Chapter Five
FIVE
Jake
I fold an envelope. My name is scrawled in black ink over the letterhead: Jake Koning Waterford. No return address. I slip it in the back pocket of my navy-blue slacks after hanging up the phone.
I called Hailey the second I found the envelope underneath my Porsche’s windshield wiper. It’s definitely not good how often she circles my thoughts, not good that my first instinct was to reach out to her—not good that I’m headed to her now.
Most of my life, I’ve been revolting.
Pushing against expectations set before birth. Probably before I was even conceived, my mother had an idea of who she wanted her thirdborn son to be, and I’m pretty positive I was only half of what she desired.
Athletic, perfect. Studious, even better. Proper, outstanding.
Questioning…unacceptable. Challenging, we can’t have that. Rebellious, he must go.
With no peep from my weak-willed father, I was sent to boarding school for most of my youth. Because she hated that I called her out for being every fucking thing I didn’t want my mother to be.
Vindictive. Petty. Cruel. Her high standards could never be reached by most staff.
She went through valets, assistants, chefs, and housekeepers like seasonal decorations.
Discarding them as if they were the wrong type of ribbon and garland for the year.
She only ever remembered the names of the nanny and butler.
They were the only ones she’d bother to keep around for decades, a way to tell herself she was so loyal, so giving.
It was bullshit.
I told her exactly what I felt each time she canned household staff, like Chef Lydia, who’d just returned from maternity leave after giving birth to twins.
“She looks so different…” Mom crinkled her nose in distaste, then waved her hand. “She’s better off elsewhere. She’ll have more time to take care of herself.”
I let out a tight, irate laugh. “She just gave birth. Not that her appearance should even matter.”
“Jacob, please. Not today.”
She loved my oldest brother because he never held a mirror to her face. Trent was Claudia…is Claudia in so many terrible ways. It’s been two weeks since she died, and I keep wishing he’d join her.
I keep thinking, What the fuck is wrong with me? That I want my own brother to die. I never considered that I could be someone who’d put a hit on their own family. Screw them over to protect others? Yeah, I tried to do that—I’m still trying. Kill them…no.
I don’t want this dark desire to exist anywhere but in my head.
This year, everything has felt like love or death.
Fitting earbuds in my ears, I play music off Hailey’s iPod Nano and leave my Porsche parallel parked on Main Street. She loaned me the Nano after I asked about what music she likes. The bands she listed off sounded fake.
“The Peanut Butter Bandits?” I’d said with raised brows.
“Death metal.”
“You’re joking with me.”
“No, really.” She handed me her iPod Nano. “Keep it.” We were on my catamaran. In my bed. Lying under the silky ocean-blue sheets. I sat higher up against the headboard.
“For how long?”
“No time limit.”
I watched her slide out from under the covers.
My eyes were drawn to every beautiful inch of Hailey—not just her slender legs, the slight curve of her hips, her small breasts and pink pebbled nipples, but in how she glanced back at me, pieces of her platinum hair hanging in her gray eyes.
Her brown roots were growing in like tar spilling into white sand.
She was seeing if I was watching her.
She was…studying me. I smiled a little, my brows creased in more intrigue.
Because I was trying to make sense of her, too.
I’d been thinking how she wasn’t shy about being naked.
Yet, she was strangely reserved. Cold. Not affectionate in any sense I knew.
I’d never encountered a girl who asked me flat out, “Do you want to fuck?” while also in the same breath waited for me to make the first move.
That same night, I’d eaten her out so very slowly.
Just to watch her reactions. Her thigh spasms. Her breath hitches.
The soft, pitching moans as her lips parted.
When she orgasmed, her eyes were so intensely fixed on mine—like she was trying to rip into my soul—that some would likely find it unsettling.
I couldn’t stop staring at her. I wanted inside her brain to know exactly what she was thinking.
I’d been a second from asking, but then she’d panted, “Can you do that again? With your tongue. I really liked that.”
I smiled, bigger than I had in so long. Months?
Years? Nothing about Hailey added up in my mind, and I liked it.
I liked that she just didn’t make sense to me right away.
I liked that I had to keep contemplating her.
“This?” I’d dipped back between her thighs, licking her swollen clit.
She’d tasted so sweet. I could’ve been down there for too many hours.
Less when she began to wince like it’d been painfully sensitive. I’d begun to pull away.
