Chapter 5
FIVE
KANE
“Well, thank you, beautiful.” Maverick slides his Ray-Bans off and flashes his most flirtatious smile at the servant, who’s putting a tray of cold drinks on the table between our pool chairs. “I love a wet refresher.”
Her cheeks turn bright pink when he winks, and she hurries back into the house with a nervous glance in my direction. Maverick watches her leave, craning his neck as she looks back at him.
“Stop flirting with the staff,” I grumble when he lies back on the sun lounger.
He laughs, sliding his shades back on. “She’s into me.”
The fucker sounds so smug.
“She’s not into you. She’s into your money.”
“Potato, potahto.”
I delete some girl from my contacts when she sends me a picture of her naked rack before reaching for a cold drink and removing the toothpick I’ve been flicking between my teeth.
The only reason I kept her number was because she gives one hell of a blowjob, but she’s desperate as fuck.
And I’m bored. “You’re not fucking my staff. ”
“Who are we not fucking?” Cash asks as he joins us and slowly lowers himself down on the sun lounger. He’s dressed in his lime green swim shorts, the ones with pineapples.
I scoff and shake my head, convinced he does shit like this to wind me up. “What the fuck have you got on?”
Our sisters squeal and laugh in the pool while Cash squirts out a big glob of sun lotion and slathers it on his tanned neck and shoulders. “What’s wrong? Does the bright color offend your delicate senses, Kane?”
“How did we come from the same womb?” I mutter, grimacing at the lemonade, which tastes too weak.
“You need to learn to relax once in a while. Have a little fun.” He lies back and props his arm behind his head, face tipped toward the sun. “Back to the question. Who are we not fucking?”
Maverick ruffles his dirty blond hair. “That young servant with the southern accent.”
“Ashley? Yeah, I fucked her this morning, and last night.” My brother taps his lips with a finger while he pretends to think. “Now that I think about it, I railed her the day before that and the one before that, too.”
Of course, he’s been screwing her. The prick sticks his dick in everything.
Since I’m used to his fuck marathons, I didn’t bat an eyelid last night when his headboard banged into the wall for hours.
A woman was moaning and squealing loud enough that I contemplated walking in and shoving a fucking sock in her mouth, just so I could concentrate on my five-thousand-word essay.
I put the drink back on the table and bite down on the toothpick, using my tongue to flick it between my teeth.
There’s no point calling him out on his behavior, because I know why he does it, even if I handle my own trauma differently and want to smack him over the back of the head most of the time.
It’s not like I’m a monk. Fuck that. I need a release once in a while, too.
But the kind of sex where I don’t remember her name the next day and don’t care to see her again?
I’m over it. Besides, most of them, if not all, throw themselves at us because they want the status of dating a founding father’s son.
“You’re disgusting,” our sister Lily says, towel wrapped around her waist, her hair pulled to one side and dripping with pool water. “Women aren’t objects. You know that, right?” She looks at me next and frowns. “Why are you fully dressed? It’s like a million degrees Fahrenheit outside.”
I remove the toothpick. “Why don’t you just go back in the pool with your friends? I’m sure we can find some inflatables for you to play with.”
She flips me off, holds her towel close to her chest and helps herself to a drink.
Maverick’s younger sisters, Aurora and Hazel, are here, too.
It seems our house is the most popular one to hang out at because of the huge pool.
Everyone here has a pool in their backyard.
Don’t get me wrong. But ours was featured in a magazine once because of how luxurious it is.
Dad likes to show off his wealth.
“Ignore him,” Cash says. “His skin is precious, and he’s worried he might burn.”
Lily fights a smile and puts the drink back down when Noah and his sister, Robyn, step out of the house. There’s a splash and a loud squeal, and Hazel and Aurora run to Robyn to give her a wet hug.
Why are girls always so loud?
“This was just posted in the group,” Noah says. He swaggers up to us and hands his phone to Cash, who reads over the text then shoots upright with the widest fucking grin.
“Hell-to-the-fuck-yes.” Cash grabs his own phone beside the drinks on the side table and fires off a few messages. Noah notes my confused expression. “Some Falls loser challenged him to a race this evening.”
Maverick snorts before he stands up and heads for the pool. “Some people enjoy humiliation.”
He dives in, and Noah sits down on his lounger with his elbows on his thighs and jerks his chin to Cash. “Nice shorts.”
