Chapter Forty-Eight
FORTY-EIGHT
Jake
“Jeez Louise.” The lighthearted voice comes through the phone. “Your oldest brother is a snake. A little bitty toothless garden one that thinks it has venom and a bite. I hope you flung him into the woods.”
“Where are you?” I ask him, phone to my ear while I trek across the estate grounds with a lengthy, assertive stride.
“Look to your right, Koning. I’m coming at you hot.
” Oliver isn’t lying. I roll to a stop in the middle of the lawn as I see him bounding in from the stables.
He’s horseback on a black Dutch Warmblood that I’ve loved since I was seventeen, and he rides him like a Texan cowboy with strength and reckless freedom. His grin could light the sky on fire.
I laugh into a bright, weightless smile and lower the phone to my side. All the pressure of this morning flits away in one moment, one second, of just seeing Oliver Graves. His devil-may-care spirit never wanes, not even when he slows from a gallop to a trot to a walk as he nears me.
“Howdy there, good-looking.” Toothpick between his teeth, his smile stretches with mine. Our conversation on the phone drifts out of my brain.
I study his natural composure and ease on the horse. “I thought all of you hate horses?”
“Rocky and Phoebe don’t like animals,” Oliver clarifies, leaning forward and patting the Warmblood’s neck with affection, “because they think they can smell their lies.”
“You don’t feel the same?”
“I believe animals can sense what humans can’t. But all animals love me, and I love them.” Oliver smiles at the horse, which is very relaxed in his presence. “No scent of deceit on me.” His glittering eyes return to mine. “Some feelings you don’t need to fake.”
My lungs reinflate.
“You can smile, Koning. I won’t think you’re into me. I already know you are.”
He’s something else, something that I never want to go away, and the frustrated noise in my throat produces an actual smile. “You called.” I nod to him.
“You came, or technically I came.” He winks, then stops the horse a couple feet from me. “You don’t need to concern yourself with the wily affairs of your brother.” He dismounts, boots thudding to the ground. “It’s already taken care of. The monster under your bed does more than just tickle your—”
“Oliver.”
“Uh, he wants me to be serious,” Oliver groans while staring at my lips, then shifts the toothpick with his tongue.
My blood stirs, a carnal urge to do more than kiss him, and at the same time, my smile returns.
Oliver seems more than satisfied by both reactions.
“What’s this one’s name anyway?” he asks, smoothing a hand across the Warmblood’s side.
“Formally, Knight Rider—I just call him Kit.” I come up, and the horse softly nickers, a vibrating hum of contentment in his throat. I stroke his muzzle.
“Kit.” Oliver smiles more at me than the horse. “Well, good thing I’m here. He would’ve been on a trailer headed for Kentucky by now.”
Trent’s last rebellion against me—he was apparently trying to sell my favorite horses as if they were his own. “How’d you know about it?” I ask.
“Oh, he told me the whole thing. Pays to be friends with garden snakes. Keep Your Love’s Lover’s Enemy Close is the name of a very fun game.”
“Yeah?” I run my fingers through my hair. “Is that what you think I am—Hailey’s lover?”
We haven’t defined anything between the three of us.
Not once during the summer. Those fever-dream nights of unencumbered affection and quiet solace and hot curiosities filled with challenge ended the minute we left Stonehaven.
As expected, they faded with the summer haze and made way for the tortured yearning of the fall.
I’ve tossed and turned ever since. I’ve had the worst sleep of my life being home.
Being alone. I’ve realized that having sex with Hailey to help her sleep was more selfish on my part, and maybe Oliver’s, too.
I think we were all taking care of one another and using one another to feel something more.
We were too afraid to fully commit to a relationship with parameters and definitions and hard, rigid lines outside the bedroom.
It was easy to slip into helping the girl we loved and just leaving it at that. It was even easier to fall for the man who loved her.
It’s the first week of October, and I don’t know where we all go from here now. But I’m not afraid. As I’m standing here in front of Oliver, even knowing Hailey is carrying my child, even knowing this makes no sense—the three of us—fear can’t grab hold and choke.
I think, maybe, that’s the beauty of being with people who cast aside doubt and nourish belief like it’s a wall that can’t be knocked down. Together feels like a fortress.
“Terms, labels, semantics,” Oliver muses.
“Hailey’s lover. Hailey’s midnight fuck.
Hailey’s past. Hailey’s present. Hailey’s baby daddy.
” He spots my surprise, bowing toward me.
