Chapter Five
Phoebe
Things are off to a spectacular start. Should I pop the champagne to my newly divorced self? Bring out the charcuterie?
Clearly, I need to toast to my stupid quick thinking. I had an opportunity to be truthful, and I didn’t take it. Maybe Rocky is right, I can’t do this.
No, the stubborn part of me is screeching.
I’m not throwing in the towel yet, not when we scope out the loft and Hailey keeps casting anxious glances and smiles at me. She wants to be here, and I’m not screwing this up for her more than I almost already did.
Flashing my landlord that I just met? Why? Why was that my gut instinct?
I hated myself in that smallest, most jagged second, and that hate swelled up like an unpoppable balloon inside of me. If Rocky hadn’t been there...
I would’ve gone through with it. I would’ve showed Jake my pierced nipples like I was at Burning Man or a strip club.
We were in public. It wasn’t smart. It had D-U-M-B written all over it. Just so, so dumb.
And I should feel grateful that Rocky stopped me, but I just feel like I should’ve had the power to do that myself. I should be more in control of my actions and my body, and I shouldn’t need to rely on another person to stop me from making a bad decision.
Instead of dunk-tanking in a vat of humiliation, I remind myself that Jake just thinks I’m a free-spirited hippie who prefers being in the nude. Thanks, Hails. It helps shake off what happened.
Jake shows off one of the bedrooms, and Rocky is standing closer to me. I sense the familiar, comforting heat of his muscled body, and I force myself not to turn and look directly at him.
Divorced.
We’re divorced.
I could’ve chosen any relation under the sun. Brother-sister. Stepsiblings. Coworkers who just mildly hate one another. But I chose something intimate. I’m never living this down. Because this is supposed to be the final backstory to my new, permanent life.
There’s no way to avoid the tension as we all inspect the loft in near silence. If I could open a window and parkour away from here, I would.
Jake ends the tour of the small two-bedroom loft with another side-eye at Rocky. I swear if there were an Olympic competition in side-eyeing, Jake Waterford would take gold.
I’m only slightly jealous.
With a deep breath, I try to focus on our new home. The positives. The little kitchen has seafoam-green cupboards and an opal backsplash. It comes fully furnished with a beige sofa, barstools, and a two-person glass kitchen table. We didn’t even need to buy bedding. It’s all provided.
I do another eye sweep, noticing the rattan lights above the kitchen counter and the cozy brick fireplace.
Quaint and dainty. The kind of place my mom would rarely choose for a one-month stay, let alone forever. It’s not exactly the Ritz or a multimillion-dollar mansion, but it’s cute and ten times better than any motel.
Thinking about my mom makes me want to call her. For a second. Just to hear her voice and the comfort inside her kind words. She always knows what to tell me when we start over. “This city has our names written all over it, bug,” she’d say into a wide, charismatic grin. “It’s perfect.” Her belief was genuine—so genuine and real that I’d remind myself in doubt or fear, it’s perfect; this city is ours.
I could call her.
I could go against Hailey’s desire and just dial my mom, and as tempting as that sounds, I know her. There is absolutely no way she’d approve of what we’re doing. Stop grifting? Ditch the next job? It’s like quitting the family business and setting the fam on a course for bankruptcy. There won’t be jubilation and pats on the back.
Also, we’re not running a steak restaurant where they’ll need to find a new chef and hostess. You can’t just hire con artists off LinkedIn. We’re irreplaceable, and I know by leaving the “family business” so abruptly we’re making the Seattle job harder and riskier.
I’m used to being a team player, and so this sucks. It’d suck seeing anyone leave, if positions were reversed. We help each other. We keep one another safe, and with even one missing link, the threat of being caught grows.
Though, I know my mom would want me to be happy first and foremost, even if that means saying goodbye. But I really believe that she believes I’d be unhappy without conning—and maybe there is a... semi-large part of me that also believes this, too.
So I can’t call her. She’ll say exactly what’s already zipped through my brain. This new life isn’t for me. I’m hurting my brothers by leaving the family in the dust. I’m only thinking about Hailey and our pact, and I can’t put her first forever, can I? How will we survive? I love what I do too much to really let it go.
The temptation to return to my old ways will be too strong if she’s here. So I pop the fantasy of a phone call and turn my attention back to the kitchen.
The stainless-steel appliances all seem new, too, and if I had to guess, I’d say it’s been recently renovated. The pictures Hailey showed me made this place look more worn. She told me the rent was twelve hundred a month, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s increased.
“Can I speak to you?” Rocky asks his sister under his breath, but he’s close enough that I hear. “Just for a sec, Hails.”
She excuses herself with her brother, and they talk hushed near the windows, one of the panes lifted. Sheer white curtains billow in the gusting breeze, a storm brewing outside.
