Chapter Two
Phoebe
He’s so ugly, my eyes are trying to roll into the back of my head. Lies. I’m supposed to be living a truthful life now, and I guess that begins with being completely honest with myself—and Brayden Tinrock has always been hot. Never even had an awkward teenage phase like me. Acne on my chin. Hair that either frizzed or fell greasy flat.
No, his hair teleported straight from the nineties. Full and lush with those teasing pieces always brushing his lashes. Even dyed black, his hair still carries that nineties allure right now.
Truthfully, he’s good-looking in a way that can con many women and men out of their fortunes. And he knows this fact, which makes him even more of an annoying pest than he already is.
He cocks his head like I shouldn’t be that surprised he caught up to me. His satisfied look begins to boil my blood.
“What are you doing here?” I snap at him. Does he know about our plan? Or is he just here to inform us of our next job out west? In Seattle, to be exact.
“I could ask the same thing of you,” he says with equal bite. I hate his voice. How its deep, sandpaper quality sounds like the personification of sex.
He’s the last man I’d ever fuck.
Just to be clear.
How his rough-around-the-edges demeanor could attract anyone is beyond my comprehension. My similar coarse grit drives more people away than entices them inside.
I clutch the edge of the door. “I’m knitting a sweater.”
His eyes flit to my head, where my hair is piled up with dye. “See, if you were knitting a sweater, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Pretend I am, then.” I go to shut the door.
He grabs the edge, keeping it open, before ramming his loafer in the doorway. And why the hell are his shoes so shiny? I glare. “You’re not invited in, Rocky.”
“And I’m not a fucking vampire. I don’t need an invitation.” He shoves closer, chest against my chest like a showdown between two apex predators in the wild. Our eyes latch.
Aggravation brews in his irises and reflects in mine. I realize he’s not leaving, but I’m not about to make this easy for him.
“Say please,” I demand.
“Fuck you,” he counters.
I don’t move.
His eyes flame. “Please and fuck you.”
My nose flares, but I know when to surrender a battle in order to win a war.
Fine. I step aside.
He slides farther into the motel, enough to shut and lock the door behind him.
Hailey emerges from the bathroom, rubbing a towel against her damp platinum-blonde hair. When she spots her brother, she plasters on a fake smile. “Hey, Rocky. How’s it going?” Her casualness isn’t as manufactured as that smile, and like a fire extinguisher blew at him, Rocky’s anger dissipates around his little sister. She was always the calm to his storm.
Rocky and I, together, are a volcanic eruption. One that’ll never end, not until the whole world is coated in magma.
“Can you give Phoebe and me a second alone?” he asks Hailey.
My whole head is searing. Might just be the dye. “What—you’re just going to ignore her question? How’s it going, Rocky?”
“It’s going.” He’s staring me down.
I’m staring him down, and if anyone is going to win a staring contest, it’s going to be me. Air suctions out of the room the longer silence stretches.
“Alone. You and me,” Rocky repeats.
A conversation alone with Rocky means that Hailey can’t be there to moderate, but maybe I can kick his ass back to wherever he came from faster without her here.
“Phoebe?” Hailey asks for confirmation.
I give her a nod.
Hesitation fills her eyes that are shadowed with heavy black liner. “Okay, but just don’t kill each other. I don’t need to clean up a murder today.” Spike-studded backpack over her shoulder, she pauses at the door. “I’m going to grab some shit from the vending machines. Want anything, Phebs?”
“I’m good.”
She sighs, then reluctantly leaves. Not gracing her brother with the same offer.
I scratch the wet, processing hair at the back of my neck. “I have to wash this out,” I mutter. His intense eyes track me to the bathroom, and he follows like a shadow attached to my heels.
Testing his resolve, I start undressing in front of him. It’s a quick, thoughtless decision.
Annoy him like he annoys you, my gut always tells me. I pull my strawberry tee over my head, revealing a simple pale pink bra. He stares at my eyes, never flinching or looking down. “Seriously, Phoebe?” he asks. “What the fuck?”
“You followed me into the bathroom.” I unbutton my jeans.
