Chapter Two
TWO
Rocky
Sixty miles out of Victoria, I’m in a drugstore stocking up on bandages and other shit my teenage brother might need to recover from a stab wound. Just a regular Friday afternoon for a Tinrock.
I’m tossing antiseptic cream into a basket at my feet when Jake calls me.
Phoebe. She’s the first person I think about.
Phoebe is at the country club today.
Phoebe is with Jake.
Phoebe is supposed to break up with Jake.
Raw concern for her is a shot of adrenaline, and I answer on the first ring. “Hi, Jake.” I narrow a glare at bottles of supplements. Magnesium. 250 mg. Melatonin. I calm down so my voice isn’t caustic. “This better be about my new equestrian purchase.”
I hope this has absolutely nothing to do with Phoebe. But it doesn’t hurt to remind Jake of two things. One, that I’ve recently done him a solid by buying his dead sister’s horse. And two, that I know he helped fake her death.
So if he fucks with Phoebe, I will bury him.
“It’s not about that.” Jake sighs like talking to me isn’t on his top-ten list of daily desires. He wouldn’t even make my top one hundred, so why the fuck is he calling me? “Listen, Grey…” He lets his voice taper off.
I wait and wait for more. There’s nothing.
“You afraid to talk to me, Jake?”
“I just want you to think about what I’m going to say rather than react,” Jake explains. “Please.” His voice has lowered to a whisper.
I scan the wellness aisle and smile kindly at an older woman who passes by. She beams back, and I tell her, “Have a good day” before she leaves for a beauty supply section.
“Where are you?” I ask into the phone.
“The country club.”
“But where?”
“The hall…outside guest locker rooms.”
Interesting. He wants something from me, but if he didn’t want anyone to overhear, he should’ve gone to the bathroom or slipped into a closet. While I read the label on the melatonin, I say, “I’m listening.”
“I know you want Phoebe to break up with me.”
“ She wants to break up with you, too.”
“She also expressed that,” he says. “But I really need this to continue, at least until my family dinner.”
Hell no. “We’re together ,” I force out. “Me. Phoebe. We got back together.” So fuck off.
I couldn’t care less that he’s the first to know. I want it to be vitally clear that she’s mine and she’ll never belong to him.
“Yeah, Phoebe told me,” Jake whispers.
A smile tries to pull at my lips. She already told him we’re together.
Then I realize Jake likely couldn’t accept Phoebe saying “We’re breaking up right now,” and so she had to throw out the truth to get him off her back. Or half-truth—considering this isn’t two divorcés mending a relationship.
The entire town and Jake believe Phoebe is my ex-wife. When in reality, we’ve never actually been together outside of a con. Not until now.
I just hate that he’s pressuring her to keep this shit going.
Jake adds, “She even warmed up to the idea of staying with me—which is why I’m calling you. She told me I needed you to say yes , basically.”
Why would Phoebe want this to continue? What’d he pitch to her?
I return the melatonin bottle to the shelf. “I’m saying no .”
“Hear me out, please.” He’s desperate. Then I hear the pitch that Phoebe likely got. He goes into this whole spiel about his overbearing mother pairing him off with Julia Kelsey, a shy twenty-two-year-old who’s susceptible to manipulation and won’t survive the cutthroat nature of the social elite. He’s protecting Julia—a girl I’ve met briefly in town.
And yes, she’s quiet. Yes, she will be chewed up and spit out.
“But what about Phoebe?” I ask him.
“Phoebe’s different. She can handle this family dinner.”
Fire brews in my chest, burning my lungs. “Your mother hates her.”
“Phoebe can hold her own. She’s capable and something of a spitfire.”
Hearing him describe Phoebe to me like I don’t really know her is aggravating on several accounts. “She’s capable,” I repeat. “You want her to take shit from your mom while you protect soft little Julia. Just because Phoebe can take it.” Fuck him.
“Phoebe wants to help,” he counters. “She cares about Julia, too.”
“The answer is no .” While he’s out here protecting Julia, all I care about—all I can think about—is protecting Phoebe. She’s not his tool, and it pisses me off that he’s trying to use her under some moral pretense.
“Can you please think about this?” he whispers. “ Please. Phoebe is okay with it. Why can’t you be?”
“Because I don’t care about little fucking Julia,” I whisper coldly into the phone, then I eye a middle-aged man who enters the aisle. I exit with my basket and slip into a quiet section stocked with condoms and lube.
I don’t tell Jake that I care about five people. Just five. For that list to grow, I’d be more susceptible to manipulation. So I have no soft spots for these “damsels” that Jake is so adamant on shoving out of his social circle. And clearly, he hopes to save them from becoming distressed.
“Julia, who by the way,” I add with heat, “isn’t much younger than Phoebe.”
