Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I fucked her so slowly, pulling her against my cock, I thought for sure he was going to come before she did.
He even looked at me like I’d nearly gotten to him. He had to leave for the bathroom. I heard the shower cut on, and I smiled against Hailey’s lips in a deeper kiss.
Thinking about our situation together, the three of us, I just keep reminding myself, It’s the summer. It’s a heat wave. It’s a distraction. It’s tranquilizing for more than just Hailey. It’ll pass like a haze.
I thumb through a stack of magazines on his desk. “I regret getting here so early…” I trail off at the pictures on a tabloid.
“Who do you recognize?” he asks.
“That obvious?” I pick up the Celebrity Crush magazine.
Fizzle, a company located in Philadelphia, has been all over the tabloids after this major scandal involving the CEO’s daughter.
I didn’t expect to see him in one of the photos.
Even if I knew he was originally from Philly.
“Connor Cobalt, or Richard Connor Cobalt.”
“Old fling?”
I laugh. “No. He’s five years younger than me. We both went to Faust Boarding School for Young Boys.” I stare at the photo of his deep blue eyes and confident gait as he walks hand in hand with a girl who’s likely glaring at the paparazzi. “He’s someone you don’t really forget.”
Oliver reaches for the magazine.
I hand it to him. “He’s incredibly smart. Broke most of the academic records at our school. He was very good at getting people to do what he wanted. He understood social capital so well, I figured he’d be a billionaire by thirty if he wasn’t already an heir to a Fortune 500.”
“Meh, I could take him.” Oliver skims the photo.
“Could’ve been our next mark, too bad he’s famous now.
” He tosses the magazine. “I’m not risking my face being caught in a tabloid.
Some grifters love the attention, but that’s not a thrill we seek.
” He threads his hands behind his head, about to kick his feet on the desk, but they stay grounded when the door opens.
His fingers unlace, and he’s pushing up to a stand.
Hailey has arrived like a speeding train slamming into a brick wall. She suddenly halts two feet into the room. The door bangs shut behind her.
“Hailey?” I take one step, but she holds up her hands.
Oliver and I stay back. Chunky black headphones cover her ears and flatten her platinum hair, and she begins pacing, wringing her mesh sleeves in her hands. Chains jingle on her cargo pants in the silence.
I skim her for any signs of harm. My brother. What did Trent do now?
It ravages my brain, until I notice the elastic Calvin Klein waistband sticking out of her pants. I side-eye Oliver. “Is she wearing your underwear?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He assesses her more than me. “Jealous, Koning?”
I smile to myself. Just happy for the distraction. Even one so brief and fleeting.
Then she stops, takes a breath, and yanks her headphones to her neck.
She must’ve been blasting the song. It floods the office, and the lyrics and the melody pummel me because this isn’t her normal metal headbangers. The first time we ever exchanged music, I sent her this poetic song about love, death…and fear.
She intakes another readying breath as “Death” by White Lies plays on high volume, and she says, “The job must go on. This doesn’t change the job. You need to know that before I tell you something.”
Oliver keeps his hands in his pockets. His casual demeanor isn’t unspooling the tension in my muscles. If anything, it’s making me more on guard.
“Did something happen with Trent?” I ask.
She shakes her head. Her hands grip the headphones around her neck as the chorus blares, and her eyes reach mine as she says, “I’m pregnant.
” She looks at Oliver. “I’ve done the calculations a thousand times, and the baby could be either of yours.
It must’ve been around March…I was sleeping with you both then. ”
I can barely think.
Oliver’s eyes skim her. “That’d make you around fifteen weeks?”
“Sixteen,” she corrects.
“Sixteen weeks pregnant.” I shut my eyes tightly. Four months. “Hailey—”
“Wait.”
I open my gaze on her steady eye contact. Like she’s played this moment in her mind over and over a million and one times and seen all our possible reactions. None could surprise her.
Now she’s here, and she’s confidently saying, “I will have this baby. I will love this baby. I will be known as a town whore more than I already am. There will be speculation over who the father might be once I start showing, and I don’t care.
This is me. I’ve never been in a relationship.
I’ve never done anything the normal way.
I don’t know what normal is outside of pretending to act it, and maybe that’s okay.
” She takes the tiniest breath. “And I know you two don’t want kids—or at least aren’t ready for them.
I know anything serious freaks us all out.
So I’m releasing you from this situation.
” She nods several times. “You don’t have to be a part of this. I have it under control. Me.”
Oliver and I open our mouths at the same time, but she cuts in again.
“One more thing.” She raises a finger. “Just one.”
“Okay,” I say tentatively.
“No matter what happens with us or the job, my child will always know the truth of who they are. Who their real mom is. Who their real dad is. I’m not deceiving them. Not for anything or for anyone.”
I keep falling more and more in love with Hailey. She stays resolute on my gaze, drinking in my respect for her, my affection for her, my concern for her. Only tearing away when Oliver bridges the distance between her and him.
He swoops his arms around her thin build. Lifts her off the ground. Spins her in a circle round and round while whispering in her ear. As her arms weave around his neck and her ear turns toward his lips to hear more, I can almost picture them as teenagers.
Fourteen and fifteen, embracing as the towns and cities change in a blur around them. And I’m certain—they will never change.
Hailey and Oliver will endure like all the Tinrocks and Graveses. Even if this job fails, even if they’re run out of Victoria, they will be together until the very end. Like they were together in the very beginning.