I stay in the tiny hallway. Just hanging out, twiddling my thumbs and trying to avoid my phone. I’ve had a few texts from my brothers, and I’m not jumping at the opportunity to tell them, Hey, I’m not going to make Seattle.
I already hear Oliver’s bemused, “What the fuck.” I smile thinking of him. He has a sort of spirit that shouldn’t fit inside one body, a spirit that’s always bursting to come out. “Reel it in” is a phrase that seems made just for Oliver. No one else gets told that on jobs but him.
“That’s really it,” Jake says to me.
I lift my gaze. “Thanks for the tour. It’s a really nice place.”
“Yeah, it’s not too bad.” His voice sounds stilted. He’s coming from a bedroom, and to reach the living room and kitchen, he needs to pass me in this narrow hallway. When Jake begins sliding past, I stop slouching to let him by, but his knees still brush against my body.
Heat flushes my neck.
And then when we’re in line with one another, his gaze plummets to my boobs. His face twitches, maybe knowing that was uncouth or whatever, and before he apologizes, I blurt out, “I’m really sorry about... um, almost flashing you earlier. My bad.”
My bad?
Ugh, I want to crawl in a hole.
His lips rise in a soft smile. “It was...” He tilts his head and finds a word. “Unexpected.”
I’m still cringing at myself. “I must be your first—first girl who tried to flash you, I mean.” What the fuck is wrong with me today?
His smile widens into a laugh. “You’re definitely not the first, Phoebe Smith.” My fake surname. It blows past me while amusement glitters his blue eyes.
What is he—the playboy of Victoria? Every girl wants to go wild and topless in front of him? Still, the way he says it, it doesn’t sound exactly like boasting. Just something commonplace to him. He’s so used to seeing tits or having girls bend over backward for him?
I don’t know.
Maybe he’s just trying to make me feel better.
“I’m not the first?” I process out loud. He’s loitering in the cramped hallway with me, and his height is more apparent as I crane my neck. It’s hard not to place his beauty in a high percentile, and instead of seducing him for a job, I’m supposed to just... be myself?
“Not the first.” He nods.
“I prefer being seventh in life, anyway.” I shrug. “Bottom tier. Solid placement. Unassuming.” I smile at him, but I feel the uncertainty in it.
Maybe my real self is a bumbling fool. That’s... scary. I already want to exchange her for the confident, cool version.
“Unassuming is a good place to be here,” Jake says softly. “You don’t want to stand out or race to the top.”
If he’s advising that I stay away from the upper echelons of Victoria’s social structure, then I must appear like easy prey already. Freeing my nipples isn’t exactly a first-class ticket into charity galas and country clubs. But I’m done trying to appear like the social elite.
We’re middle-class bitches. And I’m hoping my mom and Hailey’s mom have been wrong. I hope we’re both going to like it here.
“So lock the front door,” I note his warnings. “Re-dye my hair. Take out any piercings, and don’t try to mingle with the top dogs. Is that all?”
“Barely. I could write a four-hundred-page textbook on What Not to Do in Victoria.”
“And I’d let Hailey read it.”
His attention veers to my best friend, who’s still talking with her brother in the living room.
“She’d probably even devour your rule book in a couple minutes,” I tell him. “But I appreciate the warnings, even if we might not take all of them.”
His smile is gone. “I hope you’re serious about loving seventh place.”
I frown. “Why?”
He straightens off the wall, his entire body brushing my body now, and I don’t shrink back as he says, “Because in this town, everyone else is busy chasing after first. And no offense, you’re not equipped to be there.”
Okay, Judgy McJudgy. He can act like he has me figured out, but he has no idea. If only he knew...
Before he begins to pass by, I ask, “You don’t want first place?”
His eyes grip mine in a hotter beat. “I didn’t say that.”
I hold my breath like if my lungs expand, he won’t be able to slide past me. A silly thought. He easily walks beyond the hallway and enters the kitchen.
I’m following behind him, aware that he’s the typical man that my mom chooses to date. Clean-cut, good-looking, wealthy. At least, I’m assuming he’s rich from his bravado and if he owns this loft himself. Then again, maybe it belongs to his parents?
He must be twenty-seven, twenty-eight?
Too young for my mom. She usually dates men twice her age.
She’d love him for me, though.
He’s a good one, bug.
It irks me, and I wonder if there are any guys in this town she’d disapprove of. My eyes flit to Rocky, and my stomach overturns. His approval rating is astronomical with my mother. He’s polling a grand one hundred percent.
Jake wouldn’t be that high. But it’d be close.
I turn back to my landlord.
He has a nice butt. Perky in his slacks. I watch him flip open a binder on the butcher board counter.
Rocky clears his throat behind me. I look over my shoulder, and his brows rise. Okaaay, he caught me checking out my landlord’s ass. It’s not a crime.
“And?” I whisper.
