Chapter Thirty
THIRTY
Rocky
Trent runs two hands through his hair, pulling at the strands in severe distress.
He’s pacing. He’s been pacing for the past thirty minutes. Inside the Koning pool house, two empty bottles of Ardbeg line the counter, and Trent pours from a third into a shot glass. I’m not the only person he called to this little emergency meeting.
Collin Falcone and Oliver “Smith” sit on the blue toile couch, watching Trent spiral in a whirlpool of scotch and panic.
The four of us, coined the Fortunate Four (hate it) by town gossipmongers, have been playing damage control in Trent’s eyes, and playing babysitter to a petulant man-baby in mine.
“I just don’t get it,” Collin says, leaning over the glass coffee table. “Who would’ve recorded you? You were in your own house.”
“He was in the carriage house,” I correct Collin.
“Same difference.” Collin snorts a line of white powder off the table.
Trent glowers. “It’s not the same, you dipshit.” He waves a tensed hand toward me. “Grey understands. Facts and details matter.”
Collin grimaces. “Yeah…” He sinks back into the couch and pats Oliver’s back, nodding toward the cocaine on the table.
Oliver is quick to comply, and I look away. Try to ignore. Try not to let it get to me. My pulse thumps harder. I pull at the collar of my black button-down, heat surfacing within me. I had to go straight from the golf course to the boathouse just to change out of my wick-away polo and golf shorts. Lest Trent think I played eighteen holes without him.
“Play the audio again,” I tell Trent.
His nose flares as he takes out his phone. He sinks onto a wicker chair and rests his elbows on his knees. The recording starts, and it’s his unmistakable voice that arrives first.
“Celia, Celia.” He laughs, and I can only imagine he’s squeezing her in a hug. “You looked like a pro out on the court. Caufield’s coach will be an idiot if he doesn’t make you number one singles on the team.”
I do everything not to grit my molars.
Celia Whitlock. Newly eighteen. She has a full ride to Caufield for tennis and graduates from Victoria High in May. The fact that her parents even let her play tennis alone with him is…something.
But they’re divorced. And her mom has already routinely slept with Trent. So I’m guessing he was drawn to the idea of fooling around with her daughter.
“Thanks,” Celia replies bashfully. “I’ve been working on my forehand.”
“Your topspin is flawless. Just like you…and you know, I really like you.”
“I like you, too.”
I concentrate on the weight of the Rolex on my wrist. On the collar of my shirt itching at my neck. Just to stop my face from cinching in pure disgust.
“I could show you a good time, if you’d like that?” Trent asks on the recording. “Up in my room. You’ll love it there. And you’ll love me here.” I imagine he touched her.
“Yeah…okay.”
Here in the pool house, Trent extends his arms at me. “She consented . How is this fucking bad?”
Oh, let me count the fucking ways. Instead, I’m forced to appease him. “People are sensitive, man.”
“I can’t believe this.” He has a hostile glare on his cellphone like if he could, he’d reach into the past and sucker punch the person who made this moment public.
In the audio, Trent says, “You know I’ve been with your mom, right? I like you more, though. We should see if you inherited the best of her assets.”
“You want me to…?” There’s some rustling on the recording, like she’s shedding her clothes.
“Definitely hotter than your mom. Take off the bra, too.” It ends with some murmuring and a grunt before they likely head to Trent’s room.
Currently, his leg is jostling in pure rage. “The motherfucker who recorded me is a dead man.”
It was a woman.
One of their groundskeepers who’s in charge of fresh floral arrangements on their property. Everett paid her to drop audio devices in vases around the estate.
“Look, man, I don’t know if it’s that big of a deal,” I tell him. “No one said your name. There could be plausible deniability. With technology, things get faked all the time.”
Highly un-fucking-likely.
Trent nods, trying to ease. “You’re right. I could just say it’s not me. It sounded like me, but that’s not me.”
