Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rocky
“Trouble in fake paradise already?” I grin. I shouldn’t gloat, but I’m not one to turn away the chance. Not when it comes to Phoebe.
She stands at the edge of the dock, while I’m up high on my boat. Hammer in hand. No shirt. Threw that off an hour ago during the middle of demoing the galley’s cabinets.
Beads of sweat drip down my chest that have momentarily distracted Phoebe’s attention. I grin wider and add, “Fake cheating on your fake boyfriend already?”
Her scowl returns to my eyes. “Staring at your ugly chest is not cheating.” Her face flushes. “And stop using the word fake.”
“Why?” I question. “You love that word.”
She growls under her breath. “Just... help me.” She returns to what she said when she first walked up to the sailboat. “I don’t trust Jake.”
“I never trusted him,” I say. “Nothing has changed.”
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“I trust you. I trust my sister. My brother. Nova. Oliver. That’s a big number of people.”
“Five. That’s the same amount as a pack of gum,” she refutes.
I open my hand out to her like she made my point. “The perfect amount.”
She exhales a frustrated noise. “We don’t need to worry about your trust issues. You don’t have to trust him, but he’s cagier than I realized. I feel like he’s hiding something.” She tells me about the phone call at the movie theater and the ringtone.
I flip my hammer, thinking and glaring out at the sun-reflected water. “What if he’s a mole?”
She frowns. “For who?”
My muscles contract in tensed bands, and she slowly shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “Our parents aren’t spying on us.”
“He could be one of their connections, here to feed information back to them,” I say. “It makes sense.”
“It makes zero sense,” Phoebe says. “One: they trust us...” She shifts uneasily, neck reddening remembering the truth about me confessing my teenage crush to my dad. “At least, I think our moms do.”
“You don’t think they’re suspicious of this random job in Connecticut? Where none of us have confirmed what it entails. Who the marks might be. Nothing.”
Phoebe wavers, then shakes her head. “If they trust us, they wouldn’t be too suspicious. We’re being vague to protect ourselves. They’d understand that.”
“My dad has been fishing for details,” I tell her, and I wish I could lump my mom and Elizabeth in with him, but they’ve been largely uncommunicative.
“Have our moms?” she wonders.
I glower and flip my hammer again.
She smiles, her trust in them resurrecting, and I’d never use every tactic in my arsenal to sway Phoebe to hate them. If I did that, I’d be no different than our parents, so I accept her sunny viewpoint while I’m sitting alone in my dark one.
Phoebe gestures to me. “Just think about this, Rocky. They’d have nothing to gain by spying on us.” She adds, “We are on the same team.”
I wipe sweat off my brow with my bicep. Maybe... I don’t know.
All my instincts tell me they’re involved somehow. Could this be the first time I have the ability to get actual proof of their manipulation?
Phoebe shifts her hips, impatient. “You want to do a trade-off? I’ll fix whatever needs fixed in your boat, and in return, you can help me figure out what Jake might be hiding.”
“You’re not fixing my boat.”
“I’m good with my hands.” She didn’t mean for that to be a come-on, and her glare skewers me. “I’m good with tools.”
“Great. You’re not getting near mine.”
Her gaze drops to my crotch.
Blood runs south, pumping through the veins of my shaft. “I was referring to my hammer, not my cock.”
“You went there,” she accuses.
“Fucking A, Phoebe.” I groan, just frustrated. Constantly. “Look, I know you could help me fix the boat, but I don’t want your help. I need this.” It’s my outlet. My thing.
She throws up her hands. “Then what do you want, Rocky?”
I can’t even look at her because the answer is right there. I adjust my grip on the hammer, rotating the hilt. “I don’t need anything in return.” I set the hammer down and grab my leather jacket. “I’ll help.”
She expels a breath of relief. “Thank you.”
“Where is Jake, anyway?”
“You can’t confront him right now,” Phoebe says, wide-eyed. “We have to plot. Make a plan. You don’t want him suspicious.”
She’s right. “Let’s call Hailey.”
Town streets have closed for Victoria’s annual Harvest Festival.
Vendors are set up along the cobblestone, selling warm apple cider, lobster mac and cheese, fresh oysters, and other fall staples. A local band plays somewhat-decent cover songs in the middle of the square, and the pumpkin carving stations contain more adults than children since a cash prize for Best Pumpkin Art is at stake.
Small-town normalcies.
Not here, Hailey has already warned me against confronting Jake at the festival.
I attempt to be interested in connecting two blue pieces of candy on my phone, but while I’m staring at Jake and Phoebe—sipping their apple ciders beside the town’s fountain, laughing and chatting like a happy couple—the timer runs out.
Shit.
With a tight breath, I shove my phone in my pocket.
