Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
Rocky
As if Trent wasn’t a lesion festering on my skin enough—now this. With my sister. I want to reject it on the pure basis that Varrick set it up. I want to reject it because Hailey really shouldn’t be taking lead in this type of role. But she’s right when she says, “It’s our bread and butter.”
It should be easy for us.
This job is typical Tinrock-Graves fare. Phoebe has been engaged to dirtbags. I’ve been married to marks. Legally, sure, under the name Cal Creighton. So fake. I can’t even count my marriages to Phoebe. Some lasting five hours for a short con, some lasting months for long ones.
Now I’m Grey Thornhall. Legally divorced from Phoebe Smith. Thanks to Carter for gouging me for those papers. Hailey’s marriage will also be fake in the sense that she’s not really Hailey Thornhall, but it is a name that she wanted to be hers for longer than a job.
Then again, most jobs like this have been challenging in a different way. The emotional ties we have to each other make this type of deception feel like quicksand.
I’m used to fighting the grip against my legs.
Oliver, also a professional.
Jake, not at all.
He’s the one shaking his head before Varrick is even out the door.
I’m the first one to speak once Nova confirms Varrick has left not only the hidden parlor but the attached smoking room. “I don’t like that Varrick is dictating shit,” I tell my sister. “If this were your choice to start, it’d be different, but it feels like he trapped you here.”
“I’d already considered marriage as a possibility,” she admits, sinking back onto the couch beside me. “I know…I know feelings are…involved.” She shies from Oliver and Jake.
I shoot Oliver a deadpan look, like Oh, but I thought it was just sex.
He waves at me like I’m sending him a gift basket and not an I told you so.
Hailey continues, “But this really is the best shot we have at finishing what we started. We’d be smart to take it. We’d be stupid not to.”
We all process in a quiet beat. Jake is careened forward, his fingers steepled to his lips. His eyes ping around us, as if expecting one of us to shoot this down.
He zeroes in on me. “What happened to ‘it’s not fucking happening’?”
“It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”
“If it were Phoebe—”
“We’ve been through this,” I snap at him, my blood igniting just picturing Phoebe springing out of her chair and trying to take this from Hailey. There is no fucking scenario where she could take this on without major irreparable consequences.
There must be a God, because I don’t have to talk Phoebe into walking away. She did that on her own.
I can live inside excruciating pain, but not a world where Trent has her. That would’ve fucking killed me.
If she didn’t back down, I would’ve manipulated Phoebe into not taking this role (being brutally honest). I would’ve done anything so she’d drop this bomb.
It’s not that I don’t love Hailey. It’s that the risks are much different. So are the desires, but just to be certain, I ask Hailey, “Do you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
I nod hard. “The second Trent puts a hand on you, this is over,” I warn her. “The job is off. I’m only agreeing to it on the flimsy fucking notion that he’ll see you solely as a piggy bank to Varrick’s inheritance and not a pair of legs he wants to slide between.”
“O-okay, Rocky.” Her widened eyes dart over to Oliver and Jake.
“You’re embarrassing our sister,” Trevor tells me.
Oliver’s lips quirk.
Jake’s eyes soften on her, but he intakes a sharp breath through his nose.
He’s acting like we’re throwing her into a pit of vipers.
He either thinks Hailey can’t handle this job like Phoebe can—because Jake did not show this same level of worry for Phoebe—or he’s just very much in love with my sister.
Hailey’s cheeks are still splotchy red. Yeah…she must really like them if she’s getting this bashful. I’m just glad she’s not so deep in her thoughts that she can blush from this.
She manages to sit up and face Jake. “I want to prove to myself, and maybe to all of you, that I’m better. Every day, I’m getting better. I can handle this mentally. I can take this on. I-I know I’ve been a burden to the team lately—”
“Hailey Tinrock,” Phoebe chastises, “you are not a burden.”
“I haven’t pulled my weight.”
I scrunch my face at her. “You literally figured out I’m a Wolfe.”
“I just need this, please.” She’s beseeching Jake.
He’s the only one digging his heels in the sand.
“It’s not like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not.
I get to be the most me there is. The girl that Trent finds off-putting.
Who knows? It might actually be fun.” She looks to Phoebe for encouragement.
Who, of course, is going to dole out a Mack Truck–sized one: “Fucking over Trent is fun.”
I cut in. “Being around Trent is the opposite of fun.”
“When has Rocky ever had fun?” Oliver teases.
“You can’t seriously be okay with this?” Jake asks Oliver with actual blazing heat. Jesus, are they in a real fucking love triangle?