Oliver sniffs a couple times before he says, “Deny, deny, deny.”
Collin throws up his hand. “Why does this matter anyway? So you might have banged an eighteen-year-old and her mom. I’ve seen you finger-fuck a girl while getting your dick sucked.”
Trent is seething at Collin. “Don’t say it like that. I don’t finger-fuck . You crude piece of shit.” He throws a pillow at him. “Do you know what I’ve been through?” His face fractures like he’s grasping a heart he suddenly purchased. “It matters . What they’re saying about me isn’t true. I loved Scarlett. I still love her. My wife was my everything. You know that, Grey?” He looks to me, seeking validation.
He does often express love for his late wife. But only to gain sympathy from others. “I know,” I say, consoling. “She was your one and only.”
“My one and only .” He nods strongly. “Now they’re saying I’m a pig? For what? Did they honestly expect me to never physically be with anyone else? Because that’s all it was.” He wipes at his mouth, incensed. “This better not get to the board. I’m a widower .” He points at his chest. “I’m not a fucking porn star.”
Step two: tarnish Koning Jesus’s reputation.
Weeks ago, I warned Valentina de la Vega never to accept a tennis match with Trent. How he’d been talking about her ass among his friends. She thanked me for the heads-up. And then yesterday, I slipped the audio flash drive in Val’s locker at the country club. Her family owns the Victoria Weekly , and I thought there’d be a fifty-fifty chance she’d either post it on their website or just text it among her best friends.
No post on Victoria Weekly , but it’s been sent to enough twenty-somethings in town that it made its way right back to Trent. And people are whispering. Side-eyeing. Scrutinizing him from head to toe.
“It’ll blow over,” I say casually, undeterred, like I have all the confidence in the world that Trent will ride this out. And he will. He’ll skate through the barrel of the wave unscathed, because this isn’t the wave that takes him down.
Trent ingests my confidence with another hearty nod. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right, Grey. I shouldn’t be freaking out.”
“You shouldn’t,” I agree. “Freaking out is for the guilty.”
“I did nothing wrong,” Trent says deeply. “And do you even know how many people would kill to play tennis on the Koning courts? Celia was happy to be there. She even texted apologizing for this audio getting out. Everyone needs to just chill .”
He truly believes he is a gift from God to those around him.
“I’m chill,” Oliver says, then mimes taking a hit on a joint and blowing out.
Trent shakes his head with a laugh.
I join in the laughter. So does Collin.
Then Oliver.
Until we’re all laughing, full-bodied, like it’s all just bullshit, and Trent’s passing around the Ardbeg to commemorate his “innocence.” The scotch tastes like acid down my throat. We spend the next half hour taking Trent’s mind off the scandal, which involves more alcohol, six hours of Transformers movies, and more drugs.
Luckily, I’ve dodged all cocaine use by citing my employer doing frequent drug tests. I insinuated to Trent that I work for the government, but I usually tell people I invest so I don’t blow my cover. He felt special being brought in on a secret that I tell no one.
Not even my ex-wife could know that I work for the CIA.
Halfway through Transformers: Dark of the Moon , I get a call. Casually, I glance at the screen, and then rise to my feet. “Sorry, I have to take this,” I tell Trent.
And through my body language, I convey this is an important call, more important than him. Leaving through the sliding glass doors, I step closer to the Konings’ Olympic-sized pool. Pink flamingo floaties drift on the surface of the crystal-blue waters.
I put the phone to my ear. “Hey,” I say. “I’m outside. You can talk freely.”
“Hey,” Phoebe replies with the same easygoing tone. She called on her burner, but I recognized the number. There was a zero percent chance I was going to ignore her call. All I want to do is hear her voice. “Jake said you got the SOS call from Trent. Are you still with him?”
“Yep.” I exhale a hot, aggravated breath.
“Shit,” she curses. “Oliver, too?”
“We’re on the third Transformers movie.”
She groans. “Oh God, I wish I could come end your misery.”
