2. Wentworth
TWO
Wentworth
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA MAY, THREE YEARS LATER
It was bound to happen.
I mean, I knew it was only a matter of time before it did but that doesn’t make it suck any less.
Suck because I’m in the home stretch—the last month of my senior year in college and until now, even though there’s no real way of hiding who I am, I’ve managed to fly below the paparazzi radar, more or less, for the last four years.
Sucks because up until yesterday, I’d at least been able to pretend that my life is normal. That I’m just a regular guy with a normal, mediocre future ahead of him.
I mean, I’m not delusional—I know my future was never going to be normal. I’m a Hawthorne. I grew up in a network of luxury, high rise hotels all over the world that, since our grandparents’ death a few years ago, my sister and I now own . Last I heard Delilah and I are worth somewhere north of four hundred billion—and that doesn’t even include our own personal trust funds. Normal isn’t something we get to have—but it was nice to pretend.
That all changed when I met Lexi Chase.
“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think,” Cramer says before shoving another serving spoon-sized bite of Fruit Loops into his mouth while he watches me pace from one end of the living room to the other. “I mean... Lexi’s parents aren’t exactly A-list. Chances are no one even cares—”
Stopping in front of the coffee table, I snatch up the remote and point it at the giant television mounted on the wall to turn it on. Talking heads from the local news channel appear on screen.
LAPD reports that Lexi Chase, daughter of soap opera star, Julia Chase and stepdaughter to Brent Chase, former member of the singing group, 5Sides, has been arrested for DUI and drug possession after losing control of her car and colliding with a City of Los Angeles bus bench, early this morning. The man sleeping on that bench, Brian Maxwell, forty-seven, was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition while Chase was treated and released at the scene before being taken into custody.
When police arrived, Wentworth Fiorella, heir to the multi-billion-dollar Hawthorne Hotel fortune, was also there. Even though Fiorella denies being with Chase at the time of the accident and allegedly submitted voluntarily to a drug test, speculation about his presence on the scene and his involvement in the accident continues as the investigation is ongoing. Next up on Good Morning LA, is your local dog park—
Lifting the remote again, I jab my thumb against the power button, turning it off. Tossing the remote back onto the coffee table, I shake my head. “She almost killed someone— that’s making the news whether her parents are A-list or not.” Before I can say anything else, the cell phone in my back pocket starts to buzz. It’s been ringing all morning, one tabloid reporter after another, trying to get a voice recording of me losing my shit or admit to something that will incriminate me. I almost ignore it like I have the rest but because it might be the nurse I paid off at the hospital to keep me updated on Mr. Maxwell’s condition, I check anyway.
Not the hospital.
Not a tabloid reporter either.
“I gotta take this,” I say, turning away from Cramer who just gives me a shrug before lifting his bowl to his mouth to slurp down sugary milk and soggy cereal. We’ve been roommates since our sophomore year and I’ve always liked him well enough but I’m suddenly glad that the year is almost over and I’m almost graduated because if I have to listen to him eat cereal one more fucking time.. .
Back to him, I take my ringing phone down the hall to my room and shut the door. “Hey.”
“Seriously?” Conner Gilroy, the only real friend I’ve ever had, gives me a low, humorless chuckle. “Your drugged up girlfriend nearly kills a homeless man and that’s your opener— hey ?”
“Okay...” Sitting on the edge of my bed, I swipe a rough hand over my face. “I guess what I have to say next depends on who I’m talking to—my friend or my lawyer?” Con’s my age. We met a few years ago at the tattoo shop I apprentice at over the summer in Boston. He earned his law degree at seventeen, according to him, out of sheer boredom.
“Let’s get the lawyer shit out of the way,” he says on a sigh. “Were you involved in the accident in any way?”
“Shit...” I close my eyes before giving my face another rough swipe. “No— no . I wasn’t even there when—” I can still see the demolished bus bench. The man who’d been sleeping on it sprawled out on the sidewalk, several feet away from it. “I wasn’t there, I swear—Lexi called me after the accident.”
Con’s quiet for a moment. “She called you instead of 911?”
“Yeah—I mean, I guess...” I nod even though he can’t see me. “She called me screaming about how she messed up her car and her dad was going to kill her. She begged me to come get her. She was only a few blocks from my apartment so I did.”
“So, you weren’t in the car with her,” he summarizes. “She called you after the fact?”
“Yes.”
“Alright,” he says, his tone suddenly serious. “Walk me through it.”
Shoulders slumped, I stare at the ground between my bare feet, trying to will myself to remember everything that happened because I know Con—details matter to him.
“We were together earlier in the day. We hit the farmer’s market and had lunch at The Ivy. Went back to my place to hang out by the pool,” I tell him, starting at the beginning. “She started making plans to meet up with friends to grab dinner and hit the clubs at around eight or nine and I told her I didn’t want to go. She got pissed even though she knows clubs aren’t my scene. We fought—and I broke up with her.” I don’t tell him that I’d been heading in that direction for a while. That I’d been waiting for a reason and when she called me a boring, no fun, lump of bullshit , she basically handed it to me on a silver platter.
“You broke up with her?” He sounds doubtful. Not like he doesn’t believe me. Like he’s not sure he heard me right. “You broke up with her and then, when she calls you several hours later, for a rescue, you drop what you’re doing and put on your cape. ”
“She’d just been in an accident, Con,” I say it slowly because we’ve crossed into territory he doesn’t understand. When it comes to women, Conner Gilroy is as ruthless as they come. Hell, unless the person in question happens to be a blood relative, there’s a good chance Con would let them die in a ditch. “She was hysterical. I couldn’t just—”
“Okay.” Cutting off my reasoning with a frustrated huff, Con continues. “She called you, hysterical, asking you to come help her, so you do.”
