Chapter Twenty-Two
Rocky
Waves slap against rock. Phoebe kicked me out of the loft a month ago, and the melodic sound of the sea has woken me up every morning since. I try not to get used to small things like that. The tranquil splashes and the calming mist. Try not to like them.
People romanticize places and create nostalgia out of it. But places are nothing more than spots on a map. Locations your feet stand on.
I can’t have sentimental fucking feelings for a place.
That’s for the dreamers. The fools.
I’m living in reality, even if it’s a reality of my own creation.
A thirty-foot sailboat is tied to the end of a dock. It’s a piece of shit. Engine busted. The mast bent. Paint chipped off. No one would be shocked if I said I hauled it in from the junkyard. This morning, I swing a hammer at the cracked sink. Gutting the bathroom has been cathartic. Demo isn’t something I do in my normal day-to-day.
Maybe I need this.
Shirtless, sweat trickling down my neck and chest, I swing again. Bits of sink hit my goggles. An indie rock song blares out of my phone. On paper, this should have been the best month of my life. No parents around to force me to do their bidding. Swing.
But it feels weird to only have received a couple general “checking in” texts. Swing.
The truth: I’ve never even tried to get out from under our parents. I couldn’t do it unless someone else agreed to it first.
Because I don’t want to be alone. Swing.
My breathing heavies. Their shortage of communication unsettles me like the overworked cliché—the calm before the storm. I can’t let my guard down, and the more I live on edge, the more I want to explode.
Swing.
The sink cracks completely off the wall.
“ROCKY!” Nova’s voice comes from the top of the boat.
I set the hammer against the wall and reach for my cell, turning the volume down. “Yeah?!” I call out and walk into the galley. Lifting my goggles to my head, I see Nova from the hatch.
“Can you come up here?” he asks. “We need to talk.”
“Come down here.”
He glares. “I’m not going down there.”
Last time he was in a hull, he vomited all over Oliver.
“We’re docked, dumbass,” I say. “How else are you going to learn to get your sea legs?”
“I have land legs, asshole. Get up here.”
I pull my goggles back down over my eyes. “I don’t take orders from you.” I don’t want to take them from anyone. I go for my hammer again.
“Rocky,” Nova says with an intensity that stops me cold. “It’s about my sister.”
My grip tightens on the hammer. Muscles flexed at mention of Phoebe. Is she okay? I could ask. But I don’t need her brothers giving me updates when I have two fingers and used them to text her this morning. It went something like this:
Me: Awake?
Phoebe: Yeah, thanks for the wake up text. *sarcasm*
Me: Just want to make sure you’re okay with serving five hundred elitist assholes at the clambake today.
Phoebe: I’m okay with serving the four hundred and ninety nine of them.
Me: Knew you hated Jake
Phoebe: I was talking about you
Me:
She seemed her normal peachy self. And we’re still hitting the same fiery notes with each other. Yet, I’m hesitating to blow off Nova.
I take another second before throwing the hammer down and ripping off my goggles. In an agitated stride, I leave the only good therapy session I’ve had all year.
As I make the short climb to the top of the boat, wind hits me all at once. Nova has already left the sailboat entirely.
He’s standing on the wooden dock.
The same dock of that boathouse party a month ago. The same boathouse I’ve been renting since Jake banned me from the loft. It was easy to convince the Reynolds’ to rent it out to me.
The narrow, wooden Venetian boat sways in the dock beneath the house. Sailboat’s mast wouldn’t fit under there, obviously, so it’s tied on the dock that extends further into the bay.
I walk to the edge of the boat and stare down at Nova. “You know it’s safer to have a conversation on the boat.” It’s why I got the piece of shit—other than to take out my pent-up feelings on it, that is.
Nova crosses his arms over his chest. “Not happening.”
I squint in the sun. “What’s on your face?”
“It’s called a mustache.”
“Gross, man.”
He flips me off. “Are you coming down here?”
I let out another annoyed breath and make my way down to the dock. “Your fear of water really needs to be looked at.”