He crosses his arms over his chest and his expression flatlines. “Nothing.” He says it in a way that abandons the actual meaning of that word.
And he keeps saying that: Nothing.
Whatever’s going on with him, I can’t worry too much about it right now. He’s not even supposed to be here.
“Emergency contacts are in here with some helpful information in case I missed something.” Jake flips a page. “Right, so we only have off-street parking. Street sweepers come Wednesday mornings, so you’ll have to move your car somewhere else tomorrow.”
“No worries,” Hailey says, reading his binder upside down. She reaches over and flips a page for him and keeps reading. “We’re just happy we could find a place in Victoria. Options were really limited.”
I look around again. Twelve hundred a month?
I start disbelieving.
“Everything rents out quick because of Caufield,” Jake explains and watches Hailey flip another page. “Fall semester starts next week.”
“Then why is your place still available?” Rocky asks skeptically. He leans casually beside a bookshelf with classic hardcovers.
Jake motions to Hailey. “Like I told your sister over the phone, we just finished renovations on this place. It was only online for about an hour before she called about it.”
So it is new?
I try to catch Hailey’s eyes, but she avoids my gaze.
“Your credit turned out great, and we prefer working professionals. Students tend to trash the place. So it was a plus that you’re twenty-four and already graduated college.”
“We actually... didn’t graduate,” Hailey admits slowly. “We’re high school graduates, basically.” She gives him a slight smile and does this weird breathy laugh that I fucking mimic. I kid you not.
Rocky is trying so hard to smother a smirk that he rotates to inspect the stupid fireplace.
I blame the fact that nine times out of ten, we’ve been Ivy League grads. I know way too much about Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, etc.—from their mottos, their common hangouts, their best dining halls, anything that I can use to strengthen the lie that I went there.
Jake gives us a sympathetic look.
Like we’re embarrassed to only wield high school diplomas.
“I shouldn’t have assumed,” he mentions.
“Oh, you should have,” Rocky butts in, his arm on the fireplace mantel. “Except assumed the other way around.”
I shoot him a glare.
“They could’ve gone to a community college,” Jake tells him.
“Oh, thanks,” Hailey mutters.
Jake regroups fast, holding out a hand. “Not that there is anything wrong with community college. I’m sure it’s a great form of education.”
Rocky is laughing.
“Can you stop?” Jake retorts.
“I don’t know, can you?” Rocky questions. “The hole you’re digging is big enough for a body—”
“So you’ll be leaving by Friday?” Jake cuts him off with heat.
Humor fades from Rocky’s face. “Not by Friday.”
It’s only Tuesday.
Jake closes the binder and slowly looks to me. “If your ex-husband stays for longer than a week, this isn’t going to work out. This place isn’t big enough for three tenants.”
My gut drops. “He’s not living with us.” I swing my head to Rocky. “You’ll be out by Friday.”
He narrows his gunmetal eyes at me. “I’m not letting my sister get murdered by Patrick Bateman.”
Jake glowers back. “Really? Patrick Bateman? Clever.”
Rocky stands off the fireplace. “I don’t know you, so I can’t trust you, and I’m assuming that feeling is mutual.”
Jake doesn’t deny.
The fact that Jake hasn’t kicked us out is truly a miracle at this point. He could rent this place to anyone else, and it’d be less trouble than dealing with Rocky.
“You don’t have to trust him,” I tell Rocky. “He’s not your landlord.” Normally, Rocky is easy to get along with. (Unless you’re me.) To strangers, he’s charming, even. I’m not sure why he’s showing Jake his actual Brillo-pad personality. I turn back to my landlord. “Thank you for everything, seriously. We’re really happy to be here.”
Hailey puts a hand on the binder. “Appreciate the notes.”
“I’m glad they could help.” Jake eases for half a second. “But seriously, guests shouldn’t be here more than a week. If he’s not out by next Tuesday, you’ll breach the lease, and I’ll have to kick you out.”
Fuck.
“Understood,” Hailey says.
He looks to Rocky. “I’ll be back to check.”
“Counting on it,” Rocky says dryly.
Jake glares, then slides over some papers on the counter. “Sign here. I’ll also need the first two months’ rent up front. Check or Venmo work.”
Hailey skims through the paperwork, speed-reading.
I ask Jake, “What was rent again?” My chest constricts like I’m waiting for a rubber band to snap.
“Three thousand a month.”
I restrain a wince. Train, meet my face. The impact hurts.
Hailey slides me a subtle look that says, We’ve got this. Her silent optimism does nothing to quench the unease in my stomach. Especially since I’m now a hundred percent positive that she lied to me. What were the photos she showed me?
Were they even of this loft?
I hate that I can’t remember.
How are we going to afford this with our country club jobs? Sure, our cut from the Carlsbad job might cover two months’ rent, but after that we’re going to have to figure something out.
