Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
Rocky
When’s the last time I ran this fast? Was it carrying my wounded brother on Halloween? Was it racing toward a storm shelter where my sister was hallucinating?
Now it’s for Phoebe.
I want to say this is worse somehow. That the suffering of her is the suffering of me. But it’s all hell I’ve grown strong inside. This urgent, desperate feeling isn’t new to me. It’s been undying.
I run out of the side yard with Jake and Trevor, coming to the front of the estate. Trent Waterford paid off the security guards. They refused Jake’s direction to stay the night, and they’ve left their posts at the gate so anyone could get through.
Dozens of cars are parked in jagged, uneven, chaotic lines on the edge of the road leading to the mansion. My McLaren among them.
It’s not what I’m aiming for.
Nova’s olive-green 1969 Pontiac GTO is idling in the horseshoe driveway. He’s digging in the popped trunk while Hailey disappears into the driver’s seat.
The rear door is open. Oliver is bent inside the car, and I can only guess who he’s laying across the backseat.
My lungs are on fire when I reach Nova as he slams the trunk, a trauma bag slung on his shoulder. The glare he shoots me hits a deep nerve. I wasn’t careless about his sister; I’ve never been careless about Phoebe in my entire goddamn life.
I clench my jaw and pass him without a word. We say nothing because we’re trained to move and not air grievances when things go south.
It takes an ungodly amount of force not to immediately check on Phoebe. All I want is to hold her, be with her, tell her I’m here.
It’s a nail gun to my chest just to avoid the rear door and reach the driver’s side.
“Get out,” I tell Hailey.
“I can drive—”
“It’s not that.” As she climbs out, I draw her several feet away from the Pontiac. She’s shaking. I can’t make sense of why she’s trembling or gathering the sleeves of her mesh shirt in her fists. I can tell it’s not from anxiety, but the origins are lost on me.
I’m not the person who can comfort her right now. As much as I want that for my sister, it’s not going to be me. In this moment, I’m shrapnel. “I need you to be honest with me,” I say quickly. “Hailey.”
She lifts her gray eyes to mine. They’re bloodshot and puffy. She’s been crying.
My ribs constrict. “When I ask you something, you need to tell me the truth and fast—for Phoebe, for her health.” I’m ninety-nine percent sure I know the answer to the question, but I have to ask anyway. I have to be sure.
Hailey looks sick.
I drop my voice. “Is she pregnant?”
“No.” She maintains steady eye contact with me. “But I am.”
I nod. “I know,” I whisper, the magnitude of this trying to combust inside of me.
“You know?” Her eyes well, and she glances toward the car.
“No one told me. I figured it out.”
Her nose flares, but she manages to nod back. She swipes at her eyes to stop tears from falling. “Phoebe,” she chokes out before I can react. “Go to Phoebe.”
I’m being ripped in two directions, and my skull is throbbing as I rush back to the Pontiac. The rear doors are open, both Graves brothers leaning inside the car.
I throw keys to my McLaren at Jake.
He catches them midair, then runs to Hailey as she crumples against the tire, burying her face in her palms.
“Move,” I tell Oliver on the rear passenger side. He shifts out of the way, letting me through. I see the way he glances over the car. I see the way he searches for my sister, but I don’t linger on it.
Because I just want to be with her.
Phoebe.
Phoebe.
Anger and something deeper amass like an abyss inside my chest.
She’s unconscious on the leather bench seat.
Her head nearest me. Her feet near Nova.
I examine her so rapidly. Her white dress isn’t ripped or torn.
No dirt or bloodstains. Just sand on her toes.
Her arm hangs limp over the seat. Her blue hair conceals her face, and I push the strands aside and cradle her head. I inspect her cheeks, her lips.
My pulse won’t stop accelerating.
Nova is bent over his sister and unspooling the tubes for an IV drip. His glare hits me more than once.
“I didn’t fucking lose her,” I say roughly, climbing into the backseat and lifting Phoebe onto my lap. I have her.
I have her.
I’m not letting her out of my sight.
“You didn’t find her either,” Nova retorts, then eyes my mouth. I assume my lip is split from Trent landing a punch. I’m also soaking wet. “I hope it was worth it.”
“Fuck you,” I say weakly, my voice hoarse. Guilt is already killing me. He doesn’t need to twist the knife.
Nova must see. He tosses me a rubber tube. “Tie this around her bicep.”
I prop her head on my thigh and quickly knot the rubber around her arm. He rests a knee on the seat near her hip. While hovering over her, Nova flicks the inside of her elbow, then sticks a needle in her vein.
We’re rushing at a pace that has no room for thoughts or feelings. I don’t let them enter while he starts the IV. I hook the saline bag on the car hanger bar above my head.
There is no We can’t handle this. There is only We have to handle this.
It might as well be the Tinrock-Graves motto.
Oliver stands outside behind me, and I tell him that I gave Jake my keys. “He needs to drive Hailey to the marina,” I explain. “The Ithaka is at the docks. We’ll all stay on the yacht tonight.”
Oliver bows down closer to me, his hand on the frame of the car. “I’ll go with Hails—”
“No, you need to drive us,” I say. “Your brother is going to stay in the backseat with me.” Nova is already shutting the side door. He’s sitting beside me, and Phoebe’s legs are splayed over his lap. He digs out a pulse oximeter from the trauma bag.
“Trevor?” Oliver glances backward, but as he scans the horseshoe driveaway, I know my brother is already gone.