“Please fucking do. Bring chocolate and a chain saw.”
“I’ll show up in a hazmat suit,” she jokes. “Tell him there’s been a report of asbestos.”
I’m smiling. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Hmmm. Big plans. If you can believe it, I’m actually hosting a Transformers watch party where we watch not only every movie but the director’s commentary, too.”
“That’s funny because I don’t believe it.”
“There’s nothing funny about my lies.”
I run my tongue over my lips, feeling my edging smile again. “So you have no plans.”
“I have a shift at the club until seven,” she says, and this time I know she’s telling the truth. “Other than that—I am as free as that whale in that one movie.”
“ Free Willy ?” I squint into the sun and pull my sunglasses off the collar of my shirt. “You do know he wasn’t free until the very end of the movie?”
“Thanks for spoiling it for me.”
I laugh with an eye roll. “It’s been how many years since that’s been out? You’re past the spoiler zone—”
The sliding glass doors open, and my gaze hooks to Collin. “Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, just work. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Cool.” Collin nods. “We paused the movie.” Wonderful.
I force an easygoing smile before putting the cell back to my ear. “Thanks, Hank, I’ll have the report to you tonight.”
“Nine p.m.?” Phoebe asks. “Your place?”
I tamp down my excitement so it won’t rise to my face. “Yep, that sounds great.”
“Love you, bye.” She hangs up swiftly, knowing I won’t have a chance to tell her the same.
—
The sun has set by the time Oliver and I leave Trent’s, and Oliver will. Not. Shut. The fuck. Up. He must have been using all his energy to “act normal,” and as soon as he landed in my car, the dam busted.
“It’s like the summer I found that stray cat, not knowing it had fleas, and then I brought it to our house in Raleigh and we had to flea bomb every single room. And Nova was all ‘this is why you don’t bring in random animals,’ and I was all ‘yeah, but it’s not random. His name is Claude.’ And now sometimes when I’m doing nothing in particular, I’ll just think, His name is Claude . Fuck, I miss that cat. I can’t believe he ran away. I was like the literal best cat dad.” He takes a breath. A goddamn miracle.
“Oliver.” I slow the car at a stop sign.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
He just smiles, and his head swings toward the window. “Isn’t that Varrick’s car?”
I do a double take before making a quick U-turn onto the main street. Sure enough, it’s Varrick Wolfe’s sixties Stingray. I would do very bad things to own that black Corvette. It’s apparently just one of a hundred vintage cars Emilia Wolfe’s late husband, William Wolfe, collected.
My envy for the car transforms to worry when I see where it’s parked.
In front of Baubles & Bookends. Which just happens to be the shop below Hailey and Phoebe’s loft. That can’t be a coincidence.
Fuck this guy. I park in the open spot behind the Stingray, and Oliver jumps out first. “I’ll go check on Hails.” I don’t follow him into the apartment stairwell.
I wait patiently beside my car, seeing the shape of Varrick through the bookstore windows. The bell chimes as he exits. He’s in a navy-blue suit. Brioni. No tie. Cuff links are gold, and he’s carrying a paper bag with the B&B logo.
“Surprised to see you here,” I call out to him.
He jolts when he spots me as if, maybe, I caught him off guard. But the shock dims. It’s instantly replaced by intrigue as he fixes his sights on my McLaren. “Nice car.”
He knows his is nicer.
I flash a smile.
He cranes his neck back to the store. “Why would it be a surprise to see me here?”
“You’ve barely been around town since The Hunt,” I say, a little casual but a lot territorial.
He shifts the bag to his other hand. “You keeping track of me?”
I lift my shoulders. “Just making it my business to keep tabs on the guy who tried to pay an absurd amount of money for my ex-wife.” I smile. “You know how it is.”
Varrick returns the same acidic smile. “Sure.” He reaches for the Corvette’s door handle. “Those lofts your sister and ex-wife are residing at—they might want to look into other living arrangements.”
