Chapter Seven
SEVEN
Rocky
I’ve hated it here, but Victoria isn’t special. I’ve hated it everywhere I’ve ever been for the past twenty-some years. But as I wake up on a lumpy sofa with a blue-haired girl asleep on my chest, with the TV paused on Leatherface and rain beating the panes of a foggy window, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
No one else I’d rather hold. No one else I’d rather love than my Phoebe.
My lips tic in a slight smile. I remember our childhood. Where we claimed each other like we knew we’d fall in love eventually. My Phoebe.
Being sentimental is for the fucking fools, and I feel myself being grossly sentimental over her. I can’t stop it. I don’t even really want to.
Preserving this, protecting her—it consumes my waking thoughts. It’s to the point where I’d claw through stone to keep her and rip apart any fucker who tries to take her from me.
“Mmmhmm,” Phoebe moans while her eyes fight the morning light.
Not wanting her to shift off my body, I skate my fingers through her hair. Over and over. As I continue the melodic movement against her scalp, her limbs slacken, and she falls back to sleep.
Dipping toward her, I press a kiss to her head. I have her. In my arms. Amid a lot of bullshit and torment in our lives, this is the one reassuring feeling.
I have Phoebe.
For now.
It’s fear. That with any wrong turn, I could lose her. At any moment.
Fear is just a monster created by another monster. My father. So how much of it is real and how much of it is just him manipulating me?
Before I let him ruin this quiet, warm moment in my brain—someone else does. A knock raps against the door, and Phoebe jolts at the same time I sit up.
Our foreheads bang.
“Shit,” I curse, while she says, “Ow, fuck.”
I clutch her head protectively, kiss the reddened spot, and stand fast to answer whoever the hell is on the other side of the fucking door. It’s not even eight a.m.
“Don’t your brothers have keys?” I ask her.
She’s on my heels, following. “Yeah, they do. Nova made copies.”
“Breaking one of your landlord’s pointless rules,” I mention.
“Don’t tell Jake that,” Phoebe warns. “He’s already upset about calling off my fake relationship with him—”
“Which he hasn’t done yet,” I cut in, just as we hear another three knocks. They sound less aggressive. More polite.
I sincerely hope it’s only Oliver and he’s lost his key.
“We gave him a week to break up with me,” Phoebe says. “He’ll do it, or we will. And I don’t want Jake to have any reason to end our lease.”
Irritation mounted on burning anger—that’s what’s eating through me. “If he ends your lease over you making copies of your keys or because he’s not getting his fake girlfriend for another two months, I will leave him broken on the floor.”
She’s trying not to smile. “Don’t.”
“Be a little more convincing next time and maybe I’ll consider it.”
She groans out like I’m horrible, but she’s also fighting a grin.
Then I swing the door open. All dark banter vacates the loft. Because I face the ever so fucking tall Jake Koning Waterford.
“Hey, sorry.” He’s out of breath, and he looks like a sopping-wet golden retriever.
Water drips off his light brown hair, and a soaked blue button-down suctions to his six-pack and chest. Look who forgot an umbrella and probably sprinted through the rain.
I hope he drowns in the thunderstorm and slips into a sewer and eats shit.
“Are you all right?” Phoebe asks.
Is he all right? “He’s fine, Phebs.”
“I am fine,” Jake interjects, finally filling his lungs with oxygen. He wipes the wet rain trails off his face with one hand. “I just got caught in the rain, and I wanted to check on Hailey. She asked me for some books from my family’s library, and I met her last night at Seaside Griddle to give them to her…but she seemed off. She wouldn’t let me walk her home, and it’s kept me up all night. She is here, right?”
Phoebe sends me an I told you so smug expression. She’s just short of saying, See, Jake cares.
I grip either side of the doorframe so Phoebe doesn’t butt in and soften this exchange. “Ever hear of this modern device used to call people?” I mime a phone with my hand. “Hey, Grey, how’s your sister doing? Good? Great. Bye.” I hang up and force an acidic smile. “Is it that hard?”
“With you, yeah.” He nods strongly. “Yeah, it can be, Grey. You’re a real fucking piece of work, and it boggles my mind how you could even have a sister as nice as Hailey and a wife like Phoebe—though, the ex part of wife , I definitely get.”
I boil. “Your presence is unwelcome.”
Jake has a hardened scowl.
“It irks you,” I say. “Mr. I Own This Town being told he doesn’t belong somewhere.”
“You’re in my loft.”
“Yeah.” I look at him head-on. “I fucked your fake girlfriend in it.”
Jake is borderline enraged.
“On your kitchen counter. Against your cabinets. And I’ll continue fucking her. Over and over again.”
He controls his anger enough to find Phoebe behind me. He’s protective of her—that is vitally clear now.