“Yeah.” Squeezing my eyes shut I see it again. “When I got there, her car was on the sidewalk and she was still behind the wheel. Her airbag had gone off and her face was pretty banged up. I was about halfway to her car when I saw him.”
“Brian Maxwell.” It’s more of a statement than a question but I answer him anyway.
“Yes.” I nod again. “As soon as I saw him, I called 911. Because Lexi was obviously okay, I left her where she was and tried to help him.”
“What time was that?”
I stare at the space between my feet for a minute, trying to calculate the hours. “3:36AM.” I’d just gotten into bed when she called me. Irritated, and relieved that I was no longer obligated to answer her calls, I answered anyway because I was hoping she’d called to fight and I really wanted to hammer the we’re through Lexi point home. “The call to 911 is logged on my cellphone—so is the call I took from her at 3:18.”
“To be clear, you and Lexi Chase did not partake in any illegal substances while you were together, Saturday morning or afternoon?”
“No.” I state it plainly. “I don’t do that shit.”
“Were you aware of Lexi Chase’s drug use?”
I hesitate before I answer. “I knew that she had a history of drug use—not that she was currently using.” When I met Lexi six months ago, she was fresh out of rehab. Obviously, it didn’t stick. “If I’d have known I would’ve tried to talk her back into rehab. Look, Con...” I give my face another heavy-handed scrub. “I wasn’t there—I swear I wasn’t—and I had no idea she was high on anything until the cops got there. As soon as I saw that man, I called 911 and did my best to help him until the ambulance got there. I even let the cops do a blood draw at the scene to prove I’m clean. All I did was try to help.”
“I believe you.” Conner sighs. “But Lexi is claiming that you were driving the car at the time of the accident.”
I don’t ask him how he knows that. Mainly because it probably involves an illegal, back-door hack into the LAPD’s very secure server. “That’s ridiculous. The airbag—”
“You’re six-foot- five, Went,” Con says like he’s telling me I have a terminal illness. “ You’d have been so far back from the wheel that if the airbag went off in your face, it would’ve barely grazed you.”
I stare at my feet, mouth open while I try to figure it all out. “Her face—”
“Both airbags were deployed,” he tells me. “She’s claiming that you hit the bus bench and then, when you realized there’d been a person sleeping on it, put her in the drivers’ seat. Whose car did you take to the Farmer’s Market?”
“We met there.” I can hear alarm bells ringing in my head. “Afterward, I left my car there and rode with her to the restaurant because parking downtown is almost impossible. Afterward, we swung back by and picked up my car before we headed to my place.”
“Who drove to lunch?”
“Me.” Which means my fingerprints are all over Lexi’s steering wheel. “My car was at the scene,” I remind him, suddenly desperate. “If I’d been driving her car, how—”
“As dumb luck would have it, the bench Lexi hit is two blocks from the market you met at. The story she’s selling has the two of you driving back from the club and picking it up on the way home.” Con is quiet for a moment before he tells me the rest. “She’s also claiming that the drugs they found in her possession belong to you. ”
I close my eyes and let out a long, slow breath.
Jesus Christ.
“Listen to me,” Con says in a low tone. “Her story is plausible but it’s also complete bullshit. I can prove she’s lying—all I need is a little time and for you to keep your head down and away from the press while I work.” That’s the other thing about Con. He doesn’t give a shit about you until he gives a shit about you. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. He’ll do anything for you.
Anything.
“This is LA, Con—” I remind him on a flat, humorless chuckle. “And I am a fucking Hawthorne. There’s no such thing as staying out of the press— not when they smell blood in the water.”
“Yeah—that’s why you’re going to have to get the hell out of there,” he tells me. “You need to go somewhere no one can find you—the last place anyone would look for you—while I sort this out.”
“You want me to leave?” I lift my head so fast my neck twinges. “I can’t just leave. That man’s in a coma. I—”
“The nurse you paid off to keep you updated on his condition has been instructed to relay all updates through me.” Again, I don’t even try to figure out how he knows about it. In the three years I’ve known Conner Gilroy, I learned that not knowing how is always better. “Brian Maxwell is stable,” Conner assures me. “If anything changes, I’ll let you know. Right now, I need you to call someone you trust—who isn’t me—and ask them to help you disappear.”
“What about the police?” I have somewhere I can go. Someone I can call but I won’t if that means dumping my bullshit on his doorstep.
“You haven’t been officially charged with anything and from what I can tell from the police reports, no one read you your rights. No one asked you to surrender your passport—you’re free to go wherever you want,” Conner says. “The earliest flight I could get myself on doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I’ll write up an official statement from what you’ve told me and deal with anything the police throw your way as it comes.” When I don’t answer him, he sighs. “Went... I’m telling you this as your lawyer and your friend—get out of there while you still can and let me work. It’s LA—things will go a lot smoother if we can avoid the media circus.”
His implication is clear—my status as bystander could be upgraded to suspect at any moment. If and when that happens, the tabloid frenzy that will ensue will be crippling. The only way to mitigate the fallout is for me to disappear.
“Okay...” I finally give in with a sigh. “I’ll shoot you a text when I get where I’m going.” Standing slowly, I start to move toward my closet. “Thanks, man—I owe you.”
“Yeah, you do.” I can practically hear the shit eating grin on his face. “I’m thinking free tattoos for the rest of my life is a fair trade for saving yours.”
Before I can agree, Con ends the call and leaves me to pack.