Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Rocky
“I’m not…” she starts to protest, but she can’t finish.
I study the way her collarbone juts in and out with short, choppy breaths. I can’t quite chalk it up to fear . Not when she’s fucking obstinate as hell. I love that about Phoebe—I love so much about this woman, but I’m going to lose my mind if she pushes herself to a place she’s A) not ready for, or God forbid B) terrified of.
She’s on her knees while I tower over her bare, vulnerable frame. Is it the position? Does she feel too defenseless? I hold the back of her skull, and her combative eyes are hoisted as they never tear from mine.
“Not what?” I prod. “Scared?”
“I’m not scared,” she says, sounding assured.
I believe her. “Do you want me to fuck your face?”
“Sure,” she retorts. “I dare you.”
“You dare me?” I look her over as she shifts her knees. Her thighs unconsciously spread. She’s turned on.
“Double-dog dare.”
“Oh, now I’m really tempted.”
“You should be. The dare lasts for thirty seconds before it’s rescinded.”
“The double-dog dare,” I correct.
She flips me off, then takes that same hand and wraps her fingers around my erection. Squeezing.
I let her slowly stroke my length, only to see her reaction. Blood pools south, a pounding heartbeat in my dick, and the urge to push into her mouth intensifies.
Phoebe is examining me, more interested in what I want, but I’m trying to make sense of her boundaries. We’re at this weird fucking standstill that I’m going to rip through.
I pry her hand off my length, and when she reaches back, I swat her away. Then I cup her chin. “Open your fucking mouth.”
“Fuck you ,” she curses.
“You made the double-dog dare. You want to take it back? Now’s your chance before I fill your mouth with my erection, and you won’t be able to say Miami .”
She glares, but her breath catches in arousal. The dirty talk is a turn-on. She clutches the backs of my thighs. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” she challenges, then parts her lips.
I stare down at Phoebe. At her big brown eyes, at her knees widening on the tub. At her mouth forming an O around my cock as I slowly, slowly flex into her. My muscles coil as the sensations strike one primal urge.
Come. Inside. Her.
She sucks me and licks around my head, like she understands what to do, but I fist her hair and stop her from working my cock herself.
I guide her head forward, making her take a few more inches, then I pull her back out. Her fingers dig into my thighs. Twice, I move her head back and forth. Ooh she does not like that. Her jaw tenses, likely wanting to shut.
Let’s try something else.
With a firm hand against her head, I root her in place and then rock into her mouth. Better. She groans around my shaft, her eyelids heavy with arousal. I’m about to describe what I’m doing to her out loud, but her body stiffens like she’s uncomfortable. Like this is not her thing.
So I pull out, and before she complains, I growl, “Stay still.” I clasp her jaw with one hand, and I stroke myself with the other.
Her eyes spark with desire.
Yeah. She loves this.
Watching me masturbate. I get off seeing her arousal overtake her haughty attitude, and she’s not fighting me. She’s not rigid and locked up. She’s melting. Trying desperately to stay upright.
Fucking Christ. My muscles are up in flames.
I slide my fingers into her hair, until my palm finds the back of her head again. I just hold her, the threat of forcing my cock into her lips is there. The danger. She emits this tiny, aching breath, and it sends me.
I let myself release, a groan scratching my throat, and I come on her face.
Phoebe shuts her eyes, her lips permanently parted as pleasured breaths stagger out of her. Fuck , that might be the hottest thing I’ve done to her…since the last time we fucked.
I scoop her up—cradling her in my arms.
“Rocky?”
“Don’t open your eyes.” I step out of the bathtub and into the nearby glass shower. Setting Phoebe on her feet, I shove the showerhead toward the wall. Then I swivel the knob and pull her away as cold water hits the tile. I wet a washcloth, and while the shower warms, I clean her face.
Her lips tic up, just slightly. She holds loosely to my waist.
“Cumshots over blow jobs, huh?” I ask her, seeing that she has a preference.
“I guess so.”
“Bad experience giving head?”
She stiffens a little, her eyes still shut. “I’ve just never enjoyed it. The whole act hurts my jaw. But I did want to try with you.”
