Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
Rocky
Waiting in a heinously long line outside for ice cream, I contemplate putting my arm around Phoebe. To feel her lean into me. She’s jutting out a hip toward me, like she wants to, but she might be thinking, It’s too soon.
Too soon to go public.
Too soon to risk cheating rumors spreading throughout town. I know that would hurt Phebs. Being deemed a cheater in a place that’s supposed to be her permanent life.
“What are you thinking about?” Phoebe wonders, keeping her voice quiet as the line grows and we barely inch forward.
“You.”
She weaves her arms together. “In what context?”
“How you’re loyal to the people you love.” I hold her blistering gaze. “You’d even sacrifice yourself for the sake of my sister. That’s what scares me. Your literal, insane interpretation of ‘ride or die.’ ”
“Not that literal.”
“Pretty literal.”
“It’s just called being a good friend,” Phoebe reasons. “And Hailey did all this”—she waves around town to emphasize the move here, defying our parents, quitting all they’ve known—“for me. Not the other way around.”
I speak under my breath. “Did you come here for her or because you wanted to be here?”
Phoebe goes quiet.
I lift my brows. “Point made.”
“She came here for me, too, so that makes us both willing to do what’s best for the other person.”
“Well, now I’m so very reassured,” I say dryly.
Children squeal as they race around lampposts with chocolate-smeared cheeks and half-eaten waffle cones, drawing our gazes to them. Phoebe has a faraway focus. I skim her features.
“Do you want kids?” I ask her.
Her head jerks to me. “Where is that coming from?”
I give her an intrusive look. “Kids. You. Staring. Duh.”
She makes a scrunched face. “I remember the caveman talk is why I divorced you.”
“Funny.” I look her over, feeling her dodging the topic. “I suddenly remember you being allergic to ‘future talk’ is why I divorced you.”
She snorts, but then winces a little in real hurt.
“I’m joking, Phebs,” I whisper.
“Yeah, I know.” Does she? Phoebe looks deeper into my eyes. “I don’t know what I want for breakfast tomorrow, you think I’ve thought about procreating?” She doesn’t give me a chance to respond as she quickly asks, “Do you want kids?” She searches my face like I did hers.
I don’t want to influence Phoebe by answering. I hate that I worry I will. I raise my shoulders, and she lifts hers back in a similar constricted shrug.
Yeah.
We drop it.
“What flavor are you getting?” she asks while canvassing the street, left and right. Everywhere the kids aren’t. “Let me guess. Rocky Road.”
Fucking really. “Let me guess, you’re getting strawberry.”
“Salted caramel. Which I already told you.” Her grin briefly meets me. “Look who’s the bad listener.”
“I was too busy reading your body to hear your lies.”
Her mouth forms a cute scowl. “I am getting salted caramel.” She gives my chest a light shove.
I hardly budge. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then watch and believe…” She trails off, gaze caught on something behind us. Across the street. She squints at the entrance to Gulp Seafood & Lounge. The door is propped open, and a twentysomething bouncer texts lazily on his phone.
Phoebe suddenly pulls me out of the line and tells the family behind us to skip ahead.
“What’s going on?” I ask her as we reach the curb and she squeezes between a parked BMW and Mercedes.
“I swear I just saw your brother.”
Shit. “My brother?” I jog across the road with Phoebe.
Reaching the other sidewalk, she says, “Trevor. Nineteen. Skinny. Wears cashmere in the dead of summer. Loves to pretend he’s Nosferatu and acts like he’s a psycho-killer, which turns out was never an act—”
“Keep your voice down,” I growl.
“I’m whispering.”
We’re both glaring. Heat ramps up between us. I watch her gaze drip down my muscled frame. Her tits rise with each inhale, especially as she crosses her arms underneath them.
I have the sudden urge to push her against the brick wall and fuck her until she can’t stand.
Flush ascends her neck. She releases a short breath to say, “We all promised to keep a closer eye on Trevor. We shouldn’t be relaxing with ice cream while he’s at the local nightclub.
It should actually be the other way around.
He should be innocently eating sherbert, and we should be getting drunk. ”
“I’d rather be stabbed than get drunk.” Being so inebriated my vision blurs, time slips, and my body can’t be controlled—no.
She groans. “That’s not the point, Rocky.”
I put my lips closer to her ear as I whisper, “What he did—it won’t happen again.”
Her cheeks flame at my closeness while others who know of us—Grey Thornhall and Phoebe Smith and our contemptuous relationship—pass.
Phoebe waits for Lola, a bartender from VCC, to stroll out of earshot with her girlfriend.
“You don’t know that,” Phoebe counters, eyes rising to mine. “You said it wasn’t the only time. But you won’t even tell me how many times it’s happened before.”