My sister is elbow deep in a pumpkin at our table. I haven’t seen Hailey smile this much in years. She’s already drawn the outline of the Bride of Frankenstein on the pumpkin with a Sharpie, a blueprint for carving. I’m happy that my sister is happy, and I wish I could somehow bottle the essence. Preserve it for her.
But I’m useless on that front. I can’t shield her from our parents if they show up. Not completely, at least.
I scoop some seeds and guts from my pumpkin and slap them in the garbage can beside our table. Hacking at this thing with a knife might make me feel better.
I look over at the fountain again.
Phoebe smiles into a fuller laugh at whatever Jake said. He gesticulates with his hand, the one without the apple cider, as if telling a story, and he tries to contain a laugh of his own.
Every muscle in my body twitches.
“The more you stare, the more people notice,” Hailey whispers to me, casting a furtive glance to Phoebe, then back to me.
“I don’t care,” I mutter, wiping the pumpkin guts off my hands and onto a towel. “I’m her ex-husband. I can be jealous.”
I am jealous.
Locals and caufers (still hate it) meander around the street, partaking in the festivities. And the handfuls of faces I recognize from the country club—I ignore.
Hailey wipes the gooey residue off the pumpkin’s skin, just as Oliver strolls over with a tray of coffee and says, “A little early for Halloween to be wearing your costumes, isn’t it?” He looks from me to her. “Doom and Gloom.”
Hailey lifts her carving knife. “I’m actually happy.”
He slips her a smile. “Doom and Raccoon, then.” He’s referring to her heavy black eye shadow.
“Procyon lotor.” She lines up her pumpkin and crouches to inspect a smudged Sharpie line. “It’s the binomial name of a raccoon.”
He intakes a breath. “I love a cute Procyon lotor.”
My jaw hardens. Jake’s laughter is real, genuine. I can tell, even from this far away, and yeah, it bothers me that he’s not fake laughing and fake smiling on the outside and for real cringing on the inside.
“Their life expectancy in the wild is only one to three years,” Hailey tells him.
“Which one are you, domesticated or wild?” Oliver asks, and it’s hard to tune in to their conversation while I’m watching Jake tell his story. I bet it’s riveting.
“Domesticated, unfortunately.”
Oliver replies in fluent Dutch, which cuts my gaze to him in warning. He tips his head to me like I’m being unnecessarily paranoid, but him knowing Dutch and being related to Phoebe—people will start asking deeper questions.
Where are the Smiths from?
How do you know so many languages?
Does Phoebe?
Where are your parents?
Who are your parents?
“No one heard.” He’s quiet while people stroll past us with warm donuts. “And anyway, if they did, I’m the world traveler of the family.” He’ll have to be. He lifts a coffee out of the tray. “A cinnamon latte macchiato for the Procyon lotor.” He hands it to my sister.
“Thanks, Olly.” She takes the cup and inspects her pumpkin.
“Diabetes in a cup for you.” He passes me my chocolate chip mocha iced frappé and keeps the black drip coffee for himself.
I force a smile. “You need to go to a dentist, man. Make sure someone didn’t pull out your sweet tooth at birth.”
“Spending an extra hour at the gym just to work off a milkshake—not an enjoyment of mine, Grey Thornhall.” He sips his black coffee.
I’d say Oliver is too concerned about his appearance, but we’ve all been drilled from a young age to ensure we appear a certain way. Fitting into what society deems “attractive” has been an unspoken rule.
Blowing steam off at a gym is one of the few things that keeps me sane. So I don’t mind lifting weights or playing tennis at the club. I can even kill two birds with one stone since they’re all social things that help me establish relationships in town.
“Where’s your brother?” I ask him.
“Loading up on oysters.”
A light wind rattles the trees, and when an orange leaf catches on Phoebe’s pink sweater, I think I’m in a new circle of hell.
Jake inches forward and plucks it off her.
“He’s touching her hair now?”
“She had a leaf in her hair, too,” Hailey says, observing the scene with me. As is Oliver.
“The classic WB drama,” Oliver muses, “the upstanding gentleman and the man-whore are fighting over the new girl in town. While her charming older brother stands off to the side and tells you”—he turns to me—“that Jake invited my sister to have dinner with his parents.”
I glare. “I know. Thank you and fuck you.”
“Guess I don’t need to ask how that’s making you feel,” Oliver says in his therapist tone.
The “dinner with the Konings” reminder is more gasoline on the fire raging inside me. Luckily, Phoebe already kept me in the loop.
It’s pretend, Phoebe assured.
She also told me that the more time she spends with Jake, the better. The closer she’ll come to uncovering whatever he’s hiding.
I’m fixated on the fountain. Them. Jake slips a piece of blue hair that escaped her pony back behind her ear, and I can’t stand here any longer.
“Rocky, don’t,” Hailey whispers as I push off in the direction of the happy new fake couple.