Chapter One #2
My mind whirls in too many directions. So…
I fell back to sleep while Oliver read to me then.
I didn’t intend to sleep this late, but he must’ve wanted me to.
Which is good. I need sleep. I’ve been trying to sleep more, in fact.
Insomnia is a beast I’ve needed help to beat, and it still rears its horned head every single night.
The name of my new personal game: Do Not Lose This Baby.
I can’t think about whether I’ll even be a good mom when I’m terrified I might cause this baby’s demise before it’s even born.
Lately I’ve felt like a wrecking ball inside my own body.
Like I cause more harm than good, and I want to prove to myself that I won’t harm this baby.
I snatch my phone deep under the sheets, and my eyes widen at a missed message from Addison Tinrock. My mom. Just not in the biological sense. “Shit, shit.”
“What shit?” Oliver asks while I shove my phone in his chest and beeline for the closet.
My pulse is going haywire as I fling aside grungy shirts and cargo pants. “Today is Saturday, April 21, 2012.”
Oliver flips my phone in his hand like a pancake. “Is there something significant about the date? Other than the obvious.”
“The obvious?” Why do I have so many cargo pants? I need a dress. Uh, not that dress. Too see-through. Very nightclub in Miami, which is the last place I wore it.
“The obvious: it being two weeks since your little brother decided that poison was a practical tool to pull like it’s the fifteenth century and we’re the Borgias.” He catches my gaze, and his smile peeks out. “Down with the queen. Off with her head.”
Claudia Koning Waterford is…deceased.
Jake’s mom.
By Trevor Tinrock’s doing. My nineteen-year-old brother—he went off-script. It was unplanned. A mistake…well, okay, it was premeditated by Trev, but for the rest of us, it was unintended. Claudia was our mark, but Phoebe should’ve pulled the rope via blackmail.
We never had the opportunity to cage Claudia in her own misdeeds.
Two weeks have passed, and everything is messier since Jake didn’t inherit the entire Koning fortune and all assets, but rather, Claudia’s will detailed a complicated split between her firstborn and thirdborn son.
Trent (asshole) and Jake (not an asshole…very sweet, actually).
All we wanted was for Jake to become sole heir. He needed to obtain everything. Then he’d pay us out.
But it’s not impossible to salvage the scattered pieces of the Koning job. It’s still alive.
I tear a simple black dress off the hanger. Prada—one of the last designer dresses I kept and didn’t sell on the internet for cash, just to pay rent. “It’s not the obvious,” I say quickly to Oliver while I shimmy out of my strappy sports bra.
He comes over and helps tug the dress down over my head. “Then what?”
I fix my platinum-blonde hair out of my face while he zips the fabric at my hip. I try not to concentrate on the tingling sensation as his knuckles brush my bare flesh, the zipper ascending with his hand. “Um”—I breathe out—“Phebs and I made lunch plans with the godmothers.”
Surprise coats his eyes. “That’s big.”
“I know.” Heat bathes my face again. This time with nerves. The lunch is the first big olive branch we’ve extended to our moms since they confessed their lies in the storm shelter. Both Phoebe’s brothers and mine knew we’d been toying with the idea of mending broken fences with the godmothers.
Rocky was the most irritable, but that’s to be expected. He never loved the godmothers the way that we did. The way that we still somewhat do.
Oliver has a hand on my lower back. It’s casual, reassuring. I’ve always liked his touch. His gaze falls to my phone, which he’s clutching. He reads my mom’s text aloud: “Where is Cogsworth?” He arches his brows at me. “I thought my sister told Addison to stop with the riddles?”
“Phoebe thinks they’re distressing me, but uncovering a riddle isn’t what’s distressing.
It’s the fact that she’s saying I’m late.
” I pull out of his reach and find heels at the bottom of my closet, explaining fast: “Cogsworth is the clock from Beauty and the Beast. She’s reminding me to check the time. ”
“I know what the text meant,” he says easily while skimming the length of me. “I’m not the rich boy who needs a Tinrock-Graves history book.” It would sound like a jab at Jake if it weren’t for his lighthearted tone and inching smile.
“I didn’t think you were Jake.” Though, I do explain a lot to Jake Waterford. Because he wasn’t raised as a con artist like us, but he’s been an ally. I nuzzle my toes into dark velvet heels. Not appropriate for springtime, but it’ll work. “Oh.” I drop down and inspect my toes. “No.”
Oliver strolls closer. “Did you grow a sixth toe? The magical marvel of Hailey Tinrock.”
“I’m not a polydactyl. Just a girl with the ugliest chipped toenail polish.” I pick at the black flakes on my big toe. “Shit. We’re going to a five-star restaurant. I think the cheapest thing on the menu is fifty bucks. My mom is going to make a comment.”
“Is the point to try to please her?”
“No, I just don’t want to spend half the lunch hearing, ‘This is why you should be a part of the elite and not the working class. So you can afford a basic pedicure.’ ”
“Fair enough.” He dips his head close to mine, his lips ghosting against my ear as he whispers, “Let’s venture to the bathroom.” Every secret he shares with me sounds sexual, and likely it’s because we have a sexual relationship.
We are sex partners.
And I’m carrying his baby. Maybe.
Maybe this baby is Jake’s—but these facts are changing…things. Things have changed, Hailey. He doesn’t know it yet, and guilt tries to pummel me.
Later.
Later.
I’ll tell him later.
“Okay,” I breathe. Okay. I wipe my sweaty palms on my thighs. I have horrible “tells” in comparison to Oliver, Phoebe, and Rocky—those three are masters of deception. I’m not great. They can all see when anxiety mounts like I’m ascending Everest without an oxygen tank.
