Chapter Thirteen
Phoebe
FOUR YEARS AGO
THE BADGER GAME
Princeton, New Jersey
I hate secret societies. They’re dramatic for no reason. Highly pretentious. The whole cloak-and-dagger bit would be cool on Halloween, but not on an average day in a musty old basement of an Ivy League. That’s what crossed my mind last month when my mom told me I’d be joining a secret society at Princeton.
I begged her to let me be recruited into a sorority. I could go through rush, pledge, and make “fake” everlasting friends. “Girls are just as loaded in Kappa Phi Delta, please,” I pleaded, like the rest of my life was at stake, even if I knew the job would only last a semester.
While applying a sheen of pink lipstick, she slipped me one of her this has already been decided looks and then shook her head. “Who’s going to be your second in a sorority? Rocky can’t do that job with you.”
Rocky. Rocky. Rocky.
It was always about Rocky. I could feel her silent push of him toward me and me toward him. And she wasn’t wrong—I loved doing jobs with Rocky. I just hated that she saw how much I loved having him around.
“He could start dating a friend that I make,” I said, forcing down a cringe at the suggestion. “It’d put us in the same social circle.”
“No—”
“I could bump into him—”
“No.” She capped her lipstick. “You focus on what you’re good at, bug. Okay? Leave the logistics and placing the roles to Addison and me. We’ve pored over these plans for weeks and thought of every scenario, I know what’ll work and what won’t.”
I wasn’t ready to let go. “What about Hailey? She could be in the sorority with—”
“Phoebe, please.” Her eyes sank consolingly onto me. “You need to do this with Rocky. You both work well together. What do I always say?”
I took a sharp breath. “Stick to the plan.”
She smiled. “Sweet spider.” She brushed her fingers through my hair like I was still a child, and for some reason, her sugary nature melted the scowl that began to form. The soft parts of my mom were warm and inviting. Maybe they were even reminders of how much she loves me and cares. “We’re only doing what’s best for you, you know that?”
I nodded.
“You’re going to college.” She smiled, like it’s the biggest adventure. “It’ll be fun. Just give it a chance?”
I wanted to. Not just for myself, but a little bit for her. I still hated the idea that I could be the screwup. The one to foil Addison and Elizabeth’s painstakingly constructed plans.
That wouldn’t be me.
And the scary part—college has been fun. The past three months, I’ve enjoyed the Ivy League experience with Hailey, Rocky, and my brothers. I’m twenty, and in another life, maybe I’d be here for real. But there’s no mistake in my role.
Everything here has been devised. Each lecture I sit in has been expertly selected by Hailey. She made sure I’m in all the classes with our marks. Add in some charisma and “chance” encounters, and it only took a few weeks for Rocky and me to be selected for initiation into the Firefly Club.
But the plan my mom wants me to stick to—it hasn’t wavered, up until tonight.
“What do you mean this is it?” I whisper to Nova. Why is he walking so fast? I rush to reach his side and power walk just to keep up with his strong gait.
Oliver is more lackadaisical behind me. With his easy stroll, black preppy peacoat, and light-brown stylish hair, he looks like he’s in a Burberry ad and not in a house on fire.
“Mom called and says it needs to happen tonight,” Nova whispers back. “We’ve gotta be out of New Jersey by tomorrow morning.”
What? “That’s... insanity.”
This changes the con we’ve already set up, but Nova just points to the dorm room at the end of the hall. “That’s Rocky’s room?” He has to ask since he hasn’t been in this dormitory before.
In fact, I haven’t seen Nova face-to-face in three whole months. We weren’t supposed to cross paths until after winter break. Sometime in January. It’s still December, and the unspooling threads of this tapestry we’ve carefully woven are putting me on edge.
“Yeah, it’s his dorm,” I tell my brother.
Once we approach the door, I hear an audible, high-pitched sound of pleasure. “OhmyGod, OhmyGod, ahhh!”
I freeze, all thoughts exploding out of my brain.
“Right there. Oh my... fuck. YES!”