I’m starting to wish we did a long con with a multimillion-dollar payout before we came to Victoria. They’re more dangerous, but the money doesn’t run out as fast.
I pull out my phone. “I can Venmo.”
Jake gives me his number, and I send him the payment.
He checks his cell. “We’re good to go after you sign.” His eyes lift to me, and he slips his cell in his pocket.
When it’s my turn to sign, I see all the apologies from Hailey. Those gray irises are pleading, Don’t be mad at me, Phebs, please.
I barely read over the contract, trusting her still. Quickly, I sign my new fake name on the line.
Phoebe Smith.
Jake nods in thanks and gathers the papers together. “One more thing. There’s a charity clambake next month. It’s an annual event, so it’ll be crowded and noisy around here. Just giving you a heads-up.”
Charity clambakes.
Country clubs.
It feels like the life I pretended to be a part of, except I’m not a patron of the club or invited to the clambake. I’m someone on the outside looking in. If I should be excited for something new, then why am I just a tumbleweed of stress?
Jake is gone. Door shut, footsteps echoing away.
Hailey whirls to me in an instant. “I’m really sorry, Phoebe—”
“Three thousand a month?” I interject in shock.
“Wait, you didn’t know?” Rocky frowns.
“No. I thought we were living in a shitty loft that we could actually afford.”
“We can afford this,” Hailey defends. “Look, you know how country clubs work. If we serve the right people, we could earn enough on tips to cover the rent.”
Could being the key word.
It’s a gamble.
“Why did you lie to me?” I ask, trying to bury the hurt in my voice. “You never lie to me. And were those pictures even real?”
Her breath shortens. “Some of them were, yeah. The others... I found on Google Photos.”
I got conned.
By my best friend.
Ouch.
“But listen.” Hailey talks quickly, while I stare at my feet. “You wouldn’t have come here if you knew this was the price. And it was the only thing available in town.”
I want to tell her we could’ve lived anywhere else. But it’s not totally true. There are cities and towns I’d never return to just in case certain people remember my face.
And it’s always been hard to stay mad at Hailey. Her intentions weren’t evil, and she’s being up front now. My anger starts to wane, even if being out of the loop feels like spoiled milk in my stomach.
“Loop me in next time,” I tell Hailey. “I promise I’m on Team Hails.”
She smiles softly. “Deal.”
We do our secret handshake that involves two pinky hooks and a fist bump explosion combo. Rocky is flipping through one of the books on the shelves, pretending to ignore us.
My phone rings, the sound shrill in the sudden quiet. I unearth it from my pocket. Both Hailey and Rocky zero in on the cell.
Caller ID: Unknown.
Muscles tighten in my stomach, and I hesitate to hit the big red button. Hang up on them. If someone is calling from a burner phone, it’s likely one of my brothers.
Should I answer? Lie to them?
I can’t lie to Nova or Oliver. Hell, even shutting them out of this new life feels weird. Wrong. Love isn’t sand in an hourglass, able to be flipped and drained the minute it’s turned in a new direction. If anything, the love between my brothers and me is made of steel so thick you’d need wrecking balls and jackhammers to make a dent.
They’re eventually going to realize we’re not going to Seattle. They’re eventually going to panic and come find me like Rocky found his sister.
I’m almost banking on it. Because a big part of me is hoping they do come and play this honest game with me. The other part knows that quitting a life of deceit, for them, is about as likely as Rocky becoming Jesus Christ.
It rings and rings, and my pulse speeds; I’m terrified of being torn in two directions. I’ve already made my decision. Stick by Hailey’s side. So I let the call ring out and bide my time.
Hailey looks a little guilty. “You’re positive you don’t want to talk to them?”
“They’ll call back later.”
And I’ll reject the call again like the worst sister ever. Yay me.
“They will,” Rocky says, too assured. “No one can do the Seattle job without you, Phoebe.”
He doesn’t need to remind me of the next con. The new clip joint scheme has been in the works for a while. I’m numb to the idea. It’s one we’ve pulled before.
“Oliver will do it,” Hailey contends, and my stomach curdles again, not loving the fact that my brother might be taking my role in clip joints.
“Maybe I should go back, just for this one,” I mutter.
I expect Rocky to take this response like a tanker of gasoline and ride off to our parents at superspeed. Instead, a darkness shadows his brooding gaze. “There’s no time.”
“I could drive—”
“You’re already here.” Gravel in his voice roughens the words. “Just leave it to them to figure out. And when your brothers call, you let me talk to them.”
Hailey turns to me. “I like this plan.”
I do and then I don’t. Rocky isn’t exactly besties with my brothers, and if he tries to manipulate them, they will lose their shit.
I’d pay to see those fireworks.
And I don’t know what that says about me. I like watching explosives blow up in Rocky’s face? Or I’m just way too used to the big Double Ds called Drama and Danger, and no matter where I go, I can’t live without them.