My stomach knots. “Why is that?”
“My family used to own the bookstore. Now I own the bookstore, and I’m finalizing a deal with Claudia Waterford to buy the lofts above.” He meets my gaze head-on, an intensity in his eyes that borders on threatening. “Though maybe your ex-wife and I can work something out.” He flashes another smile. “Have a nice day, Brayden.” He opens the door.
Hearing him call me that name—it nearly steals the life out of me. I don’t even flinch. I’m a solid block of ice. I catch his gaze, because he’s eating up my frozen reaction like it’s candy at a movie.
“Who are you?” I ask him on a public street at sunset. No one who’s anything like me would utter the truth, but I’m not thinking clearly right now.
His lip rises. He’s amused. “Varrick Wolfe.”
“You know my parents?” I ask him.
He chuckles, tipping his head in thought. “Something like that.” His smile settles on me before he says, “I hope to see you around.” As he climbs into his Corvette, a feeling wrenches and gnarls inside me.
Something like that.
Something like that.
It’s in this moment I think Varrick Wolfe might be my father. And he’s fucking with me.
I peel my feet off the sidewalk. I make sure not to appear shaken, but if he’s anything like Everett—then he could tell he threw me the length of ten hundred football fields. With one name.
Seven letters.
Once I see him drive off, I reroute back to my McLaren and hop in the front seat. I don’t start the car.
I call the man who raised me.
“Bray?” he answers.
I dig the back of my skull against the headrest, my phone in a fist against my ear. “How do you know Varrick Wolfe?”
Silence. His breath strains. Until he says, “What’d he tell you?”
“No, that’s not how we’re playing this. How do you know him?”
“You need to stay away from him, son,” he cautions, his unleveled breathing unmanufactured. His fear is real. “You need to pack up everyone and leave .”
“Afraid he’s going to tell us the truth?” I retort.
“If you love Phoebe at all, you will get her out of there—”
“Don’t ever fucking use her against me to get what you want,” I sneer, my eyes burning in their sockets.
“I’m on your side,” he growls back. “I’m actively helping you with this job that is so massively intricate. Without me, you wouldn’t be able to have eyes and ears around the estate. If you think, for a second, that we’re not the people you should be trusting—then why ask for our help? We need each other. We’re all we have, Brayden. That is real love, son. Whatever he tells you, it’s not real.”
I don’t know what to believe.
My nose flares as I restrain more emotion, and I wonder if Hailey has already thought this far ahead. Right now, I feel as fucking tormented as she’s looked for the past four months.
We hang up not long after, and I climb rigidly out of the car. That’s when I see the girls’ Honda parked a couple sedans away. The tires appear sunken. Crouching at the front wheels, I instantly notice gaping cuts.
Someone slashed their tires.
Wonder who? Gee, let me crack a guess.
I stand back up and glare at the road Varrick drove down. Now I’m starting to wonder if he was the cause of Oliver’s catalytic converter being stolen. So Oliver couldn’t make it to The Hunt.
Why is he targeting us?
And now he might be buying the loft . With this news bearing on my chest like an elephant, I leave the sidewalk. It takes me less than twenty seconds to enter Phoebe and Hailey’s place, and I toss my keys on the kitchen counter.
I need to piss, then I’ll check on Hails, grab Oliver, and head to the boathouse. Phoebe is probably already there, waiting for me. All I want is to be with her right now.
So I go to the only bathroom, and I turn the knob. Locked.
I knock.
“Give me a sec,” Oliver says, sounding…strange. I rack my brain for how many lines he did. Worry mounts, and I don’t know if Varrick or Everett or both have me on edge—but I’m digging my bump key out of my pocket.
I crack the lock on the door in under ten seconds.
One foot in, and I’m solid ice again.
Oliver is lifting his pants hurriedly up his thighs. Facing him, Hailey sits on the sink counter, and with the same haste, she slips her arms into a long-sleeved mesh shirt over a black bra.