I stare at her beautiful dark lashes. “Why?” I ask, tossing the washcloth aside. When I adjust the showerhead so warm water sprays down on us, she opens her eyes on me.
“I thought maybe it’s something you need.”
I laugh. “A blow job?”
“You mean it’s not your number one fave thing in the whole wide world?” She crosses her arms. Her snide attitude back in style. “You don’t dream of being sucked off by me? You’re not throwing yourself into oncoming traffic every day that my lips aren’t wrapped around your hard… fucking … cock ?”
I exhale this graveled guttural noise. She knows how to rouse the fucking beast inside me—the one that wants to defile her pussy.
But I force the desires aside for a second. “I don’t need a blow job.” I could tell there was a hang-up with her surrounding them, and I figured I’d rip the Band-Aid now and find out why.
“But you like them?” she asks.
“Not if you don’t enjoy it. And it’s not a loss if you never want to suck my cock. There are too many other things I can do to you that’d turn me on more.”
She tries to stifle a smile, but her cheeks flush with affection. I pull her into my arms while water slips down our bodies.
“I love you, Rocky,” she says so softly into my chest.
My lungs elevate with the depth of that truth. “My Phoebe,” I murmur. I press a kiss against her temple and whisper, “Still spending life in prison for me?”
“Forty years with parole.”
I stare her down. “Only forty years?”
“Five years. Home arrest.”
Our smiles rise at the same time, then I spin her around. She relaxes her shoulders against my chest, and I wrap my arms around her abdomen, holding her for a second while the water cascades on our bodies.
She shuts her eyes, and I feel her hands on my legs, telling me to stay. I’m not going. Our breaths are in sync, and as I track my fingers through her hair, scraping them along her scalp, she melts further against me.
And I think, I need to tell her.
I need to tell her everything about today. Because why? This moment is too peaceful, and I can’t relax? Because I’m afraid to be calm inside the eye of the storm with Phoebe?
But then I remember.
We are the natural disaster.
Our peace is a Richter scale of 7.0 and climbing. The earth should be quaking.
When we hop out of the shower, I tell her, “Refill the tub, I’ll be back.” Towel around my waist, I go grab a couple green bottles of Sanpellegrino from the kitchen fridge. I’ve had enough alcohol today. (Thanks, Trent.) Sparkling water it is.
Phoebe and I lounge on either side of the tub, our legs threaded. A thin layer of soapsuds shrouds her body, and I’m taking a hearty swig of water as she says, “How’s your knee?”
I take a quick glance at my kneecap. No scars, no noticeable issues, but it’s sore as fuck in this scrunched position. “It feels like I should’ve gotten it looked at years ago, and I didn’t.”
“When did you even mess it up?” Her brows crinkle as she fights for the memory.
“Somewhere outside of Boston.”
“I asked when , not where.” She splashes me lightly.
The water sloshes at my chest. “Hey.” I point my bottle at her. “Don’t be pissed at me if you can’t connect place with time.”
“Somewhere outside of Boston isn’t even an exact place,” she counters. “And you never talk about it.”
“About my knee?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a bum knee, Phebs. There’s nothing to talk about.” I wish she hadn’t brought this up. “I tripped.”
“You’ve said that before, and I still can’t picture it.”
“I stepped in a fucking hole, and my knee decided to take a wrong turn. It dislocated. Probably tore some ligaments. I don’t know. It’s never been right since.”
I hope she doesn’t press.
She nods slowly. “Okay. You tripped.” She partially believes me, and that’s good enough. “Your badass cred has shot down.”
“I’ll cry about it later.”
She motions to my neck with her Sanpellegrino. “The scar on your neck shoots it back up, don’t worry.”
“Oh yeah. Some shady friend of the mark almost slitting my throat at sixteen—what’s more badass than nearly pissing your pants?”
“That was a bad one,” she murmurs, her eyes skimming my arms, which I rest on the lips of the tub. “Would you get a tattoo, if you could?”
Never get a real tattoo. A rule we’ve all followed to this day.
When you’re trying to be forgotten from city to city, it’s not smart to have permanent ink on your body that can identify you. It’s not even to evade law enforcement. It’s so these rich fucks don’t hire PIs and come seek revenge if they’ve felt slighted. Hell, Trevor’s stalker didn’t even need a PI to find him.
