Chapter Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
Rocky
If I were to choose to lie on the beach, it’d be at a resort or someplace where my back wasn’t being killed on the hard fucking sand. I didn’t pack chairs for this little therapeutic outing because we’ll be here for under an hour. At most.
Phoebe can’t sit still unless she’s watching a movie or in the middle of a job. It’s why five minutes into being here, she took a walk with her brothers.
While she’s gone, I’m on my feet, popping the tab of a beer that Jake just handed me. He shakes melted ice off another can and rises beside me. His eyes are on my sister.
Hailey flips a page in her book, sitting cross-legged beneath the shade of the blue umbrella. She wears a long-sleeve black T-shirt and dark pants. A typical Hailey beach outfit. She burns easily and usually avoids the sun.
His concern has been at a twelve since she got in the car last night. It’s impossible for me not to notice how often Jake checks on her. It’s so apparent, so in my face that it’d typically grate on my last nerve.
Now—after what happened to Hailey at the Koning estate, after knowing I couldn’t be there for her in any capacity, after knowing she might be pregnant with Jake’s or Oliver’s baby—I like that Jake is attentive toward my sister.
I like that he loves her.
I haven’t talked to him one-on-one about the baby or Hailey’s pregnancy. I was way too worried about Phoebe coming off of the drugs.
Four years ago, when Phebs gained consciousness in a Nashville motel, she said it felt like waking up underwater.
I think this time was easier for her but harder in different ways.
We’re a real couple, so I could hold her for longer…
and we had sex. Deep, penetrative, I will fuck you inside out type of emotional sex that she’s been craving more and more.
Over and over. I love fucking Phoebe like I’m staking my territory.
Claiming every fucking inch of her as mine. It’s euphoric and detonating.
The only downside? This almost torpedoed too far.
She spaced out for a full minute. Not the first time this has happened.
I only saw because I’d been taking her from behind while she held the lip of the sink.
I could see her eyes glaze in the mirror.
I slowed down, then fisted her hair and lifted her head up so she could see me as I thrusted into her cunt.
“Look at me,” I gritted in her ear. “I’m the only one who’s ever going to be inside you. The only one who’s ever going to fuck you.” She regained focus with parted lips and hitched breath as I rammed deeper. “All of you,” I grunted out. “Mine.”
“Stop,” she moaned in a way that said, Never fucking stop.
I pulled out. She was about to protest, but I flipped her around and pushed back inside her, just needing her to fully face me.
I didn’t trust that I could read her well enough with her face obscured.
I almost forgot the blip of a moment because our sex is soul ripping.
Like Phoebe is trying to fuse bodies, and all I want is deeper, harder, more.
While we got dressed in the bathroom, I asked her, “When you space out—”
“I don’t space out,” she defended.
“This isn’t a critique on your performance,” I said. “I’m not giving you an F here.”
She slowly slipped on her Strawberry Shortcake shirt. “What are you asking?”
“I just need to know if you’re coherent enough to actually use a safe word when that happens—when you need me to stop.”
We have a safe word in place—Miami—because when we fuck, no means yes and stop means go and I need to know when to literally stop. I thought maybe she’d be too stubborn to use it when she needed to. Now I’m wondering if it’s something else.
She pulled her damp blue hair out from the collar of her shirt. “If I wanted you to stop, I could’ve said it. But I didn’t want you to…” She trailed off, then threaded her arms together like she was done. There was definitely more there. That was not the fucking end of her thought.
“To what?” I asked.
She struggled to verbalize it.
I ran a hand through my wet hair. “Phoebe.”
“To just pull out and leave,” she finally said.
“Come here.” I grabbed her elbow, breaking apart her crossed arms. I wrapped her in a tight hug and whispered, “If you say, ‘Miami,’ I won’t scurry away from you like you’re fucking diseased.
I’ll pause for a second, check in with you, and then we go from there.
All it does is ensure I don’t hurt you.” I stroked the back of her head while she clung tighter.
“That city doesn’t mean abandon and forsake to you, does it? ”
Her face heated. She chose the safe word for a reason. That place holds meaning for her and me.
“No,” she murmured. Her fiery eyes met mine, and I wanted to take her all over again.
Phoebe being drugged this time has been harder because she’s still unpacking so much trauma. And unlike with the Melon Drop, Hailey was intertwined in this mess last night.
We’ve all been smacked in the face with so much at once, it’s strange as fuck we’re leisurely at the beach right now. I take a swig of beer, then press the cold can to my throbbing cheekbone. Because I was literally smacked in the face.