Nova pounds a hard, angry fist on the door. “I can’t fucking believe this.”
I can believe it. Rocky hasn’t been, and will never be, a Virgin Mary. And at college, Rocky—sorry, I mean Cole Miller—has quickly earned a reputation in our coed dorm hall for being a sex god.
Which is the nice way of calling him a player and a whore.
What isn’t nice are the girls on my hall giggling about the guys I’ve brought over. One of them wrote slut on my door’s whiteboard. Hailey has had five times more sex than me, but yet I’m called the slut?
If it’s not about quantity of sex, then what makes me sluttier than anyone else? I just want answers to these human questions—why people look at me and see someone worthy to sleep with and not someone worthy to be with. That’s all.
Nova’s knock goes unanswered and largely ignored.
Rocky must only be listening to his cock.
With the thump, thump, thump of a headboard against the wall, this is sounding more like raunchy sex, and power-drilling my eardrums would feel better than listening to him rock another girl’s world.
“I can call?” Oliver waves his phone behind me. He’s already phoning Rocky, but evil images invade my head now. Of destroying Rocky’s chance at finishing.
“I vote we just walk in,” I tell them. “Is it locked?”
Oliver must hear the strain in my voice because he passes his phone to Nova over my head, just so he frees his hands to cover my ears.
The moaning and heavy grunts are muffled against Oliver’s palms, but my stomach won’t unknot. “I’m fine,” I mutter and reach for the knob.
Nova beats me to it, and surprisingly, it’s unlocked. He barrels into the dorm to expletives and shrieks. Within a solid second, the brunette girl darts out of the room with her dress inside out, and as a muddled concoction of guilt and jealousy stirs inside of me, I try not to make eye contact with Heather.
Yeah, I recognize her deep blue doe eyes and thimble nose. She lives in the dorm room beside mine, and she knows me as Rocky’s sister.
She side-eyes me on her way out.
Cool.
While Oliver slips into the room to join the guys, I loiter in the hall with crossed arms and a boatload of nerves over this mess.
“Was that necessary?” Rocky growls, and I peer through the cracked door. Catching a glimpse of Rocky’s bare ass, I watch him hold his boxer briefs to his crotch. The trail of hair below his belly button teases my gaze toward his dick, and I wonder when Rocky became a man.
It wasn’t a flick of a switch. God didn’t suddenly anoint him with manhood one day and sprout hair on his chest. The planes of his body have been carved and chiseled with muscle for years, and I’ve felt those boyish arms at eleven and twelve become firmer and fiercer at thirteen, fourteen, seventeen, twenty-one as they’ve wrapped around me.
“We don’t have fucking time to waste,” Nova tells him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Rocky sneers in a whisper. “You’re early.”
“It’s been moved to tonight.”
Rocky fumes in place, stunned to silence until he snaps, “You’re kidding me? It’s too soon. We haven’t laid the proper groundwork.”
“My mom had to tie things up early with her fiancé.”
“Ex-fiancé,” Oliver clarifies.
“We need to leave tomorrow,” Nova finishes.
It’s about Mom’s safety—why this is being rushed.
Rocky lets out an incensed laugh. “So Elizabeth screws up with her rich boy toy and puts us at risk—?”
“Hey.” Nova glares. “She didn’t have a fucking choice.”
“I’m trying to protect us,” Rocky nearly shouts. “Shit, do you even know how much harder this is going to—?”
“Your mom and my mom think we’re ready,” Nova cuts him off.
“They’re not fucking here,” Rocky refutes with a deep-seated, almost guttural plea to his voice.
I slide into the dorm room quietly and shut the door, but my presence might as well be a Formula 1 crash. Metal ripping through the air. Fire and explosion setting flame to the tension.
With one hand and his balled-up underwear still covering his cock, Rocky glares at me and then points at the doorway I just came through. “You can walk your ass right out of this room if you’re just going to blindly take your brother’s side.”