“I’m not scared of the water, and you know that.” He glares at me. “God, sometimes it’s impossible to talk to you.”
My feet hit the dock, and I smile dryly. “Could it be because I don’t want you to talk to me?”
He opens his mouth to reply but an obtrusively loud noise comes from the neighbor’s dock.
A seal.
Hercules (Hailey named him) flaps his flippers at us and continues that honking sound. He’s out there every morning. Same time.
Every day.
But all he really does is make funny noises like he’s trying to cheer me up. Hercules would be a better roommate than Nova, who constantly has to “get on the same page” as me as if we’re in a perpetual group project that I never signed up for.
Nova waits for the seal to quiet down before turning back to me. “Phoebe and Jake.”
My body stiffens like those three words are literally repellent. “Is there a question there or are you just trying to make me punch something?”
Nova eyes me up and down. “You don’t like them together?”
“They’re not together,” I say, like he’s insane. Unless I’ve been sleeping under a rock for the last month—oh wait, no. I’ve been at the country club almost every day keeping tabs on the main players in town.
One of whom is Jake Waterford.
“I didn’t say they were.” Nova looks at me like I’m the one jumping to conclusions when he opened this whole conversation with just their names. “He’s been stopping by the museum and asking about her.”
Great. Just great.
I glare at the sky. Nova came into town with Oliver—wait, scratch that—he was manipulated into coming here by Elizabeth Graves. They see it differently, fine. But it doesn’t change the fact that their mom bumped them off the clip joint job, and that’s sketchy as hell.
When Nova got here, he inserted himself in the museum as an art curator. He’s not the best at talking his way out of a hole, but he can tell a forgery from the real deal in a heartbeat.
“Asking about her?” I frown. “Like what?”
“Casual shit, but I know he’s prying. I can’t tell if it’s because he likes her or because he doesn’t trust her.”
I want to say it’s the latter, but that’d be because I hope it’s not the former. And Jake liking Phoebe... Phoebe and Jake...
I don’t like the scenario.
I hate the scenario.
I don’t much like him.
I hate him. But he’s not special. Right now, in this moment, I hate every fucking one. I’m grinding my teeth and glaring at the bay.
Nova watches me too keenly. “I thought you’d have some insight.”
My only insight is a deep-seated jealousy that has gnarled around my veins and arteries. Every pump of blood is more toxic fuel in my soul. “It doesn’t matter.” I rake a rough hand through my hair. “He’s not her type. She wouldn’t go after him.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nova says. “Now that my sister is on this new honest-life kick, she has more options in the love department.”
More options.
Other than me—but he won’t say it.
I shift my weight tensely. The past month has been rage piled upon rage.
I can’t move on from Phoebe.
I just can’t. I never could. And if she’s unwilling to break away from our parents for good and I’m unwilling to be with her until we do—then we’re at a standstill that I can’t fucking stand.
With this new lack of communication with our moms, there are nights where I’ve just wanted to throw in the towel. Where I’ve imagined they’re gone forever and they’ll never find us. Where I’ve fantasized about showing up at the loft and shoving her against the wall and kissing her like she’s the only love of my entire life.
I almost hate the sheer strength of my willpower and control that constantly prevents me from doing reckless fucking things. Like leading with my heart.
More options for Phoebe?
Her love life has been cradled in my hands like mine has been in hers.
On so many jobs, we’ve pretended to be spouses. Pretended to be lovers. I’ve had my tongue inside her more times than I can count. Kissed my way down her neck and trailed my lips between her breasts. I’ve grinded up against her body, feeling the softness of her limbs against the hardness of mine. Felt the smooth curves of her hips and the warm heat of her breath. I can smell her sweet floral scent without Phoebe even being around. I’ve been in wealthy, toxic circles where I had to keep both of us in one piece. Where her body was mine to shield and protect.
Talk about options makes me want to break everything inside that boat.
We were never given options. Not for anything. And he wants to stand there and tell me that things have changed? Everything in me is dying inside. A slow, aching decay. I don’t know how to keep my shit together.
I don’t know if I want to anymore.