But as soon as he catches sight of Phoebe, something switches in his face. Uncertainty?
It’s this moment that I peer over at her.
Her breath is shallow. Each lungful pushes her perked nipples against her cropped blue T-shirt. Jake sees that she’s turned on by me, and I hate that he’s staring at her tits.
I shove him back from the entryway and grip the door, about to slam it closed and meet him on the landing in private.
But Phoebe grabs the knob. “Rocky, seriously, don’t .”
She can keep the door open. It isn’t stopping me from pushing Jake up against the fucking wall. At the top of the stairwell, he extends his arms in a slight surrender, but I say between gritted teeth, “You’re pissing on the wrong grass. Find a new plot of land that doesn’t belong to her or my sister.”
Jake exhales a slow, taxing breath, and his muscles loosen like he’s relinquishing this fight. “Okay, okay .” When I let him go, I expect him to say a quick goodbye to Phoebe and get the hell out of here, but he lingers .
I run my tongue against my molars.
He expresses deeply, “I only want to check on Hailey. Then I’ll go.”
Jesus, he’s not giving up. I would respect it more if I liked him more.
“Rocky, it’s okay,” Phoebe says. “It’s pouring out. Just let him inside. We can ask Hailey if she wants to see him.”
“We’re friends,” Jake professes to me. “We go to the same book club on Tuesdays. Look, I just need to know she’s all right.”
“You don’t believe me when I tell you she is?”
“No offense, but I’d feel better if I saw with my own two eyes.”
Funny enough, I relate to that feeling. I understand needing more than words so you aren’t sold a bag of lies, and it’s not the first time I’ve found Jake relatable. I hate that it’s swaying me, but here we are.
Against sound judgement, I let him through.
We’re not even two steps into the kitchen, and I instantly regret it. Because my nineteen-year-old brother stumbles weakly out of Hailey’s bedroom in a slim, black Brioni suit with various white gold rings on each finger like he’s planning to dine at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
“Where are you going?” I ask him, trying to ignore the confusion radiating off Jake.
“Out.”
I put a hand to his chest. “Like hell.” He can barely stand up straight without wincing. His arm is hovering over his abdomen. And underneath the designer suit is a bandage, stitches, and a fresh stab wound.
“Have you checked the fridge? I’m starving, Rock.” Then he slings his head to the side, seeing Jake and Phoebe. “Put some clothes on, PG. No one wants to see your pierced nipple.”
“Knock it off,” I growl.
Phoebe slings back at him, “No one wants to see your face. Dead in the eyes.”
Trevor wheezes out a dying laugh. “I might be dead eyed, but at least I’m not fake banging my landlord.”
Fuck. Trevor.
Jake’s jaw unhinges in shock, turning from me to Phoebe. “ He knows we’ve been fake dating?” Jake isn’t aware that we’ve told anyone . When, in actuality, we’ve shared the truth among my siblings and Phoebe’s. He motions back to Trevor. “Who even is he?”
Trevor hasn’t picked an alias yet, and I’m prepared to jump in and open an escape hatch so he won’t have to answer.
But then he announces, “Trevor Thornhall. Younger brother to Grey and Hailey.” He lifts three fingers in a stiff but casual greeting, still slumped a little in pain. I’d put an arm around him, but he’d just shove me off.
We share a small beat, our gazes meeting in a sentiment close to love. For him to choose to be my brother in this town—after knowing we don’t share the same DNA—it means something to me. It’s also another thread of realism sewn into our lives within Victoria.
“Hailey wants her brother to crash here,” Phoebe explains fast. “I know you have a two-tenant rule, but it’s temporary.”
Jake pulls at his soaked button-down, his face still contorted. “Hailey never said she had another brother. You never said anything.” He’s accusing me now.
I grip the butcher-block counter. “We didn’t have the rosiest upbringing, and we’re protective. So no, we weren’t going to share our family tree with you. Just like you never told me Katherine Rhodes was your nanny .”
He inhales a sharp breath of understanding. “Right.” He surveys the kitchen, the living room, and when his attention flits past the sofa and coffee table, I’m glad Nova brought over a Turkish rug. It hides the bloodstained floorboards. Where Trevor almost bled out on Halloween.
“Let me check on Hailey first,” Phoebe says. “If she’s sleeping, we really shouldn’t wake her.”
“Agreed,” I chime in, and surprisingly, Jake is nodding, too.
Phoebe slips down the short hallway.
To Trevor, I say, “I’ll pick up breakfast for you. What do you want?”
“Pancakes.” He’s squinting at Jake. He already revealed something he shouldn’t, and he’s not well trained in the art of face-to-face manipulation.
He’s not here on a job. He’s not supposed to be screwing Jake over.