Though, we have worn fake tattoos for certain jobs before.
Applying them constantly is a bitch.
“Probably not. Would you?” I ask her.
“I’d have a whole thigh tat,” she says. “Maybe something right beneath my boobs, too. Or on my sternum between them.”
“Huh.”
“Huh?” She makes a face.
“You’ve thought about this before.”
Phoebe shrugs. “I had a cherry-blossom vine on my hip for one job, and I liked it. I was sad when I had to take it off.” She sips her water. “Oliver says to just do it, that I can wear makeup, but Nova says it’s stupid.”
“It is stupid,” I say, sitting up higher to stretch out my leg. “If we leave. It’s not if we stay and you quit conning for good.”
Phoebe contemplates this silently. “Yeah…so your sister.”
I’m all right with the change of topic. It seems like she hasn’t figured out what she wants to do yet. Phoebe isn’t a two-years-down-the-line planner. She’s a week-ahead type of person, and one week from now, we’re still working a job.
“Your brother,” I reply.
“Did you see it coming? The two of them sleeping together?” She gathers her hair in her hands.
“I was ignoring the signs. Purposefully. I didn’t want to know.” I drag her to my side and reach out to do her hair.
Leaning her shoulders against my chest, she lets me collect the wet strands. “I had no clue,” Phoebe says. “None. I think that’s the worst part.” She hands me her hair tie. “Feeling like I didn’t catch on.”
I twist the elastic into a high pony. “They’re grifters, too, Phebs. They’re trained to lie. It’s not a knock on your skills.” When I release her hair, she eases back against me.
I curl my biceps around her and hold her forearms, which lie against her abdomen. Our breaths sync again, and I finally say, “I saw Varrick at the bookstore, before I drove over here.” And she listens as I recount the entire interaction, his threat to buy the loft, her slashed tires, the phone call with Everett, and how Varrick knew my name.
I end with the thing that’s bugging me the most. “I think he might be my father.”
“Your… birth father?” She turns slightly to meet my gaze. “You’re serious?”
“There was pride in his eyes, Phebs. At The Hunt. It just hit me today that it’s a look a father would give a son.”
“Okay, yeah.” She nods. “That’s plausible. Why wouldn’t it be? There’ve been stranger things in our lives. So Varrick might be your father.” She’s cringing.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I hope he’s not, Rocky. I really do.”
“Me, too.”
She stares off at the Venice Canal painting. “I have another theory. It’s not about Varrick, though.”
“What is it?”
“You and Jake…I think you might be brothers.”
The second I realize she’s serious, I start laughing.
She sighs. “I’m not joking.”
“Yeah, that’s why it’s funny.”
She shoves my arm, then tries to leave for the other side. I wrap my arms tighter, not letting her pull away. “Rocky—”
“Why the fuck would I be related to a Koning?”
“ Jake , specifically,” she says. “Because hating cilantro is genetic, and you both think it tastes like soap.” Her face reddens. “Shut up.”
I bottle the laughter and process this. “Phebs, if he’s my brother…” I shake my head repeatedly. “I can’t see it. I’m sorry. He has Dutch ancestry. More Germanic. We don’t look very similar, but if you’re right…you can have my million.”
She perks up. “Deal.” We shake on a million-dollar bet.
—
“Meat lover’s, extra cheese,” Phoebe tells me while she switches on the hair dryer. Wet blue tendrils soak the shoulders of her very old, baggy Strawberry Shortcake tee. One she left at my place.
I mentally file her request. “Ordering my favorite pizza for me?”
“That’s been my go-to order since forever. Not yours.”
“Since forever?” I arch my brows and knot the strings to my sweats. “You didn’t even like pepperoni until you were thirteen.”
Her jaw drops. “That’s so not…” It is true. She steels her gaze. “I influenced you and that’s the hill I will fucking die on.”
“Great. Make sure it’s a small hill so I don’t have to climb Kilimanjaro to come visit you every day.”
Her emerging smile is the last visual I have of her. Honestly, it almost coaxes me back to Phoebe, but I leave the loud whoosh of hot air to call the local pizza joint.
