Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rocky
Trent finds me before I find him.
I’ve led him away from the east grounds, away from any place where I think Phoebe might be. On the stone backyard patio, I step over cigarette butts, deflated inner tubes, and abandoned sandals.
I subtly check my phone to see if anyone found her. No new messages. No updates.
My insides are being shredded alive with every passing second I’m separated from her. My eyes are enflamed, and I have trouble seeing farther than ten feet in front of my fucking face.
The unknown is very slowly, very excruciatingly, thrashing through me like an uncaged animal.
I can’t produce a friendly smile.
I can barely level my voice.
To force myself from glaring, I concentrate on the sweat dripping down my temple. The sensation quickly grates on me, and I scrape the heel of my palm against the side of my face.
“You need to quit helping my brother,” Trent bemoans again, running fingers through his dark brown hair, then outstretching his arm to the humongous lap pool where the DJ is serving tinnitus and an idiot cannonballs off the second story into the red-lit water.
Topless women lounging on flamingo floaties squeal as waves rock into them. “You really want to stop this, Grey?!”
“I’m helping you!” I shout over the music and pop of fireworks. “Jake could so easily sue you—”
“Please!” he cuts in with a laugh. “My little brother?! He’s too fucking soft!
” Trent has both my shoulders in his grip, stopping us in a puddle of water near the pool.
“He’s not like you and me! He never will be!
” His slanted smile stretches with arrogance I can barely withstand right now.
“If he were, maybe he’d still have Phoebe! ”
I am visceral rage. But only inside.
“And what if Jake never caves?!” I grimace at the C-rate wedding party DJ as if it’s beneath a Koning’s status.
“He’ll cave! In the meantime, have some fucking fun.” He rattles my shoulders, and the urge to punch him intensifies. My general disdain for Trent lives underneath a more ruinous emotion that I can’t name. It feels catastrophic now.
“You know this isn’t my scene!” I yell back. “I find these parties to be too inclusive!” It’s a shallow dig. “It’d be better with a smaller guest list!” I check the time on my watch, needing to cut loose from him.
Needing her.
It’s a desperation, and I can’t let him smell it on me.
“Couldn’t agree more! But you have to look at the bigger picture here!” He pats my face lightly, seeing what he can get away with, and I slap his hand off me. It’s a warning.
“Don’t bust my balls, man! I’ve had a long, long week with work!” I’m in the CIA and he’s the only special fucking soul I’ve offered this confidential intel to—not even my ex-wife knows. Another check of my Rolex and I tell him, “I need to meet up with my wife!”
“Ex-wife!” He shouts back the reminder, testing my boundaries.
But I’m not a beta bitch. He’s liked that I’m an alpha who won’t let his bottom-feeder friends run all over me, but I am never to run over him.
I’m about to step away.
He shoots out a hand and snatches my bicep, stopping me. “How is Phoebe?!”
I tear him off. Is he stalling me? Alarm blasts shriller than the music, popping the external noise around me. All I hear is my dread.
I stare through him with a daggered gaze. Does he know where she is right now? Did he always know?
I sweep my eyes over the pool, the backyard, but all I see are flashes of Nashville, of our early twenties. I’m gripping her hair in the alleyway while she pukes. I’m holding her in the backseat of the car as she loses consciousness.
She’s crying. I hate this. I hate this. Don’t leave me.
I snap back into focus on Trent. “I thought you knew she was here?!”
“I saw her from afar! I didn’t think she’d come tonight! She never does!” At face value, I’d say he’s telling the truth. “I might’ve…” He swings his head from side to side with a shit-eating grin.
“You might’ve what?!” I smile to pull it out of him. We’re just friends. He can tell me anything. I even say it. “We’re friends, aren’t we?!” I smack his chest with the back of my hand.
“We are!” He dips his head toward me. “And you’ve been moody as fuck, Grey.
You need a good release.” He pauses, gauging my reaction, and I nod and smile in agreement.
He continues. “Look, as your friend, I’d say she’s still into you, but she’s not putting out without some encouragement.
It’s going to be a hell of a lot easier tonight. ”
“Yeah?” Fuck you. “How so?”
“I paid that cuck Howie to put a little something in her drink to get her loose.” He smacks my chest now.
“You can thank me later, but only if I can watch.” He laughs as if it’s a joke, but his darkened gaze says he’s serious—that there better be an invite.
He will participate. I will share and thank him for this gift.
My brain is numb. I hear nothing but my raging pulse. I see nothing but my all-consuming, heart-wrenching life with her.
A thousand times I’ve bit my tongue until it’s bled. A thousand times I’ve crushed my real feelings in a blender for the job. The job. There’s still an unfinished job. A rope unpulled. I need Trent close.
I can’t sever the rope between me and him.
I can’t hacksaw it.
But I can’t force down the violent surge inside me. All the blistering, untapped anger. The overpowering rage. It amasses. Too quickly.
I lower my head, our foreheads nearly touching as I stare into him. “You think I’m a cuck?”
He sees something new in my eyes. A flicker of doubt reaches him. The music shuts off abruptly to exclamations of “Hey!” and “Turn it back on!”
I step close to Trent, bumping my chest into his.
“Grey?”
I sneer, “You think I’d let you rape my wife?”
People gasp as they hear me.
Distaste writhes across his ugly face. “No one said anything about that, Grey. You went there.”
I walk him farther backward. To the edge.
Her voice is in my head again. I hate this. I hate this. Don’t leave me.
I erupt. I thrust him in the pool. And I go with him.
Let me be clear, I want to go with him.
The red-lit water is freezing cold, but I can’t feel the chill.
