Chapter 14

She’s not answeringher damn phone.

I glance down at my texts for the millionth time in the last hour, my anger growing. Why hasn’t Lux responded? According to my mom’s driver, they left the doctor’s office hours ago, then he took her to the pharmacy before bringing her back to Rush House.

I can see on the tracker app that I installed on her phone that she’s at one of the sorority houses, where she must be visiting Wyn. But why not just text me back? Why ghost me for fucking hours?

“She’s fine,” Christian says. We’re in the study, and he’s throwing a dart at my great uncle’s portrait. It’s a priceless piece of art, but my great uncle was a fucking cunt, so the boys and I enjoy using his face as target practice. “She probably just has her phone on silent.”

“I should roll up to the sorority house and see what’s going on,” I say, staring at the leather spines on my bookcase. Reaching over, I pull out a first edition of The Great Gatsby, blindly flipping through the yellowed pages.

“If you do that, then she’ll know you have a tracker on her,” Jackson says wisely. “Then you’re fucked, because she’ll just delete the app, and turn off her phone’s location. Then you’ll never know where she is.”

I purse my lips and nod. “Fair point.”

Fuck this is hard.

Lucas clears his throat. “So we’ve got three days before the hearing,” he reminds the group, though I know his comment is more directed at me. “Any updates on how this is all going down?”

“I think I have an argument for getting James into Lockly instead of doing jail time,” I say.

Jackson, Lucas, and Christian all perk up a little.

“So the charges are being dropped?” Jackson asks, suspicion in his tone. Out of all of us, he’s definitely the most guarded, and critical.

I push out a breath. “No.” I can feel the tension in the room. We were all hoping our plan would be James’ get-out-of-jail-free card, but it’s not looking like it’s going to be that cut and dry. “I have a call into our lawyer to talk. I’ll offer to pay for inpatient rehab or something, and we’ll have to see if the prosecution will go for it. His recent suicide attempt might actually work in our favor.”

Lucas narrows his eyes. “So he’ll still be a prisoner, just in a hospital instead.”

I lift my hands. “It’s a whole of a lot better than jail, where they don’t give a fuck about mental health. At least with an inpatient program, he might actually get help.”

“Is it really that bad?” Christian asks.

“Dude, he tried to off himself,” Jackson says to Christian in a you”re-an-idiot tone. “Clearly his mental health is suffering. That place must be fucking torture for him.”

I push out a breath. “It’s not just that. He’s still writing letters to her. I mean, damn, you saw the note he left after cutting himself. He’s still hung up on her. He needs help.”

No one says anything, because they all know it’s true.

“I’ll see if I can get him the least restrictive facility possible,” I add. “Honestly, after jail, a place like that will be like a fucking vacation. Some of these places are like resorts.”

“Your dad hates James,” Lucas points out. “So why would he pay for his treatment?”

Yeah, it’s a fair point. “I’ll have my mom talk to him. She’s the only one who can convince him to do anything.” I shrug. “And it’ll allow Dad to save face. He won’t have to deal with the fact that his stepson is in prison. Because, you know, it’s all about appearances with him.”

Christian shrugs. “It’s a decent solution, I guess.”

“If you can manage to pull it off…” Lucas says with a sigh.

I glance over at Jackson. This is official society business, so I need everyone’s agreement before moving forward. “Thoughts?”

“If the prosecution will take the bait, then yeah, sounds like it might work,” he says.

“Good.” I pull a hand down my face. “I need a fucking drink,” I say, releasing a breath. This shit is so fucking stressful.

I grab that drink—rum and coke—then spend the next hour on the phone with my mom, laying out my new plan for James. I hate getting her hopes up, but I don’t have much of a choice. I need her help because Lucas is right, there’s no way my dad is going to spend a red cent on James unless my mom convinces him to.

By the time I’m off the phone, the Rush House is bursting at the seams. It’s a random Thursday, which of course, means it’s the perfect day for a spontaneous party.

As I walk down the hall toward the living room, dodging people, the music gets louder. We have giant speakers installed in the ballroom for this exact scenario, and the loud, rhythmic bass bounces off the walls, making the windows tremble.

I walk past people smoking weed in the foyer, resisting the urge to take a hit on my way out the door. I could use something to calm me the fuck down right now. It feels like the weight of the universe is on my shoulders. But if I take a hit, Mom would smell it on me though, and that’d be a whole different conversation, and I don’t have the patience to navigate her motherly concern right now.

The drive to my family home is only about fifteen minutes, and as I park in the short driveway, and walk up to the white, concrete building, it occurs to me how the house reflects my father perfectly. It’s right on the beach, so it’s expensive—I think it’s valued at just over forty million dollars these days—and it’s large. Austere. Cold.

I unlock the front door using my phone and walk into the foyer, then meander into the kitchen. It’s an open concept, so each room bends and flows into the other. And it’s like a fishbowl, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the ocean.

Mom is in the kitchen, phone perched on her shoulder as she mixes one of her energy drinks, which is what she consumes instead of food. Her dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and she still looks quite young, which is probably due to all the fillers, and expensive serums she slathers on her face at night.

“Hey, mom,” I intone.

She looks up with surprise. “Oh, hey, Kelly, let me call you back,” she says into the phone. “My son just walked in.” A pause. “Okay, talk later.”