“Hi, I’d like to place an order for delivery.” Phone to my ear, I’m in the kitchen. I open the high-tech fridge to make sure we have something to drink. More Sanpellegrino. Liter of Fizz Life, since we were all curious what the new aspartame-free soda from Fizzle tasted like. Not bad.
And it’s still about half full. Good enough. I order a few large pies. Just in case her brothers haven’t eaten tonight.
Oliver counts his macros religiously, so I’m unsure if he’ll eat a slice. I get him meatballs and grilled chicken as extra protein.
What I don’t expect is for Trevor to show up.
He has on dark shades and a slim suit. His expression is void. Flat. Emotionless. Can’t read him that well right now.
He bypasses me.
The kitchen is open to the wood-paneled living room. Sliding glass doors overlook a dark, rippling sea, a crescent moon in the star-speckled sky, and he’s staring into the night.
I stride over to him. The sailboat I’m demoing is secured to the dock and sways lightly with the nighttime breeze. I see no other movement.
Still, I fling the curtains closed.
Anyone from the water can see inside the boathouse at this hour, and once Phoebe exits the bathroom—no one needs to spot me with her.
“What’s going on?” I ask him, slipping my phone in my back pocket.
“Just contemplating.” He’s quiet.
“About?”
Trevor breaks out of his thoughts to slip me a paper. The Victoria Weekly . “Nova texted and said to be here. He wants us all to go over the plan again.”
I can’t say it’s a bad idea. I flip open the Weekly . Trevor peers over at the popular gossip column.
SIDNEY SAYS
Collin Falcone broke his leg at a Caufield kegger doing a backflip. (Go Sea Serpents!)
Rowing coach Giddeon Rosenbaum proposed to long-term girlfriend Chelsea Noknoi after a romantic date at The Lure.
Watersmith was spotted holding hands in the parking lot of the country club. Trusted sources say they looked more smitten than ever.
The Fortunate Four attended another party on the Konings’ superyacht. Invited were the who’s who of Victoria. (Including yours truly.)
More disturbing stories of TK Waterford’s rakish behavior have been brought to the Weekly ’s attention. He’s widely known to be gregarious, but perhaps his charm is more sleaze than sweet.
I reread the part about TK. “Why didn’t Sidney specifically spell out what Trent did?” I ask my brother.
“Claudia threatened her. She already tried to pay off the de la Vegas, so they’d remove Sidney’s column. They weren’t swayed, so Claudia went to Sidney. And she said if she wrote anything defaming about her son, she’d sue her, or do worse.” Trevor carries anger in the pits of his eyes, but I can’t see behind his sunglasses. I just hear the ire building in his voice. “Sidney is scared.”
“Claudia reacting poorly over a gossip column is good for us. And if she’s rude to Sidney, Victoria’s Sweetheart , then locals will start turning on Claudia. Especially if she takes away their entertainment.” I hold up the paper.
Trevor nods with more understanding. “Yeah, I get it.”
I glance at the column again. “Trusted sources say Jake and Phoebe look smitten?” Also good for us. “Who was that source?” I raise my brows at him and push the paper into his chest. “You?”
His lip tics up in a slanted smile, and he grabs hold of the Weekly . “I told her they looked ready to get hitched and have a kid. She went with smitten .”
I put a hand to his head, shoving him lovingly. “You did good, Trev.”
He seems to be out of his funk. A grin spreads across his face. “Thanks, Rock.”
Our attention swerves the second Nova blows into the boathouse like a powerful wind. He throws a duffel bag on the round glass six-seater table. The Edison-bulb pendant light rattles at the force.
Looks like we’re not eating at the fucking table.
Nova unzips the duffel. Full of guns and ammo.
He racks a shotgun.
“Way to make an entrance, Winchester,” I say.
“Is that you being nice or a dick?”
I come over. “You didn’t hear the fuck you in my tone?” I check the mag on a Glock.
Nova has a shadow of a smile that disappears when he sees Trevor’s cringe. “You might not like guns, Trev, but the girls were being cased. And we still don’t know why Varrick is interested in them.”
“This seems like overkill,” Trevor says, as though Nova is bringing a sledgehammer to a pool party.
“Where there’s rain, there’s a hurricane,” Nova says.