Jake sets his consoling blue eyes on me.
I glare. “Redirect that look on my sister.” I lower the beer can. “And just so you know, your brother probably has two black eyes and a fat lip this morning. Go send him a sympathy basket if you’re dying to comfort someone.”
“Me being fake nice to my brother would help us how?” Jake asks in seriousness.
“It wouldn’t,” Hailey pipes in with a page flip. “Trent wouldn’t believe you.”
I lift my beer. “She’s calling you a bad liar, sweetheart.”
“Okay, jackass.” Jake has this overprotective expression on me now. “You’re not patching things up with Trent.”
That wasn’t a question. I drill a more aggravated glare at him. “Maybe you should go be a lawyer since you love laying down the law.”
“Grey.”
“Jake,” I retort with the raise of my brows.
“To repair the damage that I did with your brother could take months. He’s already blocked me on socials, and if I tried calling, I’d bet he’s blocked my number, too.
So rest assured, I’m not going to be his best fucking friend anymore.
” To work my way back into Trent’s good graces would involve me bending a knee and sucking his fucking toes, and I’d rather swallow several buckets of sand and salt water than act like his lapdog.
“Varrick called and told me Trent is trying to get me kicked out of Stonehaven.”
Hailey closes her book for a second. “Really?”
“It’s not working. Varrick says he’s not playing favorites. So we’ll just have to not kill each other in the hallways.”
“Jesus.” Jake curses into a cringe and looks me over, examining my ticked-off face. “I just thought you’d be happier about it. You’ve hated being his friend.”
“Happier?” I lift and lower my brows. The word so foreign to me.
Down by the glittering water, I catch sight of my little brother knee-deep in the ocean with Sidney Burke.
He splashes her, and I can’t hear her giggle.
I just see the sound in the way her lips part and body buckles.
His slanted smile grows to rarer heights.
Seeing Trevor so emotive over a girl and not working a con does make me happy. Being with Phoebe for real makes me happy. Everyone I love being protected and safe—happy. But that last part isn’t a reality. It’s a fucking fantasy right now.
Still, it’s easy to acknowledge the most happiness I’ve ever experienced in my life has been in this town in the past year.
I look back at Jake. “I’m happy I don’t have to stoke your brother’s overinflated ego or bite my tongue in half when he even utters Phoebe’s name. But I’m not happy I lost…”
I lost control.
And it felt good. I hate how freeing it’d been. The only time I ever feel that wildly undone is when I’m with Phoebe.
Jake frowns. “Lost what?”
I lower my voice. “Being in his ear gave me power. Severing that rope is not good for any of us. I have no influence over him anymore, and with Hailey being the crux of this job…it just makes it a bigger risk.”
I don’t know what Trent is thinking. He’s not venting to me about what happened.
He’s not even venting to Oliver. For one, Oliver is Phoebe’s brother.
For another, Trent views him as a hedonistic, coke-fueled fuckboy.
He’s a party friend. I’m sure he’s not someone Trent would confide in unless it were a group setting and booze were flowing.
My fuckup is just so bad.
I feel like we went fifty steps backward in one night.
The good coming out of this—he now knows I will kill him if he tries anything with Phoebe. But that doesn’t even matter if we can’t secure Jake’s full inheritance. Trent owning half this town means it’s not worth it to stay here.
We’d have to leave.
I’m a Wolfe, but I’m also a Tinrock. I’ve made peace with needing to say goodbye to Victoria to protect my family that’s still alive.
Jake takes a short swig of his beer, his eyes flitting back to Hailey. There’s now a much greater chance we won’t pull this off.
We’ll become a figment to Jake Waterford, some twisted dream—one year of his life when six con artists strode in and unsettled his foundation, leaving him in our destructive wake underneath the debris.
We’ll find a new town.
New city.
We always do.
Six spiders. Seven, if he decides to come with us…
Yeah, why the fuck would I want him to? I put my beer to my lips, trying not to internally stake myself with a glare. I don’t lie to myself.
Of course I know the truth. I like Jake. I would trust Jake with my life and their lives. I don’t want to leave him behind. He might even be the father of my sister’s baby. Yeah…complicated.
“So you need someone in my brother’s ear?” Jake asks, keeping his voice hushed as a family (not influential) parks their wagon of beach gear less than twenty feet away. “And that can’t be Oliver because…?”