ONE
KIERAN
“What the hell are you bitching about now?”
My re-evaluation of the situation had moved off in the direction of a possible undiagnosed mental health issue.
I had suggested as much to Jessa, which caused her to rat me out to our stepmother, Vanessa.
We were eighteen, and ‘at that age', Vanessa pointed out—if you were stupid enough to believe anything that came out of that woman’s mouth.
Like right at that very moment.
Ten minutes before her grand appearance, I had been scrolling through messages from my wasted friends on our WhatsApp group.
They were at Melanie Big Tits Matthews’ eighteenth birthday party.
That wasn’t her real middle name, of course.
The nickname was courtesy of the basketball team on campus.
Mel was on the cheer squad and was solely responsible for several rebound shots over the last two years.
WEST: You coming tonight or not?
ME: Not.
TANNER: Buzzkill!
TANNER: Where r u at, fun sponge?
TANNER: West’s doing shots off Ellie Piper's bellllly!
TANNER: Uber stank of piss on the way here!
TANNER: Transfer u a grand if u cum get us.
TANNER: U there? Oy!
TANNER: U ded? U better be ded.
The offer of such a ridiculous amount of cash for playing taxi didn’t come as a surprise to me. My friend Tanner was loaded and threw money around like nobody's business. Several minutes later, another couple of messages fell beneath the last.
TANNER: Woz kiddin about the ded thing.
WEST: He wasn’t.
We seriously needed to make a pact about not texting when under the influence of alcohol, but that shit did make me laugh. My friend’s late-night messages were always the most entertaining.
“Oy, dickhead!”
Taking one last drag on my blunt, I enjoyed the sweet taste of the cannabis as I drew it into my lungs.
I wasn’t about to give Jessa the eye contact she craved; I let the silence stretch until it was uncomfortable.
After a few more beats for good measure, I turned to the most annoying of my siblings and blew out a thick plume of smoke in her direction.
“Go away, you’re messing with my mellow.”
“You fucking stink, Kier,” Jessa spat. She performed a theatrical gag, her neck straining like an indignant chicken as she wafted the fog from her face. Forever the drama queen.
We were twins but couldn’t have been more different, both inside and out.
Jessa was the ghost of our late mother: fair skin, dirty-blonde hair, and those ocean-blue eyes that made looking at her feel like a punch to the gut.
I was the mirror image of our father. I had his natural tan, broad shoulders, the same dark hair, and obsidian eyes.
My sister and I were about the same height.
I was six foot two, and Jessa wasn’t that far off.
The shortfall in our heights she made up for with an attitude which could probably be seen from space.
Rolling my eyes at Jessa’s performance, I reluctantly stubbed out the rest of the joint on the empty beer can I’d been cradling against my chest.
“That shit will kill you,” she sniped, shaking a torrent of hair over her shoulder.
“I’m counting on it,” I replied with a smirk, slipping the butt inside the tinny I held.
Placing her hands on her hips, Jessa’s foot tap morphed into a stomp. “Are you even listening to me?”
Nope, not even in the fucking slightest.
I knew she was pissed that our stepmother’s niece, whom we’d never heard of until a week ago, was coming to stay with us. Our father, Cameron, had promised it was a temporary trial. As far as I was concerned, if it didn’t affect me, I didn’t give a shit.
A family meeting had been called to discuss the finer details of our fucking lodger.
I’d almost fallen off the barstool I’d been sitting on when Cameron broke the news.
She was also the daughter of the man who’d been involved in the hit-and-run of a student from our school.
The scumbag and his wife had been arrested, leaving their kids with nowhere to go: two girls and a boy.
Enter the Rook family.
Looking back and forth between us all, the big man of our family had stated. “And you can lose the horrified expressions. She isn’t guilty of her father’s sins.”
I’d scoffed at that one. “That’s not the way the neighbours will see it.”
“And that just brings me to my next point. No one is to know. Everything I have told you tonight stays in this room, especially who her parents are and what they may or may not have done. There’s a court order in place to protect the identity of the children.
” He knew he could trust us, but it didn’t matter; shit got out no matter what, especially at our school, Northridge Academy.
“So, what’s happening to the others?” Jessa had questioned.