“Not true, but okay,” Trevor says tensely. He backs away from the duffel.
His hatred of guns stems from being shot in the foot. He was friends with this rich kid in Dallas whose father had a collection of prized hunting guns. They were more for display. His friend fucked around with one and accidentally pulled the trigger.
Oliver and Hailey arrive next.
He’s carrying my sister in a piggyback while she reads an old textbook. I’ve seen them do this half our lives. Her arms hang over his chest, and she grips the book low enough that he can see the pages, too.
I’m irritated that he’s acting like I didn’t just catch him with his pants down. So I decide to share my annoyance. I turn to Nova. “They’re fucking.”
He’s jarred and immediately eyes Oliver.
Jesus. I understand that look. “ You knew?” I ask Nova. He’s the most loyal brother—because he’s not confirming shit to me without permission.
Oliver comes clean. “He knew.”
“Since we were fifteen,” Nova says. “I walked in on them.”
“Glad I’m not the first,” I say.
Nova shakes his head roughly at Oliver like he can’t believe he slipped. “You’re talking to Phoebe about this. I’m out of it.”
“What’s there to talk about?” Oliver says. “Nothing has changed.”
“I can’t look at you two the same,” I shoot back. “Things have definitely changed.”
Hailey is engrossed in her textbook. She mutters, “?‘The earliest known accounts date back to thirteen thousand BC in southern France inside the Cave of the Trois-Frères.’?”
Oliver sets her down as I ask, “Accounts of what?”
Her nose is still in the book. “Therianthropy.”
“Shape-shifting,” Oliver clarifies. “She’s been on a deep dive of old folklores.”
“And that helps us how?” I ask Hailey.
She’s not answering. She just plops dazedly on a leather chair. Flipping through her novel. Trevor lifts his sunglasses for the first time to inspect the state of our sister.
“No stone unturned,” Oliver says lightly, inspecting the mini armory in the duffel.
Nova is concerned. “She’s flipping over the entire ocean floor.”
I rake my hands through my hair, worried about my sister if she’s now cycling through irrelevant mythologies.
“She’ll find the tracks again,” Oliver tells me, more assuredly. “Let her derail. Addison never did.”
Nova tears his gaze off Hailey. “Probably for good reason,” he says darkly to me.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
“Has it started yet?”
The voice of Jake Koning Waterford steals my attention. He’s dressed down in jeans and a white Victoria Country Club T-shirt.
I plaster my surprised look on Nova, who sent out these invites. He says plainly, “He’s important.”
“No shit,” I mutter. We can’t do this without him. “Hope you like pizza, Jake.” I pat his chest and say, “Welcome to five hours of preplanning hell.”
“Five hours?” Jake asks.
“That’s being generous.”
“Everyone’s here?” Phoebe waltzes in with dried hair twisted in a high pony. Seeing her, I almost smile.
Nova packs the guns and zips the duffel up. “Team meeting. Now.”
Logistics are a major pain in the ass, but it’s necessary. Even without our parents to run the show, we’ve been trained on how to man the helm. We’re all camped out in the living room. Three pizza boxes cracked open on the square coffee table. Glasses of Fizz Life and bottles of water slowly empty as we formulate possible scenarios for what might happen when we pull the rope.
“Let’s go over scenario C one more time,” Nova says, setting down his cheese slice to grab his notebook.
“You’re burning those pages after tonight,” I remind him.
He glowers. “Who do you think I am?”
“Someone who needs to make lists on paper instead of in your head.”
Nova ignores me. The kitchen chair, which he dragged over here, creaks as he leans back and scribbles in his little book of crimes.
“Scenario C is the least likely to happen,” Phoebe says next to me on the brown leather couch. I have an arm over her shoulders. She licks pizza sauce off her finger. “Do we really think Claudia will sic her security on me?”
“She could,” Jake answers, relaxed on the other side of me. “My mother has had Jordan’s friends escorted out before.”
“That’s Jordan,” Phoebe counters. “I’m your guest, and she respects you more than your older brother.”
Nova cuts back in. “It’s a possibility. We need to prepare for it.”
“Okay, Dad,” Trevor says on the floor, lounging back on his hands.