The only question is me. It’s why she was staring at me. I have more to lose. Being associated with Hailey and a baby out of wedlock—especially while the town thinks my older brother is interested in her—it’s gossip fodder. Salacious. Reputation damaging.
Not just to her.
I imagine Oliver doesn’t care. He’s a playboy. No one would be shocked if he knocked up a girl here.
And me…
I stare down and almost smile. I’m always revolting against what people want me to be. Had it been up to my mother, I’d be married to a girl from an upper-class family and we’d have four kids by now.
I’m not worried about what people will think of me. Shame is for those who can’t be proud of their convictions, and I’ve never been ashamed of being with Hailey. I’d never be ashamed of having a baby with her.
I’m deathly concerned about her being around my brother now, but that’s another conversation. Because when Oliver rests her feet on the floor, when she turns to me, she looks uneasy.
Oliver places a hand on her head and tells me, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” I say lightly. “You’ll always be in her life. Whether you’re the father or I am, you’ll still be there.”
“Jake…?” Hailey hesitates.
“I wouldn’t take him from you,” I assure her. “It’d be wrong for you two to lose each other.”
Her eyes glass. “I…” Her face says, I don’t want to lose you, too.
It crushes me, realizing she believes I’m going to walk away from her and this baby. Then I breathe deeply, and I see her during wintertime.
Twinkling stars carpeted the night sky while we sat on my catamaran sharing a woolen blanket over our shoulders. She’d been interested in Stonehaven, the history of the Wolfe family, and I’d taken her to my boat since I had a perfect view from the dock.
I didn’t think she’d bring binoculars. There ended up being less spying through the windows and more talking.
For hours and hours and hours, we discussed her life and mine, from the simple joys of reading to the shared guilt we had over the people we loved.
I felt responsible for not helping Kate sooner.
I felt responsible for my mother’s pettiness and cruelty.
She felt responsible for what happened to Phoebe in Carlsbad.
She felt responsible for finding answers about all their origins, their birth parents, before it was too late.
She was losing time.
I was losing hope.
And somehow, we found both that night in each other.
The frigid air was almost unbearable, and we’d eventually have to go inside the catamaran, but we still lingered. I didn’t want to leave that moment.
I didn’t want to leave her.
Then her gray eyes bounced between me and the mansion on the rocky island. Back and forth.
“What is it?” I smiled down at her.
“Being here with you just reminded me of a poem.” Her cheeks went flush, and not just from the cold.
“Well, now you have to tell me.”
“Forget I said anything. I, uh…I’m just thinking too much.”
“Emily Dickinson? The poem about the sea and her dog,” I guessed. “I don’t think it has an official title but I’ve always called it ‘By the Sea.’ ”
She smiled almost instantly. “Kind of close.”
I smiled back. “Theme or year?”
“Both poets were alive at the same time. ‘By the Sea’ actually rhymes with…” She trailed off, her blush spreading as it dawned on me.
“ ‘Annabel Lee’?” I held her gaze while she searched mine rapidly.
“Do you…do you know it?”
I didn’t just know it. I had recited it as a child for school, and every line was ingrained in my memory.
“ ‘It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea,’ ” I whispered, glancing out at Stonehaven, then back at her.
“ ‘That a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee. And this maiden she lived with no other thought’ ”—I watched her eyes pool with emotion, and my heart filled past capacity—“ ‘than to love and be loved by me.’ ”
Hailey stared into me so deeply, hanging on to these words I spoke like a fairy-tale romance I was bringing to life for her, and I wanted it to exist for me. The haunting, unending love of Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” That night it felt like it was written for her and me.
We stared at each other for so long, I would’ve believed time froze. I didn’t think. I just felt. And I kissed Hailey for the first time that night, under the stars, with the words of her favorite poem hanging around us like icicle dreams.
I thought they would melt come morning.
But they never did.
I later learned it wasn’t just her favorite poem. It was the poem the Tinrocks and Graveses used as a cry for help when one of them was wounded or in trouble. She said it encompassed the undying love of their families.
All Hailey has ever known is a love that’s more than love.
And now she’s seeking that in me. I want to love someone to the depths of poetic death. I want to love her this way, but my home is a place. Her home is an organ pumping through five different bodies. All she needs is them to survive.
I need this town. I can’t leave my birthright. I’m still, and will always be, a Koning.
“Hailey,” I whisper in the office.
She shifts her weight, nervous. Oliver stays behind her, and she peers from him to me. “I can only give you the information. You have to make a choice, too.”
“Are you releasing me?” I ask her. “That’s what you said. You want to release me from the responsibility of being a father? The responsibility of caring about you, of loving you?”
“I don’t want to,” she breathes. “But if it’s easier for you—”
“It’s not easier to walk away,” I interject softly.
“Jake…” she draws out. “If we fail this job, I can’t stay in Victoria. E-even if the baby is yours, I can’t. It won’t be safe.”
I nod, knowing, and I don’t lie to her. “I can’t leave this town,” I say gently. “I will do everything I can to make sure I get the full inheritance, because I can’t fathom abandoning you. I’m not scared about my reputation. I’m just scared you won’t be able to stay here with me.”
She’s pregnant. Even picturing her packing her bags with a round belly, carrying my child, and I can’t follow is tearing me apart. That’s not the man I ever wanted to be.