But we have enough baggage that could bury all of us. Our parents kept him on a tight leash because they knew he’s impulsive and unpredictable. Still, all he has ever wanted is their approval to do more than creep in the shadows. All I have ever wanted is for him to be less of a bitter, angry cynic like me.
“You know, if this thing with Phoebe doesn’t work out”—Trevor sifts through a basket of sunglasses—“you could always fake date me.”
It’d be funnier if I weren’t holding my fucking breath.
“I’ll even put out,” Trevor offers.
“No, he won’t,” I cut in.
“Yeah, I will.” Trevor closes one eye in appraisal and uses a single finger to outline Jake’s tall, athletically fit frame in the air. “I can work with it. He’s about a nine out of ten.”
Jake’s brows are permanently crunched. He raises two hands to pause the show. “Thanks for the offer, I think, but my mother wouldn’t really approve. She almost wrote me out of the will when I dated a guy in boarding school.”
I’m genuinely shocked, but I smother that emotion so deep.
“Gay?” Trevor wonders.
“Bi. I like women, too. And you’re…?”
“I don’t really do labels.” He slips on a pair of Prada sunglasses, probably to hide the fact that he’s wincing in near-severe pain. “Neither does my older brother.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I whisper through my teeth at him. “And sit down.”
At least he lowers into a bistro chair, and I relax when he swallows like the pain is ebbing. Wanting Jake a whole football field away from my brother, I tell him, “Let’s check on Hailey.” Phoebe shouldn’t be taking this long.
Once we make our way into the short hall, I push the cracked door farther open, and my muscles flex into burning bands seeing Hailey hunched over a laptop with her eyes wide on the lit screen. Phoebe is beside her on the bed, trying to entice my sister with a glass of water.
Our presence only captures Phoebe’s attention. She gives me a slight worried shake of her head and shoos us out with her hand.
I shut the door, hoping Hailey at least slept a couple hours last night.
“She didn’t look good,” Jake whispers to me, skating a hand through his damp hair. Worry pleats the space between his brows. “Did something happen…?”
We learned our entire existence might be constructed on a lie, so yeah, something happened. “It’s a situation from back home. Phoebe is taking care of her.”
“Right,” he says, more sharply this time. He can tell I’m being evasive. I’m not letting him in. It’s frustrating him.
Welcome to the fucking club.
He has no idea that I could so easily spout off a wild, fabricated story. He’d buy the tall tale, and I wouldn’t have this massive, brain-splitting headache. Instead, I am actively trying not to outright deceive him.
And unfortunately, I have to share his company for another five minutes. I escort him out of the loft, and since I need to pick up breakfast for Trevor, I’m descending steps in the echoey stairwell with Jake.
He’s ahead of me.
Which is annoying because he stops midway and turns. Blocking me. “So you aren’t straight?” he suddenly asks.
“You hitting on me, Jake?”
“No,” he says pretty causally. “You’re not my type.”
“Too mean?” I mime crying fists to my cheeks.
“Too short, actually.”
I almost, almost smile at that one—since, when we first met, I said he was too tall to be my type. “Funny.”
The air unwinds. Strangely. Considering seconds ago, we both looked ready to fling each other out the window. Common ground is the best brick to build bridges, but never did I think we’d have this in common.
I don’t hate it.
He has a foot above the stair, a foot below. He’s practically dry by now, and I hear the rain letting up. Yet, he’s not moving.
“Jake—”
“You’re right,” he interjects. “I do have more to lose than you. I really need Phoebe, and I want to tell you why. I do, and…” His voice tapers off as a song blares out of his pocket and echoes throughout the stairwell.
He sets ringtones for family members. “Chiquitita” for his beloved little sister, Kate. “Highway to Hell” for his oldest brother, Trent. “Bad to the Bone” for his lovely mother, Claudia.
But this particular song is new. “Is that ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’?” I ask.
“By Thin Lizzy,” he confirms, as if this entire situation isn’t suspicious. He’s hurriedly digging out his phone.
Who could possibly warrant this type of urgency? An uncle? None are present in Victoria that I’m aware of. A grandparent? All deceased, unless he faked those, too. Doubtful.
I’m scrutinizing the fuck out of him.
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I should take this. He rarely calls.”
“Who?” I ask.
“My old boarding-school roommate.” He jogs down the stairs.
“Where’d you go to boarding school?!” I call out.
He has the phone to his ear. “Faust. It’s in upstate New York.” Of course I recognize the name of the all-boys boarding school. Once upon a time, we all attended a coed one only an hour from Faust. It was where we’d meet at the cemetery every Thursday night.
Jake slows to a sudden, eerie stop at the exit, then he asks his friend, “Who died?”