“You don’t need to know.” I’m not making her a fucking accomplice to his crimes.
“What if he…” She waits for an older couple to walk past us on the sidewalk. Once they’re out of earshot, she whispers, “What if he offed Boyd Delacy?”
Trevor’s stalker from Halloween last year. “There’s been nothing in the news, and I trust that Trev would tell me.”
Phoebe eases slightly. “We all need to be more proactive. We should at least figure out what he’s doing in there.”
“He’s not a dog we need to put on a leash.”
“No, he’s your brother that we kind of need to babysit. At least right now, Rocky.”
She has a point. I’ve been so hands-off, in fear of treating him like a liability the same way our parents have, that I haven’t properly guided him. If I had, maybe he wouldn’t have taken matters into his own hands and killed Claudia.
“Okay.” I motion toward the entrance of Gulp Seafood & Lounge. “Ladies first.”
She flips me off with both middle fingers, then spins toward the bouncer, Jerry Caldwell, who barely pries his attention off his phone. Until he stares at her ass as she goes inside.
Jerry catches my dark glare and shrinks backward. “Uh, hey, Grey.” His face reddens. “You think you could get me Phoebe’s num—”
“No,” I cut him off. Don’t piss on my territory is a warning I’m writing on his forehead with a fucking knife.
His expression drops. “Yeah, yeah.” He coughs a little. “Have a fun night.” He goes back to his phone.
Five feet inside, where it stinks of sweat and oysters, Phoebe stops dead in her tracks. I bump into her back, then grab her biceps to keep her from falling forward.
It’s instantly clear my brother isn’t alone.
He cups a glass of amber liquor while sitting stiffly at the bar. A silver cross around his neck. The top buttons undone on his black shirt. Pieces of his sweaty hair hang on his forehead, like he’d been dancing at some point.
His demeanor right now isn’t casual. He’s tensed. Barely blinks. Narrow eyed and angled toward a man who’s not seated.
This fucker encroaches on Trevor. I can’t place him. Not from the back. He’s wearing a nondescript gray sport coat, appears of average height, average build. He seems older. Maybe forties.
Varrick.
It’s all I can think. Varrick just sought out my brother the night before we’re supposed to board his yacht.
I whisper quickly against Phoebe’s ear, “Follow my lead.”
She nods.
Pulling her behind my back, I stride forward. A new popular EDM song, “Levels” by Avicii, thunders in the nightclub, so I slip closer to the bar to better eavesdrop.
“I don’t want your money,” Trevor says flatly. His eyes shift covertly to me. He notices me down the bar, but he’s trained well enough to hide it.
“You’re going to regret this,” the man warns.
I recognize that pretentious fucking voice.
Weston Burke.
One of the rich widowers who frequents Victoria Country Club and the father of Trevor’s girlfriend. He likes my brother about as much as he likes me. Which is to say, he’d throw us overboard any chance he gets. I haven’t given him the opportunity.
Shifting closer, I see Weston grip the lip of the bar near Trevor. “I can make your life very difficult here.” He careens into my brother’s space.
I feel Phoebe bristling behind me, but I wait to see how Trev will handle this.
He doesn’t flinch. “Like you make hers?”
“Stay away from my daughter.”
“She’s not your property, man.”
Weston rips the liquor out of Trevor’s hand. I explode forward, grabbing a fistful of his sport coat. I yank him backward off my brother, then I shove him hard into the bar. He relinquishes the glass as I pin him.
Trevor snatches the alcohol off the counter. “Nice talking to you. Now you can deal with my brother.” He lifts the rim to his lips just as Phoebe steals the glass out of his hand, liquor sloshing onto the grimy floor.
“What the fuck, PG?” He gapes.
“You’re underage.”
That’s not why Weston tried to take it from Trev. It was a silly fucking power move to make my brother look weak.
“Get off me,” Weston snarls at me.
I release my hold on him, just so he can turn around.
When he does and his back presses into the sticky bar, I get in his face like he got in my brother’s.
“I don’t care who the fuck you are,” I sneer, “or how much money you have or how many friends you’ve bought around here—you ever corner my brother like that again and you’ll wish the only thing you see are my fucking lawyers. ”
He works his jaw, fixes his sport coat, and tries to straighten up. As if physical violence is beneath us, but I have no issue knocking him out. The only reason I don’t is because I’m trying to set an example for my brother, and I don’t want him to beat people to shit.
Weston fixes his gaze on me. “Tell your degenerate brother to never speak to Sidney again, and you and I won’t have a problem, Grey.”
“This isn’t Let’s Make a Deal. Your daughter is a grown adult. She can make her own choices.”
“You tell him, Rock,” Trevor pipes in.