Chapter Nineteen
Rocky
Phoebe tries to cold-shoulder me. “Sorry, Archer. You still want to go somewhere quiet?”
He assesses me—Grey Thornhall, territorial ex-husband with zero fucks to give. Being this openly destructive in a new town is almost cathartic.
I stare right through him with the darkest, most scathing glare.
“Rocky,” Phoebe whispers between her teeth.
I haven’t said a word to him.
Archer wavers with an uneasy smile. “Actually, I have somewhere to be. Maybe another time, Phoebe.” With that, he makes a quick exit.
Phoebe spins on me. “Are you serious? Why do you have to be the living embodiment of ‘fuck around and find out’ right now?”
“I’m being myself,” I tell her, scoping out the drunken college students. People are watching us. “Isn’t that what you want me to do?”
She growls, huffs, and storms into a pit of dancing students. For the next forty-five minutes, we keep the closest tabs on each other. We splice conversations and rip through any unfamiliar hands. When a dripping wet, half-naked Collin tries to grind on Phoebe, I intervene.
When Sidney leers close, Phoebe is the natural disaster no one wants to be around except me. I’m swept inside her chaotic sphere that matches my own.
We both aren’t stagnant, still people. We’re fueled by tankers of gasoline. Made to endure and keep going beyond exhaustion, and we don’t stop.
We never fucking stop.
Not in the living room. Not on the roof. Not down below where the boats are stored. She chats with Rachel Rawlings inside the wooden Venetian boat tied to the dock. It ends as soon as I appear. Just like Damian Bennett’s short-lived proposition to blow me ends with Phoebe’s demonic glare.
We’re some of the most sober at this party, and too many people are singing and slurring Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” at the top of their lungs to notice our cockblocking war.
We aren’t doing this to stop the other from winning the deal. I’ve never been in the market to fool myself.
I’m doing this because I don’t want Phoebe to fuck someone else.
Plain, simple, and petty.
Her reasoning is the exact same. Trust me. (You should by now.)
The drunker the party, the more time it’s taking to cut through sloppy hands—and I can’t take it for much longer. Since I’m older than her, I try to take the high, mature road and find the brake pedal first.
Seizing Phoebe’s hand, I pull her swiftly into the bathroom and lock the door.
“Deal is off,” I declare.
Phoebe frowns. “Why?”
“You know why.” I switch on the sink faucet and then slide open the glass shower. I turn it on. Warm water gushes out. The sound will muffle our voices well enough.
Phoebe pretends to be interested in a jar of potpourri made in Italy. “I want you to say it,” she breathes.
“You want me to say it?” I say with control, but I’m on the verge of combusting. Phoebe sets the potpourri down, her hands gripping the sink behind her, and I face this girl in a pseudo standoff we’ve had for years.
Our hate isn’t real. It’s the armor we carry to shield us from the truth.
But our frustrations—those are real.
It goes far beyond sex, but while Phoebe stands there with her nipples hardened through her white shirt and her breath shallowed, sexual frustrations attempt to take precedent. Carnal thoughts ignite.
Me, pushing her up against the wall beside the towel rack. Whispering in the pit of her ear how I’d devour her. Tearing off her jeans and panties with rough speed. Spreading her open for me. Spurring a moan out of her—being inside of her for the first time in my life.
I’ve jerked off to the mental image of ramming so deep into Phoebe and watching her come on repeat and holding her beneath me. It’s a fucking classic in my head, and I never ever dreamed it’d be a reality.
I still don’t dream that impossible dream.
Because I know it can’t come true.
I inch closer, stretching tension.
Her neck lengthens and shoulders draw back with anticipation.
“I can say it,” I tell her, an aching foot away. “I. Can’t. Have. You.” My words are cold and dark between us. “As long as we’re working for our parents, I will never be able to have you. I will never be able to give myself to you. But it physically pains me to see you with anyone else—and if I can’t have you, then no one else can.”
She’s breathing heavy, empathy blistering her gaze. “Same.”
Same. “There we go,” I say heatedly. “We said it. Now what, Phoebe?”
She lifts her shoulders. “I don’t know, Rocky. Maybe we just get it over with and don’t make a big deal out of sleeping with each other.”
I’m shaking my head, my jaw tightening.
“Rocky—”
“No.” I hold her gaze. “If I fuck you, it won’t be for power or for money or for them. It’ll be because I love you and every ounce of my being couldn’t contain the love I have for you, no matter how much I should’ve.”
She blows backward, lips parted. It takes a solid minute for her to speak. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t say those words.” Her eyes glass and grow angrier. “We don’t say I love you to each other off jobs.”
Funny how the words always felt too intimate to say to one another, but I’ve been swimming inside the emotion for years.
Dirty, destructive love.
I’ve been in love with Phoebe since I was a teenager.
“You don’t want to be loved by me?” I put that out there, trying not to feel my stomach churn saying it.
“It’s not that.” Her voice cracks. “Fuck, Rocky. What kind of happy ending is there? What’s the point of loving someone if you can’t have them?” Her gaze bleeds into mine. “Hearing it, feeling it—it’s suffering and anguish.”