“Nova’s trying not to get us caught,” I tell him. “Because when your ass is on the line, you’re going to want him to be five feet away.”
Nova goes silent. I can feel his deep surprise that I’d stick up for him.
“True, yeah.” Trevor nods to Phoebe’s brother. “Sorry, Nov.”
He nods back, brushing it off easily.
I wad my napkin and see Phoebe constantly checking on Hailey with side glances. I do, too. My sister nibbles on a cheese slice and reads to herself. She’s contributed to this discussion tonight, so my worries have slowly waned.
Oliver hasn’t sat down. He is a live wire. He stands and paces and forks a piece of chicken from a to-go container.
“Is he on something?” Jake whispers to me.
“Oliver was with me at Trent’s.”
“Fuck,” Jake curses under his breath and careens farther back as his muscles stiffen.
“You’re not responsible for your dipshit brother,” I whisper.
“I pulled all of you into this. I am responsible if anything happens to you,” he whispers back.
I full-on meet his gaze. “You pulled in people who’ve done this their whole lives. Chill.”
Jake sits like he’s on the verge of storming a castle. I swear he and Nova together could be a pair of unrelenting legionaries.
Oliver bobs his head to the beat of nothing. “How many scenarios are there total?”
Nova thumbs pages. “I have all the way to R.”
“And we’re stuck on C?” Phoebe groans.
“Like I was saying,” I tell Jake. “Five hours.”
He twists off the cap of a Pellegrino. “I have nowhere better to be.” I hold his determined gaze. His homelife is chaos and power plays, and mine wasn’t that far off.
We’re doing this together.
“What are we calling him?” Trevor tilts his head to Jake. “You have to have a name.”
“You’re the professionals.” Jake stares around at us. “You tell me.”
We all look to Hailey.
She’s thoughtful. “It’s not that you’re rich. It’s that you have the keys to the town. The one true heir.” She says, “ The King .”
Phoebe is grinning from ear to ear with Hailey, like we’ve officially just included a new person in our childhood clubhouse.
I’m not mad about it. I wonder if it’s because Jake isn’t someone I was taught to protect. He’s been trying to help me. To look out for me.
Jake smiles at the girls, then turns to me. “You said I’m not a real king yet.”
“You will be.”
He has to be. This can’t be all for nothing.
Nova tosses him a phone. “It’s your burner. We’ll give you our numbers. Memorize them. When you text us, you’ll use a crown at the end of your messages.”
“I have a serious question.” Trevor sits up now.
Nova folds the cover of his notebook. “Go ahead.”
“Oliver and Hailey—they should bunk up, and I should take Oliver’s bed.”
My arm falls off Phoebe. Jesus Christ. Here we go.
Oliver chews the grisly chicken slowly. “Was there a question in there?”
Jake wipes his hands with a napkin. Tension in his shoulders.
“It’s more of a serious suggestion,” Trevor says, “now that we know you’re boning my sister.”
“Oh God,” Hailey mutters, hiding beneath her book and sinking in the chair. “It’s just casual.”
Trevor gapes. “No way this is just casual.”
“It is .” Hailey drops her book to her lap.
“Then casually share a bed.”
No one says a thing.
Until now, I haven’t heard Trevor complain about crashing on the couch. Whenever I spend the night at the loft, I let Trevor take my vacant bed at the boathouse. Essentially, he’s been bouncing between Hailey’s place and mine.
Oliver and Hailey share a short glance. I think Oliver would share a bed with her indefinitely in a heartbeat, but not if it’d cause her more distress.
“She can stay at my apartment,” Jake offers.
Now Oliver pops the lid onto his container and wanders to the fridge. He’s avoiding. My sister looks ready to coexist with the chair cushion.
Before I butt in, Phoebe says loudly, “She’s not moving, and no one is moving in with her. Because I can live at the boathouse. Trevor can take my room.”
“No,” about everyone says at once.
“Moving in with your ex-husband?” Nova shakes his head at her. “Fuck no. We’re not putting your fake relationship in jeopardy. The entire reason Oliver and I are still rooming with Rocky is so you two can have time together.”
It’s been the best alibi for why Phoebe constantly visits the boathouse. They’re living with me for their sister. Phoebe rooming with Hailey is also the only reason I can stay at the loft.