Cash beams. “Thank you. Finally, someone with taste.” He leans across and shoves me. “You should learn to appreciate the finer things in life.”
“Uh-huh.” I poke my tongue into my cheek.
Noah scratches his stubble and chuckles, but then he overhears the girls talking and stands up. “Absolutely not. You’re not allowed at the race tonight.”
His sister, Robyn, closes the distance between them with her arms crossed, oozing attitude. The others shuffle behind her like they don’t really want to face Noah’s hostile expression.
“We’re adults, Noah. We can go wherever the hell we want.”
Noah towers over her. “Try it, sis. Show up at the race later and I’ll escort you home myself. You could be in a retirement home, for all I fucking care! I don’t want you around that crowd.”
They bicker back and forth, and I pause as Hazel sneaks a glance at Cash then averts her gaze just as fast.
The hell? My oblivious brother hums along to an imaginary tune in his head as he scrolls through his phone. She looks again then notices the brow I raise and turns a deep shade of red.
Hazel has barely spoken five words to any of us over the years. She’s the shyest of the girls. And a virgin. I’d bet my trust fund on it. That little crush she’s got? It needs to end. My brother would run right through her like a train.
The right thing to do here is to inform Noah about his sister’s innocent crush, but Mom would be upset if Noah killed Cash.
And he would. However, judging by how clueless my brother is, we don’t need to worry.
He hasn’t noticed because he’s so used to women throwing themselves at him that he’s blind to furtive glances and blushing cheeks.
I get up and head inside. Mom is in the sunroom, where she’s working on one of her paintings, another landscape motif.
The floorboards creak beneath me, and she glances over her shoulder, smearing a streak of blue paint on her cheek as she shifts a loose strand of hair away from her eyes. “Hi, sweetie.”
I cross to her and kiss her temple, and she hugs my waist, ruining my shirt. “That’s beautiful.”
“You think?”
“Mom, everything you paint is beautiful.” I pull back, and she turns away from me, but not before I notice the bandage on her wrist. She’s self-harmed again.
And here we were, thinking she was improving, that she was finally learning to live with the grief, but maybe she’s hiding her pain better.
“Mom…” I take hold of her wrist and inch her sleeve up to reveal the bandage, brushing my thumb over the space where blood has seeped through. “Does Dr. Hartley know?”
She shakes her head, the action barely noticeable as her bottom lip trembles.
She’s struggling to look me in the eye now, and I swallow down the hurt I feel at seeing her sad.
Mom was never meant for this world, and sometimes I think maybe that’s why my father is so obsessed with her, because he likes to possess rare items. He saw her, he wanted her, and he took her.
He’s a cold-blooded monster who destroys everything he touches, including my mother, but he won’t let her go.
“You need to talk to him. Can you promise me that?” I palm her cheeks and kiss the top of her head before looking her in the eyes. “Promise me you will talk to him about your feelings.”
Dr. Hartley is the therapist Father hired the last time Mom self-harmed. And he’s a good one. The best money can buy.
Under his care, Mom began to smile again. But the grief is never far away from the surface, and some days are darker than others.
“Kane. A word in my office.”
I stiffen at the sound of my father’s voice, and so does Mom, which makes me feel all kinds of murderous. I give her shoulder an affectionate squeeze and follow my father to his office.
When I enter, he throws down a folder on his desk, then heads over to the mini bar in the corner to pour a glass of whiskey, the liquid sloshing against the sides before he caps the bottle again.
“Read it.”
It’s a folder filled with photographs of Kennie, a drug mule at our university, and I slowly sift through the incriminating evidence while my father sips his expensive alcohol.
He loosens his tie. “I trust you to take care of it. You and your brother.”
I don’t reply, and he sits down in his office chair, patting his breast pocket for his cigar.
“Where’s the damn lighter?” He finally finds it buried deep in his desk drawer and strikes the wheel, then proceeds to puff on his cigar as he eases back in the seat. He’s not using spoken threats, despite the dark look he gives me before removing tobacco from his tongue, but he doesn’t need to.
Everyone is under his thumb.
Me. My brother. And our mom.
“Anything you want to say?” he asks, squinting at me through the swirling smoke.
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
“Good.”
Another puff of his cigar, and he rests it in the ashtray on his desk. “The senator was very pleased after our last dinner.”