Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Deacon
I smiled out at the ocean as the breeze cut through my clothes, not because I wanted to, but rather because the ferry was passing by our sailboat and one too many cell phones were pointed in my direction.
Maybe they were just taking photos of the view of the island, or maybe they were about to sell my photo to a tabloid . . . or most likely both. And if I frowned for even a second , I knew I'd wake up to some headline about “bad boy Deacon Harrow is looking sad after his latest breakup with supermodel Kate Schofield."
Little did they know that the nineteen-year-old British supermodel and I had never been dating. We’d been set up by our publicists for a couple opportunistic photo ops together while I’d been on a press tour in London. And soon I'd be yet again labeled a “playboy and heartbreaker" to keep my name in the press while filming this new romantic comedy.
And then my rom-com co-star, Ivy Blanc, and I would start our greatest acting gig yet: not the movie itself, but navigating the media storm afterwards to make everyone think we were madly in love and get more butts in theater seats.
Contracts had already been signed, my personal life leveraged for lots of money, sold to the highest bidder. I was no longer a singular person, I was a business , and there were a lot of people vested in keeping Deacon Harrow LLC running.
As the ferry passed and the prying eyes pulled out of view, my posture eased and I stared down at the choppy water. “Clear.”
“All good.” My agent—Zeke—army-crawled out from under the white leather bench as if it were perfectly normal to hide from paparazzi so they could get a better shot of his client. “Why the sad face, D-man?”
"Not sad, just not smiling," I replied, rubbing my sore jaw.
"This isn't about the whole Zap thing, is it?"
"No," I said tightly. "Although that's not necessarily helping my mood.”
Zeke shook me by the shoulders, pulling the neckline of my polo shirt askew. "Loopy is already all over the Zap stuff, brother.”
“His name is Luca,” I said. “You’d think after six years, you’d know my assistant’s name.”
“It’s a nickname, D-Money,” Zeke chided. “Anyway, he’s got a conservation organization in LA that is going to make you their new poster boy, and they’re going to send some money over to the turtles?—”
"Skinks—”
"Whatever," he said as he frantically texted someone. If I had a nickel for every time I’d seen that man without a phone in his hands, I’d have ten cents. The only person worse than Zeke might be my publicist, Cody. "It'll all be old news, my man. We had this whole Kate breakup in our back pocket for just such an occasion. She even pretended to cry walking out of Nobu the other day, so we are golden. I should send her a fruit basket.”
Great . The media thought I was the sort of guy who made beautiful, young models cry. And what was even more concerning was that that was somehow helpful to my public image.
I gripped the railing tighter, even as I nodded along to Zeke’s debriefing. It wasn't worth fighting him on this. I wasn't my own person anymore. I was just a cog in a bigger machine, and too many booby traps were laid out before me for me to deviate from our plans.
"Listen, save the sad puppy schtick for the cameras, m’kay?” Zeke said. “We've only got two days to par-tay before I've got to catch the red eye back to LA. Your team is already at the house getting ready, we’ve flown in a chef who used to work for Henry Cavill, and your trainer is letting you have two cheat days in a row so we can have some real fun. Now, if only this island had a strip club, right?”
I looked at Zeke and let out a long-suffering sigh. He spoke like an amalgamation of eight different kinds of douchebag, but he was the best in the business so I tried to ignore it.
I'd managed to secure the Holloway Estate for my team since it was the off-season on Prickle Island. My father had been the head butler for the rich family, and apparently they were “tickled” by the success of one of their former employees’ sons. I was paying an extortionate amount to stay in their home now, but I had money to blow and it was a personal vendetta of mine to stay there.
The image of the giant, sprawling estate was still branded into my mind. I’d told myself every single day over my childhood summers that one day I'd live there. And even if it was only for three weeks, I was going to make that dream a reality.
Of course, those summers I’d spent almost no time at our little cottage in the corner of the Holloway Estate and every waking moment at Prickle Island Zoo. It had been the first time I’d felt like a celebrity—getting to waltz through the front entry and skip the lines, being waved through by the front desk people. I’d been so proud that I was personal friends with the family who ran the zoo.
Even though my older brother and younger sister had spent summers on Prickle Island too, they hadn’t thought romping around the island with a bunch of feral zoo children was as much fun as I had. I wondered how many of the Lachlan kids still lived and worked at the zoo. I wondered the most about one particular person who’d called me out of the blue two years ago like a ghost from my past.
“I really thought we should’ve taken the chopper—what’s the point of having a helipad if you don’t use it, you know? But you’re right, man. The boat is the best way to see the island,” Zeke said as Prickle Island came into view. “You remember much about this place?”
"Not much," I lied.
The summers between the ages of nine and twelve had been the best of my life. Fifteen years had passed by and still the memories were perfectly preserved in my mind. Well, not all of them, just the ones that involved one stubborn girl with taped-together glasses and permanent space buns that had made me wonder if her hair just grew in that shape.
The fondness of the memory warped as I remembered our last exchange.
" Never talk to me again. "
That was the last thing she'd said to me. Dove Lachlan had called me out of the blue after over a decade of radio silence, asking me if I had any need of the zoo for swanky events or for a movie I was working on. I could hear the panic in her voice, knew she must’ve been desperate to even call me, and I’d instantly said yes. We’d called back and forth a few times working out the logistics—something I normally would’ve passed on to my team, but I’d just wanted an excuse to walk down memory lane with her. But then all of the Zap stuff had come out, and when I’d tried to call her to explain, she’d texted me “never talk to me again” and that had been it.
She’d deleted all her socials and disappeared after that text, and I wondered if it was because she didn’t want to see me splashed all over her feeds, wondered if it made her stomach sour to look at me now. I had plenty of people who hated me, plenty more who thought I was a talentless hack, but I’d learned to develop a thick skin and not care what they thought. But there was one person apart from my family who knew all the holes in my armor.
My stomach dropped just thinking about it. I needed things between us to be set right, needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t the guy she thought I was. The thought nettled me. In a life that was anything but normal, one where thousands of keyboard warriors professed their hate for me every day, I needed my childhood best friend to still think of me as a human and not a brand.
And now I'd be staying on her island, filming at her zoo for three weeks—something that I had thought would be a fun reconnection with an old friend, but now I knew would be an awkward reminder that I was no longer that kid who’d loved hearing her bird fun facts and binge-watching Lord of the Rings .
If I tried hard enough, I could probably manage to avoid seeing Dove altogether. My assistant, Luca, was incredibly skilled at shielding me from people I didn't want to see.
But I already knew I'd be seeking her out. This was a vendetta I couldn’t let go. I set myself a challenge right then and there as the springtime sun shone down on Prickle Island: I would get Dove Lachlan to accept my apology and be my friend again before the three weeks were up, so help me God.