“Phoebe acts—”
“I swear to God if you say older , I’m hanging up on you.”
“I was going to say more mature,” Jake retorts. “Phoebe has clearly dealt with more in her life than most people her age.”
I clench my jaw. “You mean she’s had to deal with me.”
“A marriage and a divorce aren’t little things,” Jake reasons, like it wasn’t a personal slight. “And you’re not the easiest person to get along with. And still, she’s choosing you for whatever reason, and I’m not asking you two to split up.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I hiss into the phone. “Let you fake kiss my wife? You want to fake fuck her, too?”
“I…” His sigh turns into a frustrated noise. “Look, we can work out those details.”
I drop the basket so I can pinch my eyes. I wish he were here so I could punch him in the face. “How do I know this isn’t your way of convincing Phoebe she’s better off with you?”
“It’s not like that, Grey. I promise, I’m not trying to be with her for real or to win her over. I just need her help.”
I shake my head a few times. This isn’t happening. I partially believe he doesn’t really want Phoebe—only because I have enough dirt on Jake to sink him deeper than the Titanic . So he’d have to be head over heels, foolishly in love with her to risk lying to me right now.
And I don’t think he’s in love with Phoebe—or else he’d be the one trying to protect her from his family. “I heard you,” I say. “I listened to you. And the answer is still fuck no .”
The line goes quiet, and I frown at a box of Trojans. My ears catch muffled noises over the phone. Someone is with him.
“This conversation is over,” I tell him, about to hang up.
“No, wait. I’m still here,” Jake says with a heavy breath. “Your ex-wife just dragged me into a closet with her.”
My muscles contract in tensed bands.
At least Phoebe understands the importance of privacy, but I remember being crammed in the country club’s storage closet with her. I remember pulling her hair and the hitch of her hot breath up against my skin. I remember wanting to thrust my cock inside her so badly, I could’ve wished upon every star for the ability to fuck her without consequence.
I hear Phoebe in the background. “Can you put him on speakerphone, please?” And then more clearly, she says, “Rocky?”
“He’s not dating you—”
“It’s not about that,” she cuts me off, panting.
Alarm jars me, and I immediately go to the cashier to check out. I’m not in town , I’d tell her if she wasn’t around Jake.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asks her.
“We have a major problem,” Phoebe tells us. “Claudia Waterford hired two matchmakers to try to pair me with Rocky. She’s dead set on getting us back together…and now she enlisted the help of these…fairy godmothers like I’m their Cinderella.”
I freeze.
Godmothers is code for Elizabeth and Addison.
Our mothers are in town. We all figured they’d arrive sooner rather than later. I didn’t think they’d entrench themselves this quickly into the Waterford family, but it’s not shocking they chose a role that’d put me and Phoebe together for a quick payout.
I should’ve known our moms would insinuate themselves in the town before arriving, but I heard nothing about them. No whispers, no gossip. Which means, I’m not exactly in the inner circle in Victoria.
I haven’t really tried to be. It wasn’t such a necessity.
Now, though—it definitely is.
I lose track of where I am, and things come into focus when the cashier scans a box of tampons my sister requested. When I’ve paid, I’m out of the drugstore and slowing my heated stride. “Hold on,” I tell Phoebe.
An athletic-built man in track shorts and a Nike wick-away shirt is snapping photos of my parked black McLaren. It sticks out like a shiny new toy among hand-me-downs.
He’s admiring it.
I jog to the driver’s side, acting in a hurry, and collide with the man.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say, in a rush.
“My bad.” He’s flustered, and we fumble with my plastic bags.
“No worries.” I detangle from him, then slip into the front seat. Door shut, I unpocket the phone I just swiped off him, and I delete every photo he snapped of the car. I check his iCloud settings and see he has it disabled.
I’m cautious. Paranoid. I’m not taking any chances, and I don’t need him to post this shit on social media and for anyone to trace me to a drugstore out of town. Shouldn’t have taken the McLaren. It seemed like a minor risk before now.
Before knowing we’re several steps behind Elizabeth and Addison.
Once the man disappears inside the store, I roll down my window and toss his phone on the pavement where we made impact. He’ll think he just dropped it.
I peel onto the road and use my burner phone to text my siblings, Phoebe, and her brothers.
Godmothers are in town
I have no idea where my father is, but if they’re here, it’s likely he’s not far behind.
“I’m in the car,” I tell Phoebe and Jake. En route to Victoria. “Who are the matchmakers?”
“Isla Rivers and Wendy St. James,” Phoebe says.
So our moms are using aliases. Phoebe’s voice sounds strained, and I hear a thump of a tennis ball or racquet.
I forgot they’re sharing a closet. “Let’s video chat.”
“You’re driving,” Jake says like it’s unsafe.
Jesus Christ. “I’ll pull over just for you, sweetheart.”