They just had a quickie in the bathroom. Even catching them after-the-fact, it’s obvious.
“Rocky,” Oliver says like he’s gauging my temperature, as he buttons his slacks. I am at a degree that would melt a fucking bullet.
“It’s not what you think,” Hailey says, more nervously.
I arch my brows, hurt in my face that she thinks I’m that dumb. They’re rushing to get dressed. They’re still in positions that scream, sex .
“Oh-kaaay,” she says with wide eyes. “It might be what you think. But, but …it’s not as bad as you think.”
I plant my drill bits for eyes on Oliver Graves, who’s quieter than a fucking church mouse. “Oh, so now you have nothing to say?” I ask him. “Claude got your tongue?”
“You have a literal centimeter of itty-bitty space to be angry at me.” Oliver squeezes his fingers together. “You do realize that? You’re sleeping with my sister—so you can’t be mad that I’m with yours.”
“We are not the same,” I growl back. “Because I had the decency to at least inform you that Phoebe and I are a thing.”
“Olly and I aren’t a thing.” Hailey hops off the counter. “Not like you and Phoebe.”
My brain short-circuits. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Oliver buckles his belt. Casual, unconcerned. “It means it’s just sex.”
“Just sex,” Hailey echoes, fixing her nose ring in the mirror. I read people, places, and rooms, and the comfort and ease between them tells me this is not new for them. This is familiar, routine.
Hot breath sears my throat. Yeah, I never pried because I didn’t want to know. There’ve been a thousand times I thought maybe…maybe something happened between the two of them. Now I’m in too deep to leave without poking this beast.
I grip the doorframe, filling the exit so Oliver doesn’t dart out. “For how long has this been going on?”
Hailey is avoiding my gaze. “Rocky—”
“You can sleep with whoever you want, Hails,” I tell my sister. “But why the secrecy? Sure, I would’ve been irritated, but I’d live with it. Like I do everything else that irritates the fuck out of me.”
“We never wanted it to be a big deal among everyone,” Hailey says while Oliver sidles close to her at the sink. “We were afraid it’d affect the group dynamic, and it’s just sex.”
Just sex.
Just sex. I can’t even imagine being involved with someone in our “group” and eliminating feelings from it. A one-night stand in Brooklyn, who you’ll never see again, is not the same as getting into bed with someone you would follow to the ends of the earth. Someone you trust in ways that normal people could never understand.
Oliver cradles her life in his hands every single day. With the knowledge of who she is—knowledge that could send her to prison. Just like I cradle Phoebe’s.
Just like they cradle ours.
They can’t tell me that this begins and ends with sex. But really, what the fuck do I know about emotions—I’ve only spent decades trying to control mine.
“We’ve been sleeping around most of our lives,” Hailey reminds me, like being promiscuous is in the Grifter Handbook that we’ve all opened.
“How long have you two been keeping this a secret?” I ask.
Hailey slips a tiny help me look to Oliver.
“Why don’t you drop it here?” he suggests.
“Why don’t you answer my question?” I snap, aggravated now. He doesn’t get off the hook just because he’s Oliver Graves.
“And if I don’t answer the question, what are you going to do? Shove me in the ocean like you did Nova?”
“Maybe. Give me a minute and I might come up with something more creative.”
“It’s been years,” Hailey cuts in, exasperated. “Okay? Off and on.”
“Years. Years. ” I nod a couple times, not shell-shocked. Their body language already gave it away, but still, I can’t imagine being that intimate on and off for years and severing the emotion. I had feelings for Phoebe before we even slept together.
Hell, almost having sex on a job nearly shattered us. Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing my relationship to theirs—maybe that’s not right. But it’s all I’ve got. There is no other viewpoint or window to look through than the one that exists with me and her.
“How old were you?” I ask them. “When this first started?”