Oliver pushes off the wall. “Running scenarios with Hailey to prep her for a high-risk, epic showdown? It sounds better than a summer blockbuster.”
Hailey smiles over at him.
“You mean that geeky little movie Nova missed the premiere of,” I pipe in.
“The Avengers,” Nova retorts, “probably headed to be one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.”
“Dork.”
“Asshole.”
We share a subtle smile, which seems to pull one out of everyone else. Everyone but Jake. Until Trevor says, “We are pretty much the Avengers. Just less G-rated. More badass. Like Dark Avengers.”
“That’s not a thing,” I say.
“It is, actually.” Nova smiles—really smiles in a way I haven’t seen since we were young, a time before his mom dated dickhead after dickhead mark—and he laughs to himself, his tough brown eyes rising to meet us. “They’re a group of villains who impersonate the Avengers.”
“So…frauds.” I raise and lower my brows.
Phoebe has an all too smitten smile. She does love the counterfeit. It makes my lips rise higher.
Oliver grins. “If the shoe fits…”
“Wear it,” Hailey finishes.
He winks at her.
I’ve never seen myself as a vigilante, but for Jake, imagining he’s this summer’s hammer-wielding superhero might keep him from wanting to rip his hair out. Trent isn’t just a mark; he’s the older brother Jake despises, so this is another level of fucked-up for him.
If this isn’t an initiation into our world, I don’t know what is. “Welcome to my magical summers,” I tell him later that night. “They’ve always been very unhinged.”
—
I can honestly say I’ve been enjoying working alongside Hailey.
It’s new—her taking huge pointers from all of us, listening and following what we have to say.
The hot, sticky summer days feel cool as fuck knowing Trent is being bamboozled at every turn.
Friday, we attend Victoria’s movie night on the green, and he’s loosening his tie and curling his lip as Hailey stretches out on a blanket beside Phoebe.
Both girls digging into a bucket of popcorn purchased from the outdoor vendors.
“I know she’s your sister, Grey, but what the fuck is on her face?”
Hailey put in all her piercings at one time. Septum, both eyebrows, bottom lip, studs on her earlobes, and hoops in the cartilage.
“She’s alternative, man,” I say. “A little weird. I don’t know, we’re not that close.”
“Yeah, I’ve gotten that sense.” Trent cringes while we wait for gourmet sliders from a burger food truck. “I don’t know about this.”
“You want to ditch the movie?” I nod toward the opening of The Sandlot playing on the giant projector screen. Families and couples hunker down on the lawn space with Fizz sodas and boxes of candy: Junior Mints, Skittles.
“I meant Varrick’s idea,” he whispers, eyeing me seriously.
“I was already married once. I’m a widower.
” A title he wears with pride. “Getting married again, while I’m in a legal battle with Jake, to your…
” He makes a sour face at Hailey. Good. “Her.” He motions to Hailey as she picks chewing gum out of her mouth and sticks it to the side of the popcorn tub.
(Phoebe’s idea.) “What the fuck?” he mutters, then grits out to me, “There’s nothing in it for me. ”
“Really?”
“I really don’t see it.” He gives Hailey another once-over from afar.
“He’s basically handing you a cash cow. It’s the Wolfe fortune. They were building railroads and shit. Wasn’t one of them friends with the Rockefellers back in the day?”
“Carnegie, I think.”
“Old money,” I say. “Loaded for generations. You and all your degenerate offspring.” The quip comes out far too lighthearted to be real from me.
He laughs, then grimaces again. “And her degenerate offspring.” He narrows his eyes from her to me. “Thornhall. I can see how you’d like this, being her brother.”
Deep, sudden laughter rumbles out of my chest. “Yeah, yeah, I would. Who wouldn’t want to be one degree from probably a billion, maybe more.
But I’m not telling you it’s worth it so I can bag a fucking dime.
I don’t have to be from around here to know the depth of money from the steel industry.
” I nod to him. “To be honest, the chances she accepts any kind of marriage proposal from you is low anyway. You probably shouldn’t bother—”
“Whoa.” He catches my arm before I turn back to the food truck. “You think I can’t get her to marry me?” He laughs even harder than I did, a little pissed. “Are you high right now?”
“Man—”
“I’m a twelve. She’s a two. Most of this town would pay me to be Mrs. Trent Waterford.”
I stomp out the urge to roll my eyes halfway across the Atlantic. “I don’t think my sister cares about your pedigree.”
“Wasn’t she sleeping with half the staff at the country club?”
Yeah.
Hailey did do that.