A hostile growling noise scratches his throat, but his gaze never abandons mine. Not even as I wiggle my jeans down my hips and step out of them. Mesh sky-blue panties ride high on my hips and reveal more than they hide. I hate that undressing in front of him is easy for me. I hate that it’d be easy in front of anyone. Thoughts intrude in a wave of bitter shame that I try to swallow down.
Use what you’re given, right? Hailey has the brains. I have the body. Dissociating from my tits and ass and the rest of my physical form has become easy. Too easy. And in the next breath, I hate it.
Christ, I hate it.
But I don’t know how to reverse time and unlearn what I was taught.
“I followed you to talk to you,” he says gruffly. “I didn’t sign up for the striptease.”
I grimace. “I’d rather stand in front of a moving train than put on a show for you.”
“Likewise,” he says casually, like it’s known. We would willingly jump into certain death rather than seduce one another.
Great.
And I’m seriously not putting on a show for him. I just want to unnerve him. Like a game we play. Aggravate the other before you yourself can get aggravated. I have very tragically failed right now.
I grind my teeth. “Turn around.”
He does without me asking twice. Nice—no, he’s not nice. He’s an asshole. I hate that I have to remind myself of that.
He lets out a resigned breath. “Can we just have a civil conversation for five minutes?”
“Why are you here?” I counter, spinning the moldy shower handle. Letting the warm water cascade into the tub-shower combo.
“To stop you and Hailey from making a mistake.”
I slow my movements as a colder chill sweeps my exposed skin. He knows. How? Head crawling with heat, I don’t have time to ask. My brain is sufficiently frying from the outside in. Quickly, I shed my panties and bra, then step into the scalding shower.
“Fuck,” I mutter before swiveling the knob to a colder temperature. I hate you, shower. I hate you, Rocky. I hate you, hair. Maybe if I hate everything enough, I’ll find love again.
That is definitely not how that works.
Rocky takes my silence as an avenue to keep talking, even if his voice is muffled from the shower. “Moving to the East Coast without telling your parents or mine isn’t going to end well.”
Blue dye slips down my legs and into the drain.
“How’d you find out?!” I shout over the shower.
“Carter told me.”
“What a rat.” I groan.
I know Hailey has a massive crush on him, but ughhh. She’s swept up by his forgery skills. She does that a lot. Falls headfirst for any guy that shows some extraordinary talent. I’ve teased her to death about the fire juggler she slept with, but to this day, she says he was her best lay.
But Carter isn’t some random stranger we met in a dark alley. I first heard about him at seventeen.
“I met this guy who does great fakes,” my mom said, like she made a friend at a book club who knows how to craft lawn furniture. Only instead of an Adirondack chair, my mom got a shiny new passport.
Carter is just a connection for my family. Another string in the webs we all weave. So I thought I could trust him—and maybe I still can. It’s not like he blabbed to the Feds. He told Rocky. Someone that’d take a secret to his grave.
What I assume Rocky knows: Carter made Hailey and me new licenses for our fresh start. And in Hailey’s attempt to flirt, she might have divulged the fact that we’re moving (for real) to Connecticut. If Carter told Rocky all that, then red flags must have been flapping in his face.
And Rocky took the red flag, made a cape, and flew to us.
Hence the check-in.
“He called me, by the way,” Rocky explains outside the shower. “He knew this wasn’t your next job, and he was worried.”
I know this is dangerous. Those words stick to the back of my throat. Admitting to Rocky that this might be a risky plan feels like sticking my finger in an electric socket. Instead I let the silence build.
After carefully rinsing all the dye from my hair, I cut the shower off, snag a towel from the rack, pat my hair dry, and then wrap the towel around my chest. Partly, I expect Rocky to be gone. Back in his car. Left without saying goodbye.
He wouldn’t.
I know he wouldn’t, and I hate that I like that about him. His reliability. If I ever found myself in deep trouble, he would be there.
Hell, he’s here now and we’re not even in trouble.
Irritation bubbles again, drowning out the affection that exists. As I yank the curtain, metal rings clink against the shower rod.
Yep, Rocky is still here. Leaning against the discolored tiled wall, buff arms crossed and gray eyes fixated on me, he seems to be considering something.