“The younger girl has Type 1 Diabetes and has been fostered by a family that is experienced in caring for a child with that illness. The older boy is considered an adult at nineteen and has emancipated—and to put it bluntly—we don’t know where he is.
” So, the eldest had gone AWOL, and they were splitting the girls up?
Even I could accept that was harsh, but that’s fucking social services for you: bloody useless.
That conversation was days ago, and Jessa and I hadn’t spoken about it since.
And now she’d brought it up again and crapped all over my night.
Decimating the can of Bud Light in my fist, I swung my legs onto the polished stone of the patio and pushed to my feet.
It was almost midnight, and I was stoked: the lights from the pool exuded a soft, calming glow, but I still felt as wired as fuck.
It wasn’t long until the anniversary of our mother’s death, and I always struggled in the build-up to that day.
Even the hour I’d spent in the gym had done little to ease the tension I felt.
Discarding the crushed can in the bin, I snagged my iPhone from where I’d left it after reading Weston’s parting text and slid it into my sweats.
As I rolled my shoulders, hating those relentless knots in my neck, I saw Jessa’s expression turn feral. Here we go. “I’m just surprised you're so calm about it. Didn’t you intend moving your shit in there now Lincoln has gone?”
“Shit in where?” I shot back impatiently. When Jessa had first appeared, lingering at the edge of the patio, I’d done what I usually did. Fazed her the fuck out.
“So, you didn’t hear what I said?” Her tone was full of exasperation.
“No, I didn’t. I was trying to relax, something that will be even more difficult with another hormonal teenage witch in the house.”
“That’s what I was saying. She won’t be in the house. Vanessa said she’s joining us at the end of the week, and Daddy has already offered her the pool house. I just thought you should know. The daughter of a criminal, living in our pool house, who would have thought it.”
That got my attention, the pool house? Over my dead body.
I whipped my head towards the water, glaring at the darkened glass windows of the aforementioned self-contained annex.
I’d been asking to move my shit in there for the last eight months, and Cameron had offered it to a fucking stranger?
What the hell? Our brother Lincoln had moved out of there last year when he returned from the army, saying that he needed his own place.
The sponging git still used his old room in the main house from time to time, treating it like a fucking hotel, but did Cameron ever say anything to the golden boy?
Nope. Now the pool house was empty, and as the next in line, it should have been offered to me. In my opinion, of course.
I didn’t give Jessa’s criminal comment any weight; that shit hadn't even gone to trial yet.
I was a firm believer in the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
I had heard on the news about the arrest of Jacob Thorn, a man who lived in Dunsfold.
The blood alcohol level Thorn was sporting when they picked him up was five times the legal limit.
Word had it that his house was raided after an anonymous tip-off about his car matching the one seen driving away from the crime scene.
I thought about Rebecca Blake, the victim, who was still in intensive care. They should throw away the fucking key if the guy did do it.
I dragged my wandering mind back to my own problems. The pool house, really?
“Ooh, that’s got your attention,” Jessa chuckled. I had tried to hide my pissed expression, but she read it, a twin thing that had started to happen far too frequently. I shared my mind with no one, especially not the interfering little busybody standing in front of me.
“How did he even rationalise that?” Our father didn’t understand the word "succinct" and loved to give chapter and verse on any decision he ever made.
Jessa let out a breath, which lifted part of her thick fringe. “Something about her needing privacy.”
“And I don’t?” I snapped back incredulously.
Fuck, I needed a wall to punch as pent-up aggression kicked through me.
What could I say? I had a short fuse, one of those things I had inherited from my old man.
Thankfully, that was where our similarities ended.
I was nothing like Cameron Rook. I had a moral compass—it was rusted, and the needle flickered, but at least it pointed somewhere other than hell.
“You already have your own bathroom, Kieran,” Jessa pointed out moodily. Her eyes were so narrow they were like slits. “I don’t. I’m forced to stand in line waiting for Maisy to finish bathing all her dolls every bloody day.”
My chest squeezed with affection as she mentioned our baby sister.
“That’s the way it should be; I’m older than you,” I reminded her. I only said that to piss her off. I counted down by three seconds before my sister verbally shit a brick.
“By eight minutes, you dick!”
TOUCHDOWN.
After shooting her one of my signature smirks, I squinted across at the Holy Grail, that one place everyone wanted to stake their claim.