They’re not paying attention to me. Oliver is inspecting himself in the mirror. Hailey is on her tiptoes and drawing down the collar of his button-down. A hickey has formed on his neck.
“I’ll go grab Phoebe’s makeup,” Hailey says, as if this has happened many times before.
I don’t budge from the doorway. Blocking Hailey, I tell her, “Phoebe? You mean your best friend, who knows nothing about you bagging her brother?”
Guilt pools in my sister’s eyes.
I immediately regret the shot I took.
“I’m going to call her, Rocky. Right now. I’ll fix it. I can fix it. I can fix it. ” She tears through my arm with panic I didn’t mean to fuel, and my stomach clenches painfully.
“Hailey!” I call after her, but I let her go.
Because Oliver says, “We were fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” My eyes flash angrily to him. “You took her virginity?”
“Yeah.” Oliver faces me more than the mirror. “And she took mine.” He’s as calm as Lake Placid.
I’m not sure how I feel other than annoyed, irritated, furious that Hailey and Oliver have been hooking up since they were fourteen—but it was Phoebe and me that were somehow the objects of our parents’ obsession.
Jealousy claws at my insides.
In a different reality, if Hailey and Oliver were open about their connection, would Phoebe and I be left alone? Could we have become a couple sooner without our parents’ needling?
That same jealousy washes away like an ocean lapping the sand. Because in that reality, my sister and Phoebe’s brother would have to deal with their love lives being pressured and controlled. We wouldn’t want that for either of them.
We would choose to be on the operating table. Under the spotlight. Fighting the knife.
“What about Jake? Carter?”
“Friends with benefits,” Oliver says with a nonchalant slouch against the sink.
My brows shoot up. “She’s sleeping with Jake?” What the… fuck ? I thought he had a schoolyard crush on my sister. Pining. Unrequited. Definitely not fulfilled .
Oliver hops over that to explain, “Carter is on the back burner, which is sad for Hails because I know she liked him, but I’m not complaining since it means I get to spend more time with her.” He slips a fallen Q-tip back into a cup on the sink. “It’s not that complicated.”
“You’re a friend with benefits, too?”
“Yeah. Only…” He shifts slightly, his gaze dragging across the bathroom rug before lifting to me. “I’m not really sleeping around—not while she’s…well, you’ve seen her, Rock. She’s been under a lot of stress, and we agreed to keep the pool small.”
“How small?”
“She’s hooking up with just me.”
“Oh, just you?”
He exhales, “And Jake.”
Jesus. How is that not complicated? “Does Jake know about this arrangement?” Is he getting the short end of the stick here? And why do I care about his feelings in all of this?
“I don’t know. I’m not the one sleeping with him,” Oliver says. “But based on our run-ins, I’m fairly certain Hailey has clued him in.”
“And there are no feelings between you and her?”
“I never said that.”
Yet, he appears to be completely fine with this situation, and I get why. Oliver’s ego is as indestructible as his heart is big. He’d do just about anything for my little sister, including becoming less of a playboy and staying exclusive to her. All while she’s also sleeping with another guy.
“This seems like a recipe to get hurt, man,” I warn him.
“So what if we all do?” Oliver says. “The way I see it, we could be caught tomorrow. We’re living on a countdown clock, Rocky, and before it hits zero, I want to know that I didn’t hold back.”
I spent years resisting Phoebe, and he gave in to Hailey—because time has never been our friend. It never will be, and now that I’m with Phebs, I understand it more.
To lose a single moment with her that I could’ve captured—it enrages me as much as it scares me.
As if Oliver knows I’m thinking of her, he says, “I’m happy you both stopped holding back.” He smiles one of his dazzling, hypnotizing grins. “Oude liefde roest niet.”
I’m not fluent in Dutch, but the phrase is familiar. I realize it’s what he said to Jake in the grocery store. But I never looked it up. Head. Sand. Buried.
He shovels me out now.
And he translates, “Old love does not rust.”