Oliver makes a noise that’s a cross between a laugh and a snort. “I thought we were all on the same side?” He bends a hip against the window, relaxed inside this four-car pileup.
Nova and Rocky ignore him, their gazes fixed to me, waiting for my response. Nova’s gaze weighs heavier on me, practically telling me—you’re my sister. It’s hard to just brush that aside, but I’d like more facts about how this is supposed to play out.
“Maybe tell me what their new plan is for tonight,” I say to Nova. “Then I can decide which one of you is being an asshole.”
“Both,” Oliver chimes in.
Nova shoots him a disapproving, brotherly look. “No one asked you.”
“No one ever does,” Oliver says. “Middle-child syndrome and all.” He lights a cigarette casually and sticks his hand out of the cracked window.
Rocky drops his voice. “What’d they say?” He’s asking Nova, too.
“It’s our responsibility to figure out how to wrap it up. We’re to contact Everett if we still need a fifth man.”
I try to let go of the uneasiness. As we’ve gotten older, they have given us more responsibilities and jobs of our own. Being treated like an adult with more decision-making feels good. Maybe after rejecting my idea of pledging to a sorority, this is my mom’s way of saying, I trust you, bug. You’re capable and ready.
But is that just a fa?ade? Is that what they want us to believe? Rocky’s faith in our parents has waned over the years. Maybe if I was the child of Addison and Everett, I’d start doubting, too. But my mother has a gentleness and love for me that has never felt fabricated, and I refuse to let Rocky’s own issues with his parents shade my view of mine.
Rocky angrily steps into his boxer briefs. His back facing me, he pulls a collegiate tee over his head. “They’re not here,” he says with heat. “If this blows back, we’re all done. Us. Not them. You all know what happens if we get caught.” A heaviness weighs the room, and I’m sure we’re all picturing prison bars. Rocky adds, “We should be deciding when it’s time to pull the rope.” Pull the rope. It’s what we call it when we’re ready to persuade the mark after the principal has gained their confidence. Roped them in.
For this job, we’re supposed to pull the rope after an intense bout of hazing.
The Original Plan: Rocky and I are initiated in round 1. Oliver is initiated in round 2. Rocky, already a member of the society, is set in a power position where he controls the hazing doled out to Oliver.
The Problem: Rocky and I haven’t been initiated yet. So no one will be standing beside the president of the Firefly Club, Matthew Wentworth, during this secretive ceremony.
The New (Worse) Plan: The three of us will all be initiated at the same time in round 1, and we’ll all be hazed by Matthew. In this scenario, we have way less control. It’s definitely not ideal.
“They’ve done this longer than us,” Nova counters. “If they think it’s time, then it’s time, and they understand nuances that we don’t—that we can’t.”
“You know, I see your lips moving, Winchester, but all I hear is my dad,” Rocky growls. “He feeds you so much bullshit these days and you can’t even see it, man.”
Nova scowls. “Or maybe you’re just blinded by your own oversized ego. You wanna prove so badly that you’re better than them—”
“Because we are!” Rocky shouts. He takes a step closer, and quickly, Oliver slams the window shut as Rocky’s voice escalates. He snuffs the cigarette out on the windowsill and shares a silent look with me. We know where this is headed.
Nova glowers. “Don’t make this about us. This petty bullshit with your dad has always been about you. You wanna cry and act like a petulant child with daddy problems. Boo fucking hoo.”
Something dark flashes across Rocky’s eyes, something unreadable. Nova takes a threatening step forward, and this is where I rush in. Oliver darts between them in a snap. Faster than me.
“All right, all right.” Oliver pushes their chests. “This stopped being fun, like, ten minutes ago.”
“Agreed,” I say and instantly regret opening my mouth. Nova and Rocky stare down at me again like I’m the judge about to determine which one caused the murder.
My stomach roils. It’s not a fair choice.
I trust Rocky with my life. Christ, I would trust Rocky with my nine lives if I were a cat and had extras to lose. Of the four of us in this room, he’s the one who can rework the con and salvage what we’ve done here.