“Keep going.”
“Hailey—”
“I like the feeling.” Her next earnest, nearly begging “please” won me over, and I’d sucked her while she cried into a full-body twitching orgasm. Quickly, I’d slipped two fingers inside her soaked pussy, feeling her contract around them, and she’d moaned into a whimper, “Don’t move.”
Hailey knew exactly what she liked and what she wanted.
I was so fucking turned on by her, I could barely think at all.
When she caught her breath, I lay beside her, wiping away leaked tears from the corners of her eyes.
Surprised when she let me, more surprised when she nuzzled her body against my side, her cheek on my chest. I was about to wrap my arms around her, but she’d grabbed my wrist, then said, “Will you stay down there?”
She’d meant between her legs.
“My hand?”
She’d nodded. “I like the pressure.”
So I’d cupped her pussy, adding friction every now and then with my fingers, which soothed her to sleep. I found her enthralling, bizarre, maybe even troubled. I knew she was searching for answers about her parents at the time, and I’d been helping her any way I could.
I kept telling myself that also meant sleeping with her, but I knew I wanted to be inside Hailey. I wanted to see if I could get her off I think as badly as she wanted to see what made me hard. The answer has been her.
No book in any library has gripped me as much as she has, and it’s been fucking maddening.
On the catamaran, with the iPod Nano in my grip, I kept my eyes on Hailey as she gathered her cargo pants and mesh shirt off the floor. She wasn’t in a hurry, but she wasn’t making a point of delaying either.
“You can stay,” I said.
“That’s okay. That Valentine’s event is happening soon at VCC.” Victoria Country Club. “I need to be there for work.”
“For the Hunt? It’s not even five a.m.” I checked the bedside clock, then glanced back as she buttoned her pants. “Katherine isn’t expecting you to be there this early.”
Katherine Rhodes is her boss and the ma?tre d’ of the club, overseeing guest relations and managing staff.
She’s also been more of a mother to me than my own mother.
But she’s extremely particular. Stringent.
She takes pride in this town and the club, and anything she sees as a threat to the values she has upheld, she dislikes.
Hailey and Phoebe have been dislikes for her, but that’s diminished a fraction of a fraction throughout the past year. Mostly because she thinks I’ve been in love with Phoebe.
I’ve hated that I lied to her, but there was no better path. Katherine revered my mother, saw her as generous and kind. She was the nanny. My nanny. Once my siblings and I were grown, my mother gave Kathrine the esteemed country club job as a token of her generosity.
It did keep Katherine loyal to her. And I needed my mother to truly believe I was going to potentially marry Phoebe.
“I have to go home and take a shower,” Hailey said, sliding on her mesh shirt.
“You’re welcome to shower here.”
“My shower is fine.” She was avoiding my gaze now.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
“About what?” She slipped on socks, then reached for her combat boots.
“About what just happened.”
Her fair cheeks went rosy. “We fucked. You went down on me twice. I wanted to blow you, but I think I fell asleep. Then I woke up, and we talked about astrology and music. You’re an Aquarius—said to be deeply intellectual, independent, and rebellious—but I don’t believe in horoscopes, even though they do matter. ”
“Why do they matter?”
“Because other people believe in them, and that belief holds weight.” She gave me an inching smile. “I didn’t tell you that part last night.”
“No, you didn’t.” I wanted to smile back, but uncertainty still hammered into me. Instead, I just shifted out of the bed, my bare feet hitting the floor. After I stood, I grabbed my watch off the dresser. Careful to give her space.
Now she was bashful seeing my cock. It confused me. “Hailey—”
“It was just sex,” she said. “We don’t need to complicate this.”
I frowned. “You showering here complicates this…how?”
“It just does.” She laced her boots.
I scraped a hand through my hair, knowing I shouldn’t want more. Because I agreed, “It is just sex.” I couldn’t have a relationship with her. I couldn’t do serious.
Not just because I was fake dating Phoebe at the time, but because it wasn’t safe to be committed to anyone who could potentially be collateral damage in this war between me and my brother.
It’s still dangerous.
Maybe even more now than before.
It’s been two months since the Hunt, and we still call our relationship “just sex.” The more I learn about her, the less I feel like it is.
As I leave my Porsche, loud rock beats blast in my ears, and I hustle toward Baubles & Bookends.