“Yes, I know.” He rocks back. “She told me earlier. I figured she likely already told you, and if she didn’t”—he sucks in a breath though his teeth—“I’ll ask for forgiveness later.
” He reads me well. “She did tell you though.”
“Like ten minutes ago.”
He laughs. “You’re still in shock.”
“Yeah.” I look him over, then shift more uncertainly. “A little worried about you.”
Oliver smiles through his eyes. “I’m happy the baby is a Koning and not a Graves. I promise I’ll love your child and teach her how to be bad in a very good way.” He wags his brows.
I freeze. “Her?”
He winces in realization. “She didn’t tell you you’re having a daughter?”
My pulse skips, and I let out a laugh, my eyes trying to well and burn. Hailey and I are having a daughter. “No, she didn’t.”
“Fuck.” He skims me head to toe. “Want to pretend you heard nothing?”
“I don’t think I can.” I slide my hands against my neck.
My daughter. Hailey. “Oliver.” I stare longer at him.
The air shifts between us like a crack of electricity, quickening my pulse, raising the hairs on my arms. Because our gazes tunnel too deep.
His breath hitches just slightly. I feel like we’re colliding, even when neither of us moves a muscle.
“I’m not just Hailey’s,” I tell him. “I think I’ve become yours, too. ”
“I think you might be right,” he whispers, our eyes scouring at a dangerous speed. “What are you going to do about it, Koning?”
“I’m making sure this isn’t just a summer fling. It can’t be the finish line, and if you don’t move the goalpost, I will.”
“I’ll move it with you,” he says. “I’m used to doing the heavy lifting.”
I start to smile. “Yeah?”
“Oh yeah. I suspect you’ll need me.”
“I suspect you’ll need me, too,” I say as our gazes roam so freely. I feel like we’re inside of each other in this field, and we haven’t even physically touched. “Move in for good,” I spell out clearly. “Live with us at this estate.”
He breathes deeply through his nose, his lips curving higher. His eyes shining brighter. “I’ll have to check my other offers.”
“Your other offers?” I glance at his lips, then watch him back away from me with a smile like dynamite and kerosene, and I am so gone, so fucking taken by him, looking away would feel like the real death of me. “Are you playing hard to get right now?”
“Keeps things interesting.” He grabs Kit’s leather reins, then gives me a salute. He laughs lightly. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m torturing you.” He’s amused and chews on the end of the toothpick. “I’ve already let you fuck me once.” I have been inside Oliver, but that’s not nearly as deep as I want to be.
“I don’t think once was enough.”
Oliver stays fixed on my gaze like he’s the one falling down the rabbit hole. “Agreed.”
—
After trekking back to the house alone, I only find Rocky.
He’s balancing backward on two legs of a patio chair, his actual legs kicked up on the table while he plays Candy Crush on his phone.
“Where’s Hailey?” I ask on instinct, anxious to see her.
Rocky drops his feet off the table. “She went to the bookstore with Phoebe. I didn’t want the girls hanging around here in case your brother throws a temper tantrum. I suggest you go make him an offer before he decides he has nothing to lose.”
They’re very good at preempting worse-case scenarios. It makes me wonder how many times they’ve encountered marks who like to retaliate after being humiliated. How many times they’ve needed a quick escape. How different this must be since they’re not fleeing the place of the con.
“Will do.” Before I go deal with my brother, I walk over to Rocky. “About your sister.”
“About my sister,” he says darkly. I can’t see a situation where Grey/Rocky/Brayden wouldn’t be protective of the people he loves, no matter who’s on the other end of his aim.
“If this is another conversation, Jake, where you tell me you aren’t serious about her, your face will be the one I put in that pile of dog shit. ”
I let out a laugh. “It’s the opposite, actually. All I want is to be serious with Hailey. I can’t imagine not being with her after all of this, Bray.”
He smiles hearing his birth name. “And Oliver?” It’s like he already knows. There is no real question in his eyes.
“And Oliver,” I say deeply.
He nods. “You love them.”
“I love them,” I state more firmly. “I will take care of them the rest of my life, and I know you guard all of them with yours. So I needed you to know where I stood.”
“I already knew, and I could lie, but I won’t.” He forces a dry smile. “It is nice hearing it out loud.” He checks his watch. “You need help with Trent?”
“I’ll call you if I do.”
“Great. You better go.”
The conversation with Trent is thirty minutes of a pulsing migraine. I offer him our family’s flat in London—one bedroom, one bath, in serious need of new plumbing. He takes it like I’m doing him a favor and starts packing his bags right then, right there.