Hanging up, she walks over and pulls me into a hug. I wrap my arms around her, noting how thin she’s gotten, even more so than usual. All this shit with James has her stressed, I’m sure. I feel bad for not checking on her more often.

Releasing her, I take a step back and raise a brow. “You’ve lost more weight. Are you eating, Mom?”

She waves off my concern like she always does. “I’m fine.” She grabs her cup of coffee from the espresso machine and takes a seat at the island. I open the fridge and pull out a couple of eggs, and the bacon she keeps for my dad.

“Not that you need a reason to stop by, but I usually don’t see you in the middle of the week.” She takes a sip of her triple espresso. “Everything okay?”

I see the concern on her face, and I know she’s worried about my brother, but she keeps her voice light like she doesn’t have a worry in the world. I blame that on my dad. She’s never been able to show him any real emotion. Any hint of anger, or concern, and he gaslights the shit out of her, making her feel guilty for having any emotions at all.

I take out a pan and start frying up some eggs. “I came to talk about James.”

A look of worry flashes over my mom’s face. “Is he okay?”

No, he’s definitely not okay.But I don’t say that, because I don’t want to worry her. Instead, I start laying out the new plan for James. I can see the discomfort on her face like just thinking about putting my brother into some kind of mental health facility hurts her. Yeah, welcome to the fucking club. But it’s our best option at this point.

“A mental health program?” she repeats, wincing like the words leave a bad taste in her mouth. Her eyes begin to water, and it looks like she might cry. “He doesn’t need that. He’s fine. This was all just a…a misunderstanding.”

I plate up the eggs and start cooking the bacon. “Mom, this is the only way. They have the victim’s statement, and God knows what else. This is the best possible scenario.” I pause, allowing those words to sink in. Thankfully, she looks more resigned than combative. “Can you convince dad to pay for Lockly?”

Lockly is a five-star inpatient facility that looks more like an elite hotel. It’s right on the beach, with elegant French cuisine, tennis, spas, and world-class counselors….you name it. But it’s expensive as hell. I’m talking NBA player expensive. A-list movie star expensive. And for that price tag, we’d need Dad’s buy-in.

I turn off the stove and place the eggs and bacon in front of Mom. “Don’t make that face,” I scold, now in the position of parenting my parent. “You need to eat something.”

She adds some salt to the eggs, and scowls at me, before taking a small bite. “Your dad and I share a bank account,” she says between bites. “I don’t need to ask his permission.”

I place the pan and spatula in the dishwasher. “You may need his pull to find a room for James on short notice, though. There’s usually a waiting list.”

Mom sighs as she bites into a piece of bacon. She wouldn’t normally eat this much food, but she’d feel guilty refusing something I made for her, and I use that to my advantage.

“Dad hasn’t been home for days,” she says. “And he’s not answering my calls.”

I push out a breath. Of course. Dad has always been like this—leaving for days, or weeks on end, shaking up with his women, before tiring of them and coming back home. I don’t know why Mom puts up with it, but when he does finally stumble home, he showers her with gifts and attention, so maybe that’s the reason. Who fucking knows.

Mom chews her bacon, then pushes her plate away, and I push it right back. “Eat,” I command.

She sits back from her plate and looks up at me. “I’m the parent, remember?”

I don’t say anything. I just blink at her.

With a sigh, she takes a couple more bites, then picks her plate up and sets it next to the sink. I’d argue with her, but it’s more than she’s eaten in weeks, I”m sure, so I let it go.

“I’ll get him a bed at Lockly,” she says turning toward me. Crossing her arms over her chest, she pins me with that motherly stare. “On another subject…” Oh, shit. What now? “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you have a girl.”

That catches me by surprise, and on instinct, every muscle in my body tenses up. Mom knowing anything about Lux is a fucking problem.

Despite my heart crawling into my throat, I try to keep my voice even, and nonchalant. I grab a piece of bacon off her plate by the sink and pop it into my mouth. “Who told you that?” I ask between bites.

“A few people, actually,” she says. “You forget, this corner of Southern California isn’t that big.”

Still leaning against the counter, I look down at my shoes, because I can’t quite meet her eyes. “I always have a girl, Mom. I’m not sure why that’s so surprising.”

“People say you’re really into this one.”

I look up at her and flash her a tight smile. “People make up all kinds of shit. Don’t listen to the noise.”

She steps forward and places her hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “I’d like to see you settle down with someone nice. You need someone who can keep you in line.”

Lux definitely fits the bill, but my relationship with her was fucked before we even set eyes on each other, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I push off the counter and look down at my mother. “Where can I find Dad?”

She pushes out a breath. “I think he might be at Exeter House,” she says. “Next week he heads off to France for business.”

Business. I almost laugh at the word. Dad inherited his money from my grandfather, and he has investments, but he hasn’t worked a day in his fucking life. I think my mom pretends he’s working so she doesn’t have to confront the truth—that he’s fucking around.

This is where James gets his wild romantic notions, from Mom. She’s the ultimate romantic, despite being married to a world-class narcissist. She wants to believe he still loves her, and she holds onto the fantasy that they’re still happily married with white-fucking-knuckles.

“I’ll talk to him,” I say, kissing her on the head. God knows how this conversation will go, but I have to try…