. A pool. Only rich kids have pools in Ridgedale. My friends and I listened with envy while the popular girls talked about pool parties and laying out working on their tans. I never dreamed I’d have something so posh.

“Hey,” calls a warm, masculine voice behind me.

I spin around, my eyes sweeping the yard before landing on a guy standing with his hands braced on either side of the gap in the fence, his head ducked under the crossbeam at the top.

Everything about him is sweet as honey. Eyes like warm, melted gold peer out at me from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses set on a prominent nose above wide, full lips that are smiling at me in a way that makes funny things happen in my lower belly. His jaw is strong and square, his cheekbones sharp as saw blades, his skin beaded with little droplets of sweat that gleam in the twilight like he’s running with honey. A shock of messy, damp black hair completes the image of the guy who is too gorgeous for words.

My throat sticks as I try to swallow. Yep, words have deserted me. The guy is… Breathtaking.

The weed eater is no longer running, so he must have shut it off while I was lost in thought. The silence in the neighborhood seems to throb in the stifling evening air.

“You okay?” he asks, his smile widening at one corner only, so it goes all crooked.

My stomach careens sideways too.

“Hey,” I say, trying not to sound as nervous and jumpy as I feel suddenly. I don’t like being taken by surprise, especially not by guys who look like they belong in movies instead of a rundown neighborhood in Faulkner, Arkansas.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks, gesturing to the gap in the fence. “I figure introducing myself is the neighborly thing to do, but I like to ask before I come in a girl’s hole.”

If I wasn’t already sweating from the heat, I am now.

I’m also wondering what kind of jerk talks like that to a stranger.

“There’s already a lot of dicks in here,” I say, gesturing to the graffiti on the fence. “I’m sure I won’t even notice one more.”

He laughs and steps through the gap, his long legs taking him across the grass to join me in moments. I try not to ogle the way he moves; the way his jeans sit low on his hips; the wallet chain that swings casually against his thigh with each step or the earrings glinting in each ear; the way his sweat-soaked white t-shirt clings to the lean muscle underneath.

Try being the operative word.

“Looks like a good day for a swim,” he says, planting his hands on his hips and gazing down into the pool.

I jerk my attention back to the task at hand. Just because he’s hot—volcanically so—doesn’t mean he’s interested, or that I’m interested in him. Besides, the guy looks at least twenty. I’ve had my share of catcalls from gross old guys, but I’m not used to them making me flustered. It’s just thrown me for a loop because he’s so not gross.

“You first,” I say, trying to shake off the star-struck moment.

“What, you chicken?” he taunts.

“Um, yes,” I say. “That’s a festering vat of disease.”

He laughs again, the sound rich and rolling through the dense heat like it’s part of it, like he’s part of the air itself, the town, the rustle of the oak tree swaying lazily in the summer evening.

He makes his voice dramatic, like he’s reading Shakespeare, and sweeps his arm wide. “Who knows what rusty needles and used condoms lurk in ye murky depths?”

A snort starts to escape me before I realize how ugly that sounds and try to change it to a giggle, which I’m pretty sure is a sound I’ve never made in my life. The hybrid snort-giggle is less attractive than if I’d just gone all in for the snort.

The guy laughs again, the warm sound making me want to disappear into the ground after my failed attempt at sounding cute.

At least someone’s finding humor in the situation. I turn my attention back to the half-foot of sludge at the bottom of the blue rectangle. A mixture of rainwater, rotten leaves, acorns, dead mosquitos and their larvae, and other sticks and bugs forms a thick stew of nastiness in the pool that should be full of clear, sparkling, Beverly Hills water.

The guy sobers but smiles sideways at me, a dimple sinking into his cheek. God, it’s not even fair how fine he is. “Well, I just saw you over here and figured I’d come by and introduce myself, since it seems we’re neighbors,” he says. “I’m Lennox.”

“Like Annie?” I ask, smiling up at him.

“Sure,” he says, tipping his chin toward me. “What about you?”

“Rae.”

“Like Billy Ray Cyrus?” he asks. “Ray Charles? Ray of Sunshine?”

“With an E,” I correct.

“You look like a ray of sunshine to me,” he says, and I’m startled to see him checking me out from the corner of his eye.

“It’s actually Rae West, like Mae West. My mom’s a big fan of old movies, and we have the same last name, but she wanted to add a little Southern flare so…” I realize I’m rambling, thrown off by having a guy who looks like him looking at me like he is.

“Wait, your last name is West?”

“Yeah,” I say. “So?”

“No way,” he says with an easy laugh.

“What?” I insist, halfway embarrassed and halfway irritated that I’m not in on the joke.

“Lennox North,” he says, pointing to his chest. “Just think, if we got married, we could be the North-Wests.”

I laugh, flustered by a guy I just met talking about us marrying, when he’s clearly older than me and a million times too hot.

“The neighborhood could use some fresh blood,” he says, his manner turning more serious. “Fresh faces. A pool…”

I roll my eyes. “So that’s why you’re really here? To ask if you can use our pool?”

“Not just me,” he says, his eyes lighting up as he paints a scenario in his mind. “A lot of kids around here… They don’t have stuff like pools. It might be cool if they could come swim here. You could be the neighborhood hot spot, where we all hang out.” He gives me such a winning smile my knees nearly melt, and I want to give him everything he’s asking just because he said he’d come hang out with me.

God, I’m such a ditz.

“If you’re up for it, of course,” he says when I’m too busy drooling to answer.

“I wouldn’t mind,” I say, reality punching back into me like a familiar fist. “It’s just, my dad—my stepdad… He’s not, like, super friendly. In fact, you should probably go. He wouldn’t want me talking to strangers, even if you are the neighbor.”

That’s putting it so nicely I almost laugh. If the neighborhood kids started frequenting our pool, Lee would sit on the back porch with his Glock and use them for target practice. My family keeps things behind closed doors. We don’t go meet the neighbors—hence it being two weeks since we moved in before any of us met him. We sure as hell don’t invite the neighbors over for a pool party. The only reason Lee wants this back in working order is so he can have something no one else has, something worth coveting, and maybe invite a few officers over to show it off.

Our job is to make sure everyone knows he’s the best. To shine a light on his goodness and hide the badness in shadow. Telling the neighbor, a virtual stranger, the truth would lead to dire consequences. I may only be seventeen, but that lesson comes from experience, not age. We don’t tell strangers our problems. We tell them they’re unwelcome when they ask to use our pool, and we pretend we don’t see their face fall, and we stop ourselves from backtracking and offering a compromise.

This is family business. We don’t air our dirty laundry in public. No one else needs to know what goes on behind those doors. Letting someone in, letting them come over on the regular, lounge beside the pool and draw me in with dirty jokes and criminal smiles, would be too risky.

I’m afraid to look at Lennox, afraid he’ll see something I don’t want seen. So I stare into the mess at the bottom of the pool while he says goodbye, and I tell myself it’s better this way. Tempting as it is to flirt with the hot neighbor, it’s the last kind of trouble I need to bring into my life. I’ll be gone in a year anyway. I just have to make it to graduation—no distractions, no connections that will tie me here.

So, with my stupid heart screaming at me that I’m the one being stupid, I let him walk across the lawn and disappear back onto his own side of the fence.

He’ll probably never talk to me again.