Phoebe must feel a sense of guilt. Our relationship is causing this mess, and she’s never really been selfish. But this isn’t the first time we’ve all lived on top of each other.
Though, around this time, we’d be packing our bags and switching cities.
“Is the loft even safe anymore?” Oliver asks from the kitchen, since I told everyone about Varrick seeking to purchase it.
“I’ll talk to my mother about it,” Jake assures us.
“It’s safe for now,” Phoebe chimes in. “We don’t need to add find a new home on top of this job. Especially when this home is free…” She trails off in thought, then looks to Jake. “And maybe I could…with…”
The bottom of my stomach drops. “No. You’re not living with him.”
“He wouldn’t mind.”
“ I mind.” She’d only be doing it to take one for the fucking team, and this is not it. I elbow Jake in the ribs. “You going to revoke that offer to our girlfriend, sweetheart?”
“You can’t stay at my place, Phoebe,” Jake tells her flat out.
I smile dryly at her, satisfied.
She threads her arms and peers past me to tell Jake, “Rocky has you wrapped around his finger. You realize that?”
“We just have mutual interests.”
“Which would be?”
“Protecting you.”
Phoebe’s shoulders slacken. Yeah, she would live with him, but she doesn’t want to. We both know that. Because living with Jake means I can’t sneak into her bedroom anymore. It’ll drastically limit our time together.
“Olly will move in with me,” Hailey declares, picking at her nail polish. “Or I’ll live with Jake.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Phoebe says. “Really, we can figure something else out. Maybe we just buy Trevor a coffin to sleep in. Let him live out his Dracula fantasies.”
“Maybe we just throw you to the bears, PG. Since you’re so good at being bait and all.”
Goddammit.
I open my mouth, but Phoebe puts a hand to my chest and says, “It’s fine, I started it.”
“I’ll sleep on the speedboat,” Nova offers.
He wouldn’t even get into the hull of my sailboat for a five-minute chat. The irony of him being isolated on the Salty Miss most of the day—he gets fucking seasick .
“A life of vomit, ginger beer, and Dramamine.” I flash a dry smile. “Fun.”
“What about the wine cellar?” Trevor asks me. “No one ever uses it here. I’ll get a cot. It’s big enough to be a room.”
He wants privacy. “You can’t bring Sidney over.”
“I know.”
“It’s fifty degrees in there,” Nova warns.
“Fifty-seven, and that’s fine. I can manage.”
Nova shrugs stiffly at me like it is the best solution. It’s only temporary, too. This situation is far from permanent. “All right,” I say—just as Hailey’s phone rings.
She’s quick to answer. “Yeah? Yeah, everyone is here. Hold on.” She puts the phone on speaker. “It’s Carter.”
“Hello, Ailey and mates,” Carter greets. “I got a quick minute between some work I’m doing, and I found something out you’ll want to know.”
“About what?” I ask.
“Rocky, Rocky ,” Carter singsongs with a grating cheerfulness.
“Get to the point, Carter.”
“Always so grumpy. Take a breath. Smell the sunshine.” He laughs at his own dumb joke. “Get it—you can’t smell the sun.”
“We’re hysterically laughing.”
“I know Ailey is smiling.”
She is.
“Barely,” I snap.
“Been dabbling into this Varrick character,” Carter says, “and he ain’t who he says he is.”
Jake frowns. “What do you mean?”
“His identity has holes. Not like Swiss cheese. Whoever built his alias did a hellava job, but it’s not my work. I found some discrepancies in his identifications.”
“They’re fakes?” I ask.
“The fakest of fakes, mate. His birth certificate, a hundred percent forged. The parents he listed—don’t exist. Passport, likely forged. I couldn’t trace any past identities. But I do know he started using Varrick around the eighties. Then he married into the Wolfe family, and the rest—well, you know most of the rest.”
Trevor stares at the phone. “So Varrick is a grifter?”
“No doubt about it in my mind. Varrick Wolfe is a conman, and the probability he knows your parents is high.”
Brayden.
I hear my name in the pit of my ear. His voice. Their voices.
Brayden.
“It’s not just high,” I tell Carter. “It’s certain.”