No shit.
That’s what we’re doing here. That’s what we’ve been doing.
Tormenting ourselves.
I comb another hand through my hair. Steam begins caking the mirror behind Phoebe, and the vapor thickens the heat already stirring in me.
“I hate your mother,” I say in a murmuring sneer.
Phoebe isn’t surprised. “I’m the one who’s rebelled against her desire to hook us up, so maybe you should hate me instead.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” I growl out. “The depth of how much I hate your mother is nontransferable. And you don’t need to protect her from my hatred, Phoebe.”
She frowns, possibly not realizing that’s what she was doing. Phoebe would sacrifice herself to protect her mom. One who’d likely redirect a gun at her daughter if it meant saving herself.
My mother is just as selfish.
They’re trained manipulators, and Elizabeth and Addison have made their daughters believe that whenever anything good happens and goes to plan, it’s their doing. Elizabeth is why Phoebe succeeded.
Elizabeth is why Phoebe is happy.
Elizabeth knows best.
“I’m not trying to protect...” Phoebe trails off, frustrated. “You act like she’s walked all over me. I’ve resisted her wishes when it comes to you and me, Rocky. I’ve told her I don’t like you just so she wouldn’t be obsessed with us.”
“And manipulate us,” I clarify. “We’re afraid of the same thing.”
“No.” Phoebe shakes her head. “I’m afraid of my mother being too involved if we ever get together. You’re afraid they’ll manipulate us if we even have sex and they find out. I mean, you might even be paranoid about kissing me outside of a job for that reason.”
I say nothing.
Her breath hitches and eyes widen. “I’m right? That’s why you’ve never made even a single move on me when we’re not working. What are they going to do?”
I look into her like she’s trying to repaint a dark history in pastel colors. I just remember that night two years ago. The night we rarely talk about. The one that changed everything. “We’re not even together, and they wanted us to fuck on a job.”
“Maybe we should’ve!” she almost shouts, her frustrations boiling over. She releases the sink to push out against my chest.
My muscles flex as she bumps up against me, but I don’t move. I stare down and meet Phoebe’s challenge.
“Maybe I should’ve crawled on top of you,” she continues hotly. “Maybe I should’ve sunk down on you. Buried you inside me. Rode you until you couldn’t see straight. Given you the night of your fucking life.”
I grit down on my teeth, reading her quickened breath. “Maybe you should’ve.” My voice is sandpaper. “Maybe you should’ve done all the things you’ve never wanted to do, you natural-born liar.” I watch her neck flush. “You’ve never wanted to make the first move. You’re waiting for me—”
“No,” she protests, but the truth is all over her face.
“—to take you in my arms. To hold you.”
She shakes her head, pain deepening her gaze.
“To kiss you. To fuck you.” I dip my head down, consuming her in a never-ending glare that tears at my insides. Her arousal parts her lips as we both imagine me overtaking her, and my whisper hits her ear. “I will make you come and come. Again and again and again. Until you’re quivering underneath me, long before I fucking come inside you.”
A tiny, wanting moan escapes from Phoebe. “Rocky.”
It’s a fuck you, Rocky, for turning her on. But I might as well have fisted my cock the way my body reacted to her saying my name. She shoves my chest, and I’m already taking many steps back. Spinning away from Phoebe, I pace the short length of the bathroom, pushing angered hands through my hair.
“And still,” she says tightly. “You don’t want to risk sleeping with me.”
Jesus Christ.
I hate even being on a different line that’s on the same page as Phoebe, let alone a completely different chapter, and I’d like to think we’ve been reading the same book.
“You know why,” I shoot back, and as fun in theory as it might be to do a whole friends-with-benefits thing with Phoebe, it won’t work.
We have too much baggage and history and feelings to fuck with no strings attached. And I can’t promise that if I start sleeping with her, I’ll be able to easily stop.
“Rocky, they’re not that evil. If anything, we’re the ones making our lives a living hell.”
I let out a strained laugh. She’s not wholly wrong—we have made a home in hell for ourselves, and sometimes I believe that’s where we like to reside.
“Not that evil,” I repeat, staring at the gathering steam on the mirror behind her. “Your mother is manipulative.”
“We’re all manipulative,” she contends.
“She’s manipulative toward you,” I rephrase. “Our parents have been manipulating you and me and all of us.”
She shakes her head. An apology nearly softens her brown eyes because she can’t see what I see, and it’s uncomfortable being so far removed from the perspective of the person you care about.
An acidic taste slips down my throat.
I should’ve protected her from them. I should’ve protected everyone from them. The single most important task my father ever gave me—to always protect my brother, my sister, and the Graves—I failed the instant I was given it.
“HEY!” a guy shouts outside the bathroom. “I need to piss!” The doorknob jiggles.
“Who the fuck is in there?! Are you taking a shower?”
“Oh my God, is this really the only bathroom?” someone whines. “The line is so long.”