I grapple with Trent under the surface and above, punching and kicking every time we come up for air.
Violent splashes of water slap back at my face.
I hammer my fist into his jaw, and he lands one on my mouth.
The commotion from bystanders around the pool is muted in my head. I only hear my pounding pulse.
Then I sink him in the eight-foot depths, drag him down. The red pool light glows hot next to us. I rip the collar of his shirt, yank his arm behind his back. He tries to dunk me to propel himself to the surface.
He’s fighting for air.
I wrench him back down like a steel anchor. He thrashes more frantically as I keep him under. He can’t shove me off. I’m stronger and more meticulous and careful in how I cage my breath.
I bet he didn’t have a father strap ankle weights on him and give him a crash course in the water like he was a teenage Navy SEAL recruit. I bet he’s never been this uncomfortable in his life.
I bet he’s never felt powerless.
He screams underwater, bubbles expelling from his parted mouth.
Seeing his unrighteous anger switch into fear—it frees something inside me. I’ve never felt this much oxygen fill my lungs.
I don’t know how long we’re underwater for, but I could last forever. I could kill him. I have it in me. But I never let my base desires dominate me. You’re not in control, Bray. I hear the woman who raised me.
I’m not in control.
Do I even care?
Before I answer that question in my head, someone plunges into the water. Hands grab at my shoulder, my ribs, and then yank me off Trent. I don’t fight them.
Trent kicks toward the surface, battling for his last breath.
When I breach the water and suck in air, I seize the pool’s edge and heave myself out onto the stone. I turn my head left and see Jake.
He’s pulling himself out, too, and he’s drenched. I honestly thought it’d been Nova…It wasn’t Nova. Jake was the one who jumped in after me.
The weight of this bears down on my chest. Now I feel like I can’t fucking breathe. Hilarious.
Trent hangs on to the edge and stays partially submerged in the pool, not having the strength to bring himself to land. He coughs up water, hacks up a lung.
I pay only partial attention to the shocked, inebriated crowd. These aren’t the older prim and proper socialites who frequent Victoria Country Club; these are their thirtysomething and college-aged children.
“Holy shit!” A drunk exclamation fills the tense silence.
“Is that Grey?”
“Wait, Grey and Trent are fighting? Aren’t they, like, best friends?”
Two social climbers try to help Trent out of the pool. He shoves off the guys, not wanting to appear weak, even as he wheezes.
I push my wet hair back and intake bigger lungfuls of air.
There’s a chance Phoebe never consumed the spiked drink. There’s a chance Howie never slipped GHB in her cup. It doesn’t change the fact that Trent premeditated this, but it changes the outcome of tonight.
Though, if she did get drugged…
It slams into me.
Suddenly, unbearably.
I move so fast, shooting toward Trent—I can’t see even two feet in front of my face now. All I imagine is stepping on his hand, hearing the bones crack, and then shoving his head beneath the water again.
Jake slips his arms beneath my armpits, gripping me from behind and wrenching me backward. He fucking lifts me off the ground to keep me from reaching his brother. “Stop,” he says in the pit of my ear, a lot less hostile, a lot more consoling than I’d be. “Stop, Brayden.”
Him saying my birth name—yeah, that does it.
I suck in the rage, containing it with one harsh inhale. Jake releases his hold on me while Trent catches his breath enough to snarl, “What the absolute fuck?” The venom in his face is tangible.
There is a way back from this. A way to convince him it was a simple misunderstanding. But do I even want him to believe that?
No.
I want to force-feed him the truth until he fucking chokes. “You think you’re a god to this fucking town?” Heat expels off my rough voice. “You’re a tumor.”
“Fuck—”
“No, fuck you,” I grit between my teeth.
“What’s mine isn’t yours; you don’t fucking own me.
You never did, you never will.” I feed off his disturbed expression as he sees me, sees the real me and what I am.
I’ve never been his friend. “If it’s not fucking clear, TK”—I spit out his nickname—“I think you’re a repulsive piece of shit.
I’ve chosen a side. And it’ll never be yours.
” My harsh gaze flits around the stunned audience, Solo cups crushed in hands and mouths agape. “You all should do the same.”
Trent blinks through the mindfuckery of my abrupt betrayal. “Get out of my house,” he says coldly.
“With pleasure.” I leave the patio with a hot, forceful stride. People back away from me, giving me a wide berth like I might catch them on fire.
I feel someone at my side.
Trevor. He’s here. He’s been here for I don’t know how long. Like a shadow passing unseen through the crowds.
He keeps my hurried pace now. Quickly, I hand him my waterlogged phones. All dead. Useless. But if anyone can bring them back to life, it’d be him.
He pockets them. “You went feral. You said to never go feral.”
“It wasn’t planned.”
This stuns him, then he faces forward. “She’s going to be okay, Rock. PG is the strongest girl I know.”
A ball lodges in my throat. Did someone…? Is she…? “Where is she?” Right as I ask, Jake reaches my other side.
“Follow me,” he says, catching my elbow and tugging me in a new direction.
As Trevor falls back behind us, I say under my breath to Jake, “You could’ve let me drown him. It would’ve solved all your problems.” He’s wished for his brother’s death. Well, it was right there.
And he stopped it.
Jake’s jaw muscle tenses, then he meets my gaze. There is something crushing in his eyes, something that reaches too far inside me. “I wasn’t saving him.”
He was saving me.
From prison.
Every tormenting thing about tonight piles onto me, and an onslaught of emotion rams into my chest, making it harder to breathe, and I see water, a dark river.
I picture the family I lost. I think about Evan Wolfe, my older brother, who likely saved me as we went under, and I can’t even look at Jake.