Chapter Six #2
Nova’s nose flares, his olive skin turning pallid. He looks murderous and ill. Training an unblinking stare on me, he asks, “Was she raped?”
Nitric acid might as well coarse through my bloodstream. “Not exactly.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I suck hard on the cigarette, then blow smoke downward. “It means you need to ask her. I’m not sharing her personal shit.”
“Fuck,” he curses roughly under his breath, then holds the side of his head in his hand, unable to concentrate on the comic book anymore, though he tries.
I have that lovely effect on people.
The door blows open. Not the one I wanted, unfortunately. Bathroom still shut. Oliver appears through the front entrance with Jake only steps behind.
“Took you long enough,” I tell them.
Oliver steals a pear out of the fruit bowl. Then tips his head toward Jake as he says lightly, “Il a la trique pour Hailey.” He has a hard-on for Hailey.
I blink in annoyance. “On sait.” We know.
Nova isn’t fluent in French, so Oliver said this just to aggravate me. Mission accomplished. Did not ask to be in the middle of whatever the fuck this is with Oliver and Jake and my little sister.
Oliver smiles into a laugh, tosses the pear in his palm, then sinks his teeth in the fruit.
“Ol.” Nova stands and fists his brother’s black linen shirt. He pulls him toward Phoebe’s bedroom. Probably to talk alone. Privately.
What friends do, apparently.
I’m left with Jake in the kitchen. Truthfully, I don’t hate it. I almost can’t believe I’m at this place with the moral crusader.
“I don’t get him,” Jake says with a heavy breath, like he’s been in a stairwell triathlon with Oliver.
Oliver Graves will race circles around him and eventually tire him out, which makes me feel a little bad for Jake.
“Ignore him,” I advise, pushing off the fridge to grab a beer out of a six-pack from inside. I hand him the cold bottle.
He’s still cemented on Oliver’s shadow. “What’d he say in French?”
“You have a hard-on for Hailey.”
Jake chokes out an irritated sound.
“Ignore him,” I emphasize.
“Is he trying to get under my skin?”
“No, but you’re making it apparent that he is, sweetheart.”
Jake rounds my body to rummage in the drawers for a bottle opener. “Then, is he trying to intimidate me?”
“Doubtful.” I raise and lower my brows.
He pops the bottle cap. “So he doesn’t care that I’m with Hailey?”
“Oh, he definitely fucking cares,” I say into a drag of cigarette.
Jake leans on the counter across from me. He’s flummoxed. “Then he’s trying to scare me away from her?”
“No, because he also cares about what Hailey wants.”
Jake shakes his head way too hard. “I…don’t understand.”
I exhale a rough, deep breath, knowing I should save him from this mind fuck, but I’ve never had to explain even one layer of Oliver to another person.
It feels wrong to expose even the surface of him, but keeping Jake in the pitch-black feels crueler.
“You’re looking at Oliver all wrong,” I tell him.
His frown deepens. “What do you mean?”
“You think he sees you as a threat. He doesn’t. He won’t even let you be an annoyance, because Oliver so very rarely lets anything irritate him. What he and I do—what we’ve done for a job and what we’ve seen—”
“What have you seen?”
I blink harder. Thinking about the job that Phoebe never names.
New York. Manhattan. “He watched a mark slap his sister across the face. I punched the mark. Oliver couldn’t help his sister.
Couldn’t run toward Phoebe. Couldn’t yell at the mark.
He had to comfort him. He was pretending to be the mark’s friend, and the job comes first. Our lives depended on Oliver maintaining the performance, and he doesn’t ever break. ”
“Would you have broken?”
“No. But to cope, you either become me: cynical, angry, hating everything and everyone, or you become him. He doesn’t waste emotion on things that could hurt, and he’s not wasting emotion on you.
So you’re just there. You’re someone he knows will eventually go, and he will stay.
He will always stay for Hailey. Because that’s what we do.
We’re here. We don’t leave the people we love. ”
Jake slumps back a little, staring off at the fridge behind me.
I don’t know how he feels. But I’m trying to make him understand the truth. “He’s irreplaceable in Hailey’s life. You can’t catch Oliver’s horse in this race when he’s basically on fucking Pegasus. Flying instead of running.”
“And Oliver already knows this,” Jake realizes, nodding to himself. He looks very hurt for a guy who said he can’t be with my sister in any serious capacity. I’m about to caution him in a not-nice way, but he nods at my hand. “I’ve never seen you smoke.”
“Because you’ve never seen me fuck. I like a cigarette after sex.” I tap ash over on the butcher-block counter. “And, no, I didn’t just fuck Phoebe, so this is a new habit.”