“Is that what you think is going to happen?” I ask heatedly. “Phoebe is going to make a clean break and fall in love with the golden boy of the town. Have some babies and live happily ever after.”
Nova has a soft smile, like I painted a happy, blissful future for his sister. “Beats the alternative.”
“Which is?” Say it, you bastard.
He stares at me. “You.”
I shove him. I can’t help it. I just push. He stumbles back, but he doesn’t fall. I’m burning alive.
Nova is kerosene. “You know you wouldn’t be good for her,” he growls. “Don’t get mad at me for saying it out loud!”
I know he’s right.
I hate that he is.
But I just can’t stand to hear it. I shove him even harder, and this time his boots teeter on the edge of the wooden dock. He grips onto my shoulder before he plunges into the water, taking me with him.
All my anger that I was fueling into the boat, I just channel into Nova. We’re wrestling, dunking each other. Drowning one another. Briny water scalds my esophagus. Shoots up my nose. Pierces my seething eyes. Until I feel hands pushing me and him apart.
“Hey, hey! Get the fuck off each other!” Oliver screams. He’s wading in the water with us and trying his best to separate us.
He’s shoving me more than Nova.
I settle down enough to seize the dock and cough up some seawater. Nova’s equally gassed, choking on air.
“Jesus, are you two trying to kill each other?” Oliver asks, swimming to the dock in his suit. He climbs out quickly, white button-down suctioned to his chest.
I don’t say anything, still catching my breath. I spit the salty taste out and push a hand through my wet hair.
Nova pulls himself easily onto the dock and lies on his back. His chest heaves in and out.
Oliver looks between us. “You know, I’ll give you both a free session with me. Therapy would serve you well.”
“I’ll pass,” Nova says gruffly.
Oliver joined a private practice when he arrived in Victoria, and his growing list of regular clients looks like a CVS receipt. The ladies love the sexy new therapist in town. He has no credentials other than watching The Sopranos and our damaged, fucked-up lives for twenty-plus years.
But this isn’t his first time pretending to be a therapist. Probably won’t be the last. And yeah—ethics are bent and warped in every direction, but sometimes we just don’t care about those.
“Rocky?” Oliver asks me.
“I’d rather beat up my boat.”
“Looks like you were beating up my brother.” Oliver isn’t as carefree as he’d have most believe, and I see the thinly veiled threat in his eyes.
“He got caught in the cross fire,” I say tightly while pulling my body onto the dock. Standing and dripping water, I reach out a hand to Nova.
Going head-to-head with Phoebe’s brothers is a tale as old as time. So is the part where we dust off the dirt under our feet and keep trekking along.
Nova rubs at one of his reddened eyes. “Is that your hand?”
And I realize, he lost a contact in the water. Goddammit. I bend down and clasp his forearm, helping him to his feet.
“Thanks.” He plucks the other contact out and blinks repeatedly.
“Does Jake asking about Phoebe even matter, Nova? The moment our parents come to town, everything will change.”
“That’s why I’m asking.” He pinches his eyes and then blinks again. “They’re going to want to know if he’d be a good mark. I’m just figuring out what to tell them.”
I nod. “We tell them Victoria is off-limits. No long cons, for any of us while we’re here. If we all agree, they won’t have enough shills or principals to pull shit off.”
“No long cons?” Oliver thinks, the corners of his eyes creasing in the start of a wince.
“We do that for our sisters,” I tell him. “Phoebe. Hailey.”
His eyes flit sharply to me when I say my sister’s name.
Ignore that, Rocky. I’m trying. “They don’t want to be roped into a job, so we need to make sure they aren’t. Yeah?”
He immediately folds. “Okay. I’m in.” He turns to his brother.
Nova takes a deep breath, dropping his hand from his eyes. “All right.” With another heavy breath, he tells me, “Your dad isn’t the Big Bad Wolf, Rocky. There are no sides here.”
There will always be sides. And I hate the scenario he painted. Because in that situation, we’re the three little pigs in straw houses, trying to protect our fragile, vulnerable lives.