38. East

THIRTY-EIGHT

east

"OH, JAMES, IT was dreadful," my mother said, barely giving me a hello before she started the retelling of what had gone down. "There I was, having high tea in the parlor with the ladies from the Partridge Historical Society when all of a sudden, dozens of men burst inside. They broke down the door dressed all in black. Guns drawn and pointed at us like we were criminals. Criminals , James. They were shouting, the ladies were screaming, and Miss Faye fell right over and nearly smacked her head on the Boca Do Lobo table. Can you imagine? If she'd been concussed right there on the parquet floor?"

"I don't care about Miss Faye, Mother; I care about my father. You know, the one who was arrested?"

"Of course I know, I was there. It was the most terrifying ordeal, you just couldn't imagine. Your poor father in handcuffs…" Her breath hitched like a fresh wave of tears was imminent. "And all the society ladies saw what happened?—"

"Who gives a shit what they saw? Why hasn't he been bailed out yet?"

"Darling, it's not possible on a weekend. Those horrible people waited until late Friday so he'd have to stay. Your poor father…wearing that same suit for several days?—"

"I'm sure they gave him something more comfortable to wear." Something orange and ill-fitting. My head began to throb, and I rubbed my thumb over the space between my eyes. "So what does all this mean? They've frozen all our accounts? We can't go home? What the hell do we do?"

"James, it doesn't become you to be hysterical."

"No, that's your job," I muttered. If she heard me, she pretended not to notice. "Can you give me something here?"

"For the time being, perhaps allow your friends to pick up the tab on any of your excursions. Just until we get this silly situation sorted out."

Excursions ? Silly situation ? Was she hearing herself?

I put her on speaker and pulled up one of the articles on the screen. "I'm reading this shit right now. This isn't some accidental arrest—these are serious charges. If he really did all this, he's going to prison, do you understand that? And not just for six months or a year. He could go for life ."

She broke out into a long wail, and I had to take her off speaker so King and Zac didn't come running thinking I'd decided to jump out of the window.

"I can't be married to a felon," she said, sniffling. "He'll ruin us all. Our good name, just dragged through the mud. What will everyone think?"

"Why are you more concerned with what your friends think than what Father did? Or did you know what was happening?"

"Of course I didn't know."

"You sure about that? Because if you did, they'll find out. I'll have two parents in federal prison?—"

She wailed even louder, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear. God, this was going nowhere. I'd always rolled my eyes when one of my friends claimed I had my priorities all out of whack, but they hadn't met my parents—who, up until now, I'd thought were smart, sensible people who enjoyed the finer things life had to offer.

"You know what, Mother, I've got to go," I said. "I'll call you tomorrow."

Before she could respond, I ended the call. Tempted as I was to throw the damn phone, I refrained, but only because it wasn't mine.

What a mess. A felon father who was going to rot in prison. A mother who was focused on how bad this all made her look. And no real answers.

Oh, other than to let my friends pay for shit.

There couldn't be anything more horrifying in the world than the thought of a denied credit card. It made the bile rise in my throat until I thought I'd?—

"East?" Zac stood in the doorway, a dirty martini in hand. "We thought you could use one of these."

Alcohol. Thank fuck. I could've kissed him in that moment. Actually…

I walked over to where he stood, a cautious look on his face, took the drink from him, then reached for the back of his neck and pulled him in to take what I wanted—no, needed —in that moment.

Zac stumbled forward a step, caught off guard, but the second my tongue slid across the seam of his lips, he parted for me.

"Thank you," I said, letting him go, then I took a sip of the drink and let out a sigh of pleasure. "This is perfect."

"I'd love to take credit for it, but that's all King."

I should've known. I couldn't remember Zac ever making me drinks before, but King knew his way around a bar, and why wouldn't he? He had, like, ten on his island resort.

"Did you get in contact with your mom?"

"Unfortunately." I shook my head and headed back down the hall. After that horrid conversation with my mother, I felt the need to find somewhere more at home for me to call West. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere I did my best thinking.

I passed by several seating areas, some of which had open windows—probably not the smartest place for me to stand right now, with how I was feeling—and kept right on until I found exactly what I was looking for.

A beautiful bedroom with a king-sized bed overlooking the Hudson River beckoned me inside. But it wasn't the soft duvet and hundreds of pillows calling my name. No, that would be the room connected to it that I knew would be just as high end.

"Do you want to get some sleep?" Zac asked as I made my way inside, taking in the expensive artwork hanging on the walls. I couldn't help but admire King's taste. The guy had just spent the week with me and Zac, so of course he had stellar taste. But this showed a whole other side to him.

"Nope. Couldn't sleep now even if I wanted to."

"Then what are we…" Zac's question drifted off as I wandered through a wide-open doorway, and there it was, my very own marble temple. "Oh, you want to take a bath? Okay, let me get out of the— Wait, what are you doing?"

I climbed into the huge soaker tub by an enormous floor-to-ceiling window and leaned back against the end, martini in hand. I closed my eyes, and my mind started to calm as the cool stone soothed my soul.

"Um, East?"

"Hmm?"

"You're still wearing your clothes."

I opened one eye and took in the confusion on Zac's face. "And that's strange because…?"

"You're sitting in a bathtub."

"I know." I took a long sip of my martini, enjoying the smooth slide of whatever high-end vodka King had put in it. "This is where I do my best thinking."

"In the bathtub?"

"Yes."

"But without actually taking a bath?"

"Again, yes. There's just something so comforting about how the stone feels around me."

"Like a tomb?"