I take a short breath. “Are we really going to walk away with nothing? The past three months will have been a waste, and honestly, Matthew Wentworth is a prick. He sent his buddies nudes of his girlfriend.”
He even sent them to Rocky, who’s his new “cool” friend. Partly, Matt has warmed up to Rocky’s Cole Miller persona so quickly because Cole paid for Matt’s two-grand dinner bill like it was nothing.
Matt realized Cole Miller was loaded and born from an affluent family who owns textile factories. He realized he’s a friend worth having in his circle.
I continue, “But maybe you three don’t care as much about what he’s done.”
“I care,” Rocky says sharply, hotly.
“We care,” Nova tells me.
“So why can’t we still do this?” I ask Rocky.
Nova scrapes a hand across his tensed jaw a few times. He eyes Rocky, knowing he’s the one who can reconstruct this mess.
There’ll always be a part of Rocky that seeks to prove he doesn’t need our parents. If they say do this now, a little voice inside his head might be screaming, Do it later! Yet, for all his pushback against the godmothers, Rocky hasn’t ever abandoned us to carve his own path.
He’s always stuck with his family and mine.
Rocky scratches at the tag of his shirt’s collar. Frustrated, he tugs his collegiate tee off, his abs flashing into view, and he rips out the tag. Fitting his arms through his sleeves again, he says, “We’ll do it tonight. At the initiation. I’m going to have to bring you in early, Nova. You’re switching spots with Oliver.”
“Why?” Oliver frowns.
“You do too much,” Rocky says with heat. “I need this person to say almost nothing.”
Oliver sighs heavily, not excited. “Whatever’s best.” He points in a circle to all of us. “I’d like this documented that I’m a team player, merci beaucoup, mes amis.” His French accent rolls off the tongue naturally and sounds authentic.
Nova looks grateful. “Thanks, Ol.”
I mentally scratch out Oliver’s name and rewrite Nova.
“Nova hasn’t been selected,” I tell Rocky. The two of us were given a wax-sealed envelope a week ago that only detailed the time and place of the initiation. Nothing else. Nova has no invite. “Matthew doesn’t even know who he is.”
“Just leave that for me. I’ll vouch for Nova.” He turns to him. “You’re Jay Thompson. We’ll keep it as J.T., and you”—he slips his dark gaze to Oliver—“keep your phone close. Be in the car with the luggage.”
Oliver is now the getaway man.
“How do we do this if you’re not doling out the initiation with Matthew?” I ask Rocky.
He wears a haunted expression. “This might get bad.” His grim eyes flit to me. “Walk out if it’s too much to handle.”
“I’ll be fine.” I glare. I’m not the weak link.
His penetrating gaze is unflinching on me.
I hate that I like it. I hate that I don’t want him to ever look away.
I cross my arms. “What if it’s too much for you? Will you walk out?”
“I don’t have that fucking luxury, Abby.” He uses my fake name.
“Then let me help you,” I snap back and step toward him, our bodies barely an inch apart. The movement strikes the air with a hot rod. Breath is caged between him and me, and neither of us unfastens our gazes that dive deeper and grip and claw like lifelines to one another. “This isn’t all on you, Cole. Don’t push me out of this because you’re afraid of what’ll happen. I can take it.”
Just barely audible to me, he breathes, “You shouldn’t have to take it.”
It pools into me, but I don’t let it overflow. I hold my ground as brutally as he’s seizing his, and I say, “I’m. Fine.”
And like he knows I could tell him the same thing—that he shouldn’t have to take it, but he will because there is a part of him that enjoys the con, too—Rocky just breaks the standoff. “Let’s do this.”
“Great,” I say tensely, avoiding Oliver’s and Nova’s intrusive stares. My face roasts knowing they just witnessed the intensity between Rocky and me.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Rocky is stewing in his own thoughts while he puts on pants and grabs a beanie. He covers his black hair that’s dyed the same exact shade as mine. “See you tonight, sis.”
I’ve been ready for our sibling relationship to die.
And thankfully, it ends tonight.