“It’s not a good one.”
“Well, I’m not a good person.” I force a smile before putting the cigarette between my lips.
“I would disagree,” he says quietly. It hits me too strong, but I can’t respond. Phoebe and Hailey finally emerge from the bathroom.
My pulse jumps, but I don’t shift a muscle.
Except for my arm as I take a much longer drag.
I scrutinize Phoebe. How she tucks a piece of her midnight-blue hair behind her ear.
Moisture bubbles up on her forehead, and she lets go of my sister’s left hand as they join us in the kitchen. My eyes race over Hailey’s clammy skin.
I can’t tell if they just washed their faces or if they’re not feeling well.
“You puke your guts up?” I ask Phoebe.
“Intestines. Stomach. Ovaries. All in the toilet bowl.” She jabs a thumb behind her. “You want to go check?” Her haughty attitude is normal.
“I’ll pass.” I skim her up and down, then notice Jake’s overly concerned eyes following Hailey. My sister reaches the stack of letters beside the coffeepot. Tension thickens the air as they stay silent.
“You sure?” Phoebe pulls my attention back.
“It’s quite a grotesque sight.” She hangs out in front of me.
Her gray baggy sweatpants ride low on the curve of her hips, and her tits push against her strawberry cropped top.
I crave to slide my hand against her waist, but as she inches closer and closer, I sense her trying to seduce me.
So I don’t touch my girlfriend. “You love grotesque things,” I say, reaching for the beer bottle I’d abandoned. I offer it to her.
“Pass.”
Alarm drills coldly in me. “Still feeling queasy?”
“Around you? All the time.” She threads her arms together.
I stare her down. She grips my gaze with the same molten intensity. Leaning closer, I whisper, “Liar.”
This would typically draw a smile out of Phoebe, but her lips noticeably flatline. I see her intake a subtle, sharp breath. Hardly even combating me, her brown eyes strangely soften on the cigarette between my fingers. “I’ll just take a smoke.”
My stomach clenches, but I slip the cigarette between my lips, then seize her hips with two hands. “Come here,” I mumble, drawing her into my chest. Her arms break apart, her body releasing a deeper breath, especially as she rotates and rests her shoulders against my sternum. Her back to me.
I brace myself against the fridge. Because Phoebe sinks her entire weight into me while I wrap my arm around her chest. I cage her to my body, holding her to me. With my free hand, I pluck the cigarette out of my mouth and keep it pinched between two fingers. I bring it down to Phoebe’s lips.
She sucks in, blows out, but I can feel her body tense more than relax. She reaches upward and clutches my forearm with two hands like she’s gripping a life vest.
I stare down at her and see her eyes shut. Observe her slowing, easing breath pattern. I dip my head closer to her ear. “You feel okay?”
“Horrible.”
“Seriously, Phebs,” I snap.
“I’m fine, Rocky,” she murmurs softly, heat extinguished. “Really, I’m okay.”
She’s never lied to me before, and I don’t believe she is now. But she’s not being completely honest either. I can’t make sense of this. I keep thinking she’s scared, but what the fuck is scaring her? There is so very little that frightens Phoebe.
I grit my back molars. It feels like an animal is crawling out of my rib cage, but I just hold her as tightly as she’s clutching on to me.
I look up.
Hailey is watching Phoebe with wide eyes. She startles when she catches my gaze. I mouth, What’s going on?
My sister shakes her head stiffly, then flinches at the sound of a door opening. Oliver and Nova return to the kitchen.
“The whole gang is almost here,” Oliver says, staring around. “Where’s our little psychopath?”
“On his way from the boathouse,” I say.
I’ve been renting the two-bedroom boathouse for almost a year—and we’ve outgrown it long before then.
Trevor has been sleeping in the fucking wine cellar on a cot.
Not ideal, but our lives have been more stable here than when we crash at Four Seasons and multimillion-dollar penthouse suites for weeks at a time.
We’re not burning through cash at a vicious rate. So we’re not in dire need of pulling short cons for quick payouts.
Nova slides back on a barstool. “Are you sure that’s where he is?”
“Yes,” I force out. “He should be here in five minutes, and if he’s not, you can lay into me.”
Not even a second later, Trevor strolls through the unlocked front door. My lanky dark-haired nineteen-year-old brother looks nothing like the Caufield University student he’s supposed to be posing as in Victoria.
No collegiate tee.
No collared polo that the preppy nepo kids would sport around here.
He’s wearing shit that makes him appear older, more sophisticated. Crisp black button-down, black slacks, shined loafers, white-gold rings. If it weren’t for the hoop earring and shaggy hair, I’d say he wouldn’t fit in with his peers.