Oliver hooks his finger with mine, and I pop into focus as he guides me out of the room and to the only bathroom.
No one else is in the loft this morning. Just us.
While I hurriedly comb a brush through my hair, Oliver leans against the sink, a little slouched as he cups my ankle and paints my toes with metallic black polish I picked out.
I balance well, but every time I teeter, he lifts the brush off my nail and slides his other hand up my bare calf, clutching me tighter.
Feeling him stabilize me steals my breath once or twice.
The sensual look he slips me isn’t helping. His I know how to fuck you into oblivion eyes are enticing. He entices me, and I can’t…I’m late. Like, in every worst way a person can be late, I’ve been late.
“It’s in Rhode Island,” I mention, using my comb to create a center part in my hair. “The lunch.”
“An hour away.”
“Yeah, I’m meeting Phoebe.”
“You want me to drive you?”
“No, no. I’m capable. I can drive.” I’ve always been one of the better drivers among our families.
He dips the brush into the polish. “Of course you can, Hailstorm.” The smile in his voice is fuel when I’m on empty. I’m eager to receive his faith in me, even if it’s manufactured purely to make me feel good. I don’t care.
I love how my lungs swell with his encouragement.
Our eyes fasten in a quiet, easygoing beat, and I want to ask where he’ll be today. I’m afraid he’ll say, With Collin Falcone.
Collin was Trent Waterford’s former best friend. I hate that Olly’s role has been to pry Collin away from the firstborn heir, which enabled Rocky to become Trent’s number one BFF.
Unfortunately, Collin is a cokehead. Which means Oliver has had to partake in these hedonistic, drug-fueled nights reserved for bored trust-fund babies like Collin.
Every time I’ve surfaced the possibility of a role switch, Oliver says, “This is where I need to be, Hails. You even said it yourself. It’s the best position.”
Best position for the job. I didn’t mean it was best for him. But for Oliver, they might as well be one and the same. He’s a lot like his sister, Phoebe, in that way. Willing to take the harder tasks if the outcome means success for the team.
I think about Oliver a lot.
For too long, really. Even how he’s unlike Phoebe.
How he’s so goal oriented that he’d race toward every checkered flag for the thrill.
How he loves pushing his limits during jobs.
How he’d choose the path with the most obstacles, the one that’s farthest away.
How he’d run until his legs broke and his heart gave out.
I think there is no stop in most of us, but for Oliver, he will run himself too hard, too fast, before anyone else has a chance to catch him.
I’ve always worried about putting him in a role that’d hurt him. I’m afraid I already have. My fault. When things go awry, it falls on me. I made the blueprint. So I made the error.
“Hailey, really, are you paying attention?”
Oh…fuck. That’s not Oliver.
I blink into the clear, vividly bright present. I sit across from a formidable, stylish woman who could pose as a high-society New Yorker as much as she could a hardball attorney. But she’s not posing as anyone other than herself today: Addison Tinrock—my mom.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? I think over and over. Trying to calm my panic, but how the hell did I even get here?
“Hailey?” Her cold voice is tinged with concern.
More than she usually grants me, but it’s why I wanted to reach out.
I could tell she’s been genuinely worried about my welfare since she saw my breakdown in the storm shelter.
It’s been nice to see she cares on a deeper level about me and not just what I can do for her.
It’s what I choose to believe, anyway. There is a small possibility she wants me close so I can continue working for her, but my brothers and I have already established those bridges will never be rebuilt with our parents. Any jobs we pull, we need to have our own autonomy.
They can’t call the shots anymore.
“Um, yeah, I’m here,” I say, doing my best not to stammer. A light coastal breeze blows through the sunny patio of an upscale seafood restaurant. The wicker chair creaks beneath my ass as I reach for my ice water. Condensation wets the glass, which means I’ve been here for minutes, at least.
I need to check my phone.
I need to check the parking lot.
Did I really drive?
Did Oliver end up bringing me?
“I actually need to make a quick call.” I scooch back.
“Hailey, wait—” Her concern spikes in an odd way. She’s afraid I’m ditching her, that I’m retracting the olive branch.
“I’ll be back. Really, I will be. Stay, p-please.”
She lowers back down at my insistence. Wind musses her new bangs, still a shade of auburn red. I assume she’s still waiting for Elizabeth Graves to show up. Just like I am Phoebe. Because neither is here, and our table is set for four.
Leaving, I weave through the crowded patio.
I don’t make a scene. Too many people mind their own business.
Every teak table is occupied. Chatter, the sounds of the sea, and speakers playing Tchaikovsky will drown our forthcoming conversation into incoherence from eavesdroppers. It’s a perfect place to meet.
I should remember arriving.
I should.
“Think, Hailey, think,” I mutter to myself. Bad habit, speaking my thoughts aloud. Bad, bad, bad.
And thinking—thinking is likely why I’m missing passages of time. I was in my head, wasn’t I?
I try not to sprint through the restaurant. I almost crash into the ginormous fish tank, but once I swerve around the hostess stand, I push the double doors into the glaring sunshine-soaked afternoon.
Then I rock to a full stop.
My old faded green Honda is parked beside a sleek sapphire blue Porsche.
The man leaning against the luxury sports car could belong in Pretty in Pink, Mystic Pizza, any Julia Roberts or John Hughes movie.
Born to a fortune of blue-blooded New England aristocracy.
He’s a man in numbers (twenty-eight), but also a man in how he carries his body.
Confident in who he is, confident in his ideals, confident in his actions.
He straightens up and spots me from across the parking lot.
I see the concern tighten his striking blue eyes. I wonder if he sees the confusion in my gray ones.
Jake Koning Waterford.
Why is he in Rhode Island?