I saw him tinkering with my waterlogged phones and walking away about the same time I talked to Hailey.
“He left in the Honda,” I say. “He’ll meet us at the yacht. Send him a text.”
“You don’t need to text,” Nova cuts in fast. “He’s spending the night with Sidney at the Harbor Hotel.
” He clips the pulse oximeter on Phoebe’s finger, then meets my hard gaze.
“That’s why Phoebe and Hailey were here.
For Sidney.” He explains what happened in under thirty seconds—information he sourced from Trevor and Hailey.
I stare at the back of the headrest, a migraine hammering against my temple. Weston Burke and Trent Waterford fucking me over in one night.
I try not to replay the downward spiral of events, but this night will get infinitely worse if Weston Burke finds his daughter at a hotel and Trevor is there. I just tell Oliver, “He stays on the yacht tonight. Call him.”
“Calling our little psychopath,” Oliver confirms, putting the phone to his ear and shutting the car door.
I lean against it more, and I pull Phoebe higher up my body. Her shoulders are flush with my chest, and her head lolls against my collar. “Should she be this cold?” I ask Nova while I rub her arms, careful of the IV.
“The fluids should help. I’ll monitor her, but if her vitals drop, we’re taking her to the hospital.” He passes me a medicine bottle. “Here.”
I read the label: Smelling salts.
I send him a short look of appreciation. The small exchange is one of amnesty between us. He could’ve easily done this himself, but he’s letting me take over this part and care for his sister like I usually do.
I’m not going to be an ass and remind him of that or how my love for her hasn’t depreciated in the past twenty-four hours. Nothing has changed—not even the fact that he doesn’t want me with his sister long term.
I wave the white flag because it’s easier when Nova and I aren’t banging heads like two stubborn bucks locking antlers.
Oliver slips behind the wheel. “All aboard.” He starts the ignition.
Nova casts a toughened glance of concern at his brother. I wonder how much coke Oliver snorted tonight. It’s a fleeting thought as he drives us out of the Koning estate. Nova turns back to me to say, “It’ll wake her up, but not for long.”
I open the childproof cap. The car glides across smooth paved roads and through the iron gates. Phoebe isn’t being jostled against me, thankfully, and I quickly pass the bottle beneath her nose.
The ammonia in the smelling salts triggers an inhalation reflex, and she suddenly jerks into a gasp. Her eyes blink open. “Wh-what the fuck?” she curses out with such a biting tone (classic Phoebe) that Nova nearly smiles, and weight releases off my chest.
“I have you, Phebs,” I whisper against her ear. “You’re safe in your brother’s car. I’m not letting you go.”
She clutches my forearm that’s wrapped around her chest, holding on and registering her surroundings. Her eyes drift to Nova, then upward at me. She blinks hard, her heavy-lidded gaze trying to close as quickly as it opened. “Rocky?”
I cup her cheek with a firm hand. “You’re okay.
I’m not leaving you.” I force this out so she understands the permanence, the promise.
Her body slackens. I press a kiss into her dark blue hair.
She expels a deeper breath, and I murmur, “We’re taking you to The Ithaka. That’s where you’ll wake up again.”
Her lips form one word. My name. Rocky. Her eyes glass, and I thumb away silent tears slipping down her cheeks.
She shuts her eyes, too out of it to comprehend anything other than my presence—that I’m right here. The comfort and security of this keeps easing her body against me. Soon, the drugs begin to drag her back under.
Now that Phoebe is being taken care of, my mind travels back to my sister, and my migraine strengthens like a screw drilling halfway into my skull. “What happened to Hailey?” I ask them.
“Oliver and Jake found her on the beach,” Nova explains in a wooden tone that sends a shot of adrenaline into my bloodstream. I can’t relax. “She was protecting Phoebe.”
“She was protecting Phoebe,” I repeat with a similar flat tone, and an iron taste floods my mouth. It takes me a second to realize I just bit my tongue. “Was she assaulted?”
“I don’t know.” Nova pulls at his khaki crewneck like he’s burning up inside. Anger pulses his narrowed eyes, and he cranks down the window to let balmy nighttime air into the car.
Silence eats at me.
At us.
Oliver has one casual hand on the wheel. “Hailey shouldn’t have been in that position. It’s not a role she’s been trained to handle.” He doesn’t bring up her role in conning Trent, since she’s been struggling with it.
Nova scrapes a palm back and forth over his short brown hair. “The three of you barely handle it fucking well. Phoebe dissociates, Rocky has a sensitivity problem—”
“It’s not a problem,” I interject.
“—and you spend three hours organizing the bathroom cabinet, Ol.”
“Coping mechanisms,” Oliver reasons. “That’s what we were taught, Nov. Hailey has none of that when it comes to these situations. If it’d been me or Phoebe or Rocky, we would’ve been able to lead these guys back to the party with promises of a good time that we were never going to deliver.”
Guys? There were guys on the beach. Confirmed.
My brain is on fire. Especially as Nova says, “This wasn’t a job. They weren’t working a fucking job, Oliver.”
I grind my jaw. “It’s Trent,” I chime in. “It’s always fucking Trent.” He’s a malignant growth on this town. We’re just the parasite determined to bring him down.
But I fucked up. Really fucked up. My friendship with Trent was obliterated in one instant tonight. I lost every shred of influence over the eldest Koning. Our plans to push him out of Victoria just became infinitely harder.
All thanks to me.