Phoebe glances warily to the door.
“We’re not done,” I tell her as I go to the door. Carefully, I crack it wide enough that they can see Phoebe inside with me. A staggered line weaves from the bathroom down the short hallway, and the complaining nails my eardrums. “Hey, hey, hey!” I shout over them.
They shut up to listen.
To which I say, “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck off. I’m fighting with my ex-wife. If you have a fucking problem with that, go piss in the ocean.” I slam the door on them and lock it.
“Come on, bro!”
Phoebe scrolls on her phone and plays a heavy metal song on high volume. She tosses her cell on a fuzzy mat near the door.
To hear her in privacy, I move closer again, and I grip the edge of the sink on either side of her hips.
“They’re not evil,” she repeats in a murmur.
“They’ve made all of you believe we’re their sweet little spiders.” I breathe. “But we’re not spiders to them. We’re the moths they’ve cocooned in their webs, and they’ve kept us trapped for years.”
Fear flickers in and out of her eyes. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“How?”
“When we were young, of course we weren’t given the same amount of responsibility, but they have given us more. And when you’re putting together a team, it makes sense that you look at each person’s strengths and weaknesses and compatibility. They’re always just doing what’s best for us.”
“What’s best for the job,” I correct.
“What’s best for us is best for the job. It’s always been that way, and they’re just giving us the fancy lifestyles they wished they had at our age.”
Her mother is speaking.
“You know the minute I started hating them?”
“The exact minute?” She looks me over. “No. You remember it?”
“Yeah.” I narrow my gaze on her. “I was fifteen. I confessed to my father something I shouldn’t have. I trusted him with something priceless.” I cock my head. “I told him how I felt about you.”
Her face slowly falls. “You actually said the words to him?”
“I told him I had a fucking crush on you. How much blunter could I be?” The pain of this mistake flares like a new sore and not something a decade old. “And you know what they did?”
She’s in slight shock.
“Over the next ten years, they chose what I was to you. They made me your brother. They made me watch you get groped by rich shitbags. They made me your boyfriend. They made me stand ten feet away and do nothing while you were defenseless with men who could’ve crushed you. They made me save you on a turntable, over and over again. They made me your husband. They took my feelings for you and they put them in a motherfucking blender.”
She’s unblinking, haunted.
The cords of my muscles burn as they’re stretched in tense bands. “Does that really sound like something a loving, caring parent would do to a child?”
“Rocky...” My name is gentle from her lips.
“The minute I started hating them,” I say, “was the minute I realized they would try to take my one vulnerability and use it against me. The cold hard truth: I’d rather die a thousand fucking times than be conned once.”
She nods, understanding.
I’ll never stop lying and influencing others for my gain.
I can’t.
It’s inside me like roots tethered to my veins. I love how it feels when I ask for something and I’m given it. The power is a drug. But more than that, I’m made for this, and deserting it leaves me weak... vulnerable to manipulation.
“We’re all bad people, Phoebe. But they take the cake.”
Phoebe drops her gaze to her feet. “I didn’t know Everett knew... I mean, they likely all suspected we liked each other. Do you think he told our moms?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“There it is,” I say dryly, “the doubt.”
She glares. “Skepticism isn’t a bad thing.”
“But you can’t be skeptical of our mothers? Just the other way around.”
She’s letting them off the hook and prepared to fry my father for misusing my trust in him. So I’m a little shocked when Phoebe admits, “Okay, maybe they’re partly to blame. I don’t know yet.”
I haven’t let go of the sink beside her hips.
Her gaze brushes over my chest and flexed biceps. I study the beautiful planes of her heart-shaped face, a quiet second breathing between us despite the running shower and the heavy metal music.
There is fond history with Phoebe that pulls me into a trance. All the roles we’ve played. All the lies we’ve lived together. It’s twenty-plus years at the other’s trusting, loving, devoted side. It circles us in moments and minutes and silent hours.
“Being with you gives them power over me,” I whisper to Phoebe. “It always has. I’ve felt weak and vulnerable and used. And I don’t trust what they’d do if we really got together. You say your mom would be too involved. I think that’s an understatement.”
Phoebe weaves her arms over her chest and cups her elbows.
The strain between our bodies prods me to push up against her. To hold her face again and pin her to the sink—but I keep the desire chained and barricaded in my head.
“We’re back where we started,” Phoebe says under her breath. “You know it hurt being close to you on a job, knowing that’s where it lived and died. I need to move on from you—that’s the only way this works.”
I let go of the sink like a knife sliced through my gut. But what did I expect?
We’ll never be together. Move on.
“I’m going home,” Phoebe says, slipping past me. She collects her phone off the fuzzy mat. “It’s better if you don’t follow me.”
I breathe hot breaths through my nose, my eyes burning. The door whips open and Phoebe storms out into the drunken party with the rage of an abused ex, while college students gawk from her to me.
“Duuude,” one guy says. “You fucked up.”
“Thanks for the commentary.” I leave with a similar wrath burning my feet across the ground.