Waiting, almost.
Hate sounds like a strong word, and I’m not even sure it’s the right one when it comes to Rocky. He’s only a year older than me. We grew up together, and we were tethered to the good and bad that happened more than anyone else in our families.
But the Job That Shall Never Be Named punt-kicked us in immeasurable ways. Whatever we were to each other, it just... changed us. We’ve been licking our wounds ever since, and aggravation and frustration simmer to the surface so much more often in his company.
He’s still a Tinrock.
Our families are permanently intertwined ever since his mom dropped a snow cone and my mom gave hers to the weeping girl. They were five. The decades-long friendship between Addison and Elizabeth is set for life. Bound further together by their crimes, and when they had children, they taught us everything they knew.
I tighten the knot of my towel without flashing Rocky, and I step out of the shower, going to the mirror. “I know you, Rocky. You wouldn’t come all the way out here just to tell me our plan is stupid. You could’ve done that over the phone. So what do you need to say?”
His jaw sets. “She won’t go if you don’t.”
Hailey.
He’s worried about his sister.
Concern fills his gray eyes. Why does my stomach drop? Why do I feel hollow that I’m not a part of his concern?
He doesn’t care about you anymore. Not after that job.
I push aside those painful thoughts, and I rake a brush through my tangled dark blue hair. Snagging knots and yanking roughly. “She wants to do this.” Pressure mounts on my chest. “She’s smarter than both of us combined. She’s thought all of this through.”
“I get all of that,” Rocky says with edge. “I know she’s smart. But Hailey has always been a fucking dreamer. She’s painfully idealistic. What I don’t get is why you would want to move to some boring, pretentious college town. It sounds like hell on earth.”
Maybe I want to live the Mystic Pizza life with her.
I’m not even sure I can be virtuous and moral, and I highly doubt I’ll find my small-town romance with a do-gooder gentleman who’s constantly merry and bright even after Christmas.
Hailey is hopeful, and Rocky is right. I’m full of cynicism.
Moving to Connecticut and starting over is her idea. Not telling her parents and my mom—also her idea. When we arrived at the motel, I suggested we contact them in a week or so to let them know our whereabouts. Just so they don’t assume we’ve driven off a cliffside and plummeted into the Pacific—or worse, got caught by the Feds.
There is a bad scenario where my mom is worrying her only daughter is dead or in cuffs, and I feel awful saddling her with that panic. But Hailey was firmly against divulging our location. She’s anti-conflict, and if they know our plan, it’ll start the equivalent of a nuclear reactor meltdown with lectures, guilt trips, and cutting disappointment.
I think Hails is also concerned that any contact with my mom might lead me back to conning.
Maybe that’s why I’m not making any calls. Hearing my mom’s voice, knowing I’m hurting her by being deceptive—a person I’m used to always being genuine toward—it’s painful for me. The only way to stay on track is to remember my best friend comes first. I’m just here to oversee the situation. A passenger on this plan. Along for Hailey’s ride in case the car crashes.
I do know how to change a tire. Thanks to my oldest brother.
But I don’t want Rocky to be right. It’s making me wish I truly believed in the soggy brochure Hailey showed me. I’m fully Team Hailey. In her beautiful boat.
Not in his busted, rotted tanker.
Quickly, the stubborn side of me takes over. I rotate to him and say, “Maybe I’m tired of doing bad shit, Rocky. Maybe I want to be good for once.”
His brows crinkle, his mouth gradually falling open. He straightens up off the wall. “What?” He looks at me like I’ve turned into Cruella de Vil and I admitted to murdering Dalmatians. “You’re not thinking about going clean...?”
Shit.
Shitshitshit.
Panicked heat bakes me. He didn’t know. He just thought Hailey and I were settling down in some rich college town, willing to lie and cheat our way into the upper echelons of Ivy League society.
Oh fuck.
My mouth dries, and I’m more nervous about living without the skills we were taught. Deception. Seducing. Forging. Can it even be done?
Inertia.
The pact.
For Hailey.
I need to try.
“We’re doing this the right way,” I say, my voice quieter. “No con. No lies. We’re starting over for real.”
He blinks. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”