Chapter Ten
TEN
Rocky
Stars speckle the dark sky in town, but I’m not looking upward on this cool start-of-summer night.
Leaning on the brick siding near Baubles she doesn’t let me as she skips ahead of me too quickly.
My muscles flex while my mind spins through assumptions I don’t want to make. Phoebe peeks back to see if I’ll follow her.
I haven’t slowed my pace.
I’m at her side in seconds. She seems relieved, but she has nothing to fear. I’m not going to abandon her.
Thirteen years old, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, all the way to her twenty-four and my twenty-seven—we’ve been tethered together. Only we’re not pretending to be cousins or coworkers or college dormmates anymore.
What we are now feels like the finale. When I know it can’t be fucking true. Because I will keep grifting. I will keep going.
I can’t stop like her.
It’s shocking she even can. I always believed this was ingrained in both of us. Part of me still does. Part of me hopes she’s not picking up a new boring book when we’ve been on the same page, the same thrilling story, our whole lives together.
It’s hard though, because I really, really just want Phebs to be happy. It does something to me, seeing the edges of her scowl soften by millimeter by centimeter by inch.
I look over at her now as she smiles around at the parked cars and families milling across the sidewalks. Drinking slushies. Ordering hot dogs from a little pop-up cart. Laughing, chatting, lost in the mundane ordinary.
She grins wider at Chelsea Noknoi, a fellow VCC server, who cuddles on the fountain’s stone ledge with her fiancé, sharing embarrassingly chaste kisses.
My face contorts in a cringe. “They’re pecking like birds.”
“Romance Scrooge.”
“That’s not a thing.” I sweep her smitten features. “You love it here.”
Her smile goes gentle. “It surprises me how much I do,” she admits, breathing deeply, and I don’t want to say Jake is right—that maybe there is summer magic in Victoria. But it’s hard to discount when Phebs looks so at peace in this second. In ways I’ve rarely seen.
“What do you love about it?” I ask.
“The normalcy, I guess.” Her eyes meet mine as we walk. “It’s almost exactly what Hails wanted for me when we moved here. A life with no danger zones. Which I guess ends tomorrow when we board Varrick’s yacht.”
We’re less than twenty-four hours away from spending the summer with a murderer. Fun.
She shifts closer to me to speak quietly. “It feels like the start of a job,” she says.
“Because it is one.” We share a strong look, and I nod at her, silently telling her we’re in this together. Like we’ve always been.
“I always like the in-between,” she says. “The before and the after of a job.”
“I can’t say I’ve enjoyed anything other than being with all of you,” I admit. “Sad?”
“Loser material. You need to hand me back the W.”
“You’ll have to fight me for it with your dinky little biceps.” I lift her slender arm as proof.
She pumps her muscles to prove me wrong at the same time that I pinch her waist, tickling her.
She squeals and laughs, trying poorly to maintain a scowl.
She pushes me lightly. Laughter rumbles out of my chest. Oxygen fills my lungs, and for a moment, we’re fifteen again, about to pack our bags for the next big city, and I’m falling in love with Phoebe for the first time.
Like clockwork, something repositions us into stoic stances. Impassive faces. This time, it’s her phone ringing.
She digs it out of her purse, flashing me the caller ID: Isla Rivers. Her mom’s alias. We slow our pace while she puts the phone on speaker. “Hi, Isla.”
Magical summer nights don’t exist.
If this were one, Phoebe would answer her mom’s call and the first thing Elizabeth would say is, Varrick is sobbing in a corner or Varrick just shit his pants. I don’t wish him dead. I want him to suffer.
More painfully than that, but at this point, I’d take a festering papercut to ruin his fucking day.
So, when Elizabeth opens the call with a casual “What are you up to?” I have the sudden urge to chuck the phone in the Atlantic.
“I’m in town,” Phoebe says. “Out with my ex-husband for a walk. We’re getting ice cream.” To me, she adds, “I’ll probably get salted caramel.” It’s a surface-level comment to indicate to her mom that we’re in public.
“Can we talk in private?”
“Yeah.” Phoebe checks left and right for a spot. I catch her hand and lead her to the only decently secluded place off the main street. A dark alley behind Gulp Seafood & Lounge. My narrowed eyes graze the cement where I once found my brother…stabbed and bleeding out on Halloween.
EDM songs boom from the bar, which’ll muffle our conversation from passersby. I face Phoebe while she tells her mom, “You’re on speaker, but we’re out of earshot.”
“Good.” Elizabeth expels a taut breath. The kind that would curb anxiety or stress. That’s unlike Elizabeth.
I stare hard at the phone. An uneasy feeling tightens my ribs.
“I don’t know how much communication we’ll have while you’re at Stonehaven,” she starts. “The Wi-Fi is spotty there.”
“On purpose?” I survey our surroundings casually while we talk.
“Uncertain. The mansion is surrounded by water, nowhere near a cell tower, but I’m sure he takes advantage of the fact.”
He could shut off the Wi-Fi and blame bad service—which will be a headache if we can’t communicate through our burner phones. But it’s not like we haven’t encountered these issues before.
“We won’t be trapped there,” I remind Elizabeth. “We’ll still be taking boat rides into town. Phoebe works at VCC. We’re essentially just spending nights and mornings at his residence.”
“Right, but before you leave, I think you should know something.” Her voice is shaky and hushed. “He’s aware you two are together.”
“Wait, me and Rocky?” Phoebe tries to stay calm, but her eyes grow. “Together like…”
“Romantically together, bug.”
My brain is a screeching car crash. “Excuse me?” I shift my weight, glaring at the phone in my girlfriend’s hand, then out at the alley’s entrance.
Phoebe goes motionless. “How does he know?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“It does matter.” She presses for more from her mom. I like this new side of Phoebe. The one that won’t take scraps or vague responses from the godmothers.
“He assumed based on how often Rocky has spent the night at your loft and how often you’ve spent the night at his boathouse.
He’s been watching you, and he’s noticed that the two of you were almost always together in various situations.
Pair that with your backstories of being divorcees—it reminded him of what we would do. ”
“We?” Phoebe asks.
“Me and him.”
I’m not Varrick, but I can’t say it. Because I don’t know him—other than he’s capable of murder. And that is in me, but I can control my fury. I swim inside it every fucking day and night, and you don’t see me on a killing spree.
I rub my mouth as bile scorches my throat. He knows I love Phoebe. Could he use this against me? Would he? She’s his daughter. For the first time, I’m hoping that means something sentimental to him.
At least we have some information going into Stonehaven. We’re not five steps behind.
Phoebe must be thinking the same thing. “Thanks for letting us know.”
“Rocky,” Elizabeth says with strain, “look out for my bug, please.”
I swallow a knot and give a dry response: “I don’t know how to do anything else, Elizabeth.”