I snorted, and Zac's lips twitched. I guess it was a little strange to take comfort this way. But could anyone blame me? It wasn't as if my mother was the warmest woman in the world. So this was like a maternal hug of sorts.

"I need to call West," I said, knowing that Zac wouldn't want to stick around for that, and just as suspected, he went to leave the bathroom. "Zac?"

He stopped in the doorway and turned back to look at me.

"You're going to stay, right?"

"The night?"

"Just…until whenever."

A small smile tugged at his lips, and my chest tightened. Jesus, with all this shit going on with my father, was I about to have a heart attack?

"Yeah, I can stay."

"Good, okay." I held the phone up, and when he turned and left without another word, I reached for the paper King had given me and entered West's number. Then at the last second hit the video feature so I could see his ugly mug.

It barely had time to connect before he answered, and when his familiar face came onto the screen, a wave of relief washed over me.

"East," West shouted as he moved out of our apartment's kitchen and into his room. "Fuckin' hell, man, I've been going out of my mind worrying about your punk ass. Why'd you hang up on me? Then your phone's going straight to voicemail. Where are you?"

"In my defense, I didn't hang up on you." I took a sip of my perfectly dirty martini and hoped King was already making another.

Someone grabbed the phone from West, and a few seconds later Travis's face filled the screen. "Oh good, you're in the tub. For a second I was worried you'd be overreacting somewhere."

"Aw, you were worried about me? That's cute."

Travis was pushed off screen suddenly, replaced with Donovan, Preston, and Gavin squeezing their faces in.

"Are you okay? Do you need a Van talk?" Donovan asked.

"We're here for you, East," Preston added. "Whatever you need."

I held up my half-empty glass. "I could do with another drink."

"I already called Scotty and told him to come early so we could pick you up wherever you are." Gavin frowned, and his shock of platinum hair moved closer to the screen like he was trying to see what was inside it. "Wait, where are you?"

"Tell him not to bother. I'm not going."

Travis stole the phone back. "What do you mean you're not going?"

"If reporters are all over the Towers, you don't think they'll be crawling up Astor's gates too? Come on, Trav. They're not getting a shot at my glorious face without coughing up the money for my father's bail."

"I could take care of it," Daire said somewhere off camera.

"We've met the quota on arrests this week, but thanks." I slid an olive down the swizzle stick and into my mouth.

"All right, all right, give me the phone back." West took one look at me, then said to the others, "Give us a sec."

There were grumbles as the guys all left West's room, and when they were gone, he flipped the lock and sat on his bed. "Obviously you've got everyone's support. We've all got your back, East."

"If you didn't, I'd have to pay for new friends. Oh, wait. I can't. Never mind." I bit off the remaining olive and tossed the swizzle stick in the direction of the trash can, missing entirely.

"It's okay if you wanna vent. This is shit, the whole thing."

Yes, yes it was. The events of the last hour hadn't quite penetrated my brain, and the vodka was doing a decent job of cushioning the blow. Before I went fully into shock, there were a couple of things I needed to clear the air on, though bringing them up made me want to find that open window.

"I suppose there's a little issue that needs to be worked out," I said. "Apparently, these morons have frozen our accounts, which means?—"

"Don't worry about that," West cut in. "You'll always have a place at the Towers, and whatever you need, I've got you. Seriously."

I swallowed around the lump in my throat, thankful he didn't make me say the words "I'm a penniless asshole, can you spare some change?" because my God, I didn't think I could force that shit out even if I was destitute.

"Well, we'll be back on our feet before you know it," I said, waving my hand like none of this much mattered and it was all a mistake.

My twisted-to-hell stomach knew better.

"I know you will." West nodded, buying into the lie we both knew that it was. "Just like I know you're upset and trying not to show it. But you're allowed to be pissed about this. You trusted your dad and he let you the down."

Yeah, in the most monumental way ever.

It was no secret my father was a cutthroat businessman. One didn't get to the top without stepping on a few people to get there—or, you know, destroying them. But I'd always assumed he'd done it in a way that was legal, that he was the smart, savvy type, not the low-down, underhanded, cheating type.

Turned out I didn't know anything at all. Which I supposed was a blessing in this particular instance. Otherwise I might be modeling the latest shade of orange too.

"I don't know what to feel right now. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact my father is currently sitting in a jail cell."

"I get it, man." West ran a hand through his hair. "We tried to get a hold of you Friday but we couldn't reach you and—actually, why couldn't we reach you? You never said."

How did you tell your best friend that you'd been whisked away to a private island so you could have hot sex with the most intimidating professor to walk the halls of Astor? Oh and that his TA had come too.

"I was out of town."

"Well, I gathered that, but you don't usually go MIA. Is it because I was with the dean?"

"No. If you want to spend time with the most boring faculty member of Astor, that's on you. I didn't call because I was busy getting schooled by the hottest member of Astor's faculty."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

West's confusion was a delightful little reprieve to this shit-tastic homecoming, so I decided to distract myself with it.

"Let's just say I spent this past week serving a king…and his TA."

One second… Two seconds… Three ? —

"Are you fucking with me right now?"

"Sorry, no. It takes all my energy to fuck around with the two I've been playing with this week. You'll have to get Golden Boy to do that."

"King? As in Professor Hardass?"

"One and the same, and I am delighted to confirm he does indeed have a hard ass—and cock."

West stared at me with a look of complete and utter bewilderment on his face. "But how? When? And his TA? You mean Zac? You two hate each other."

It was true. We had…until fairly recently.

"As much as I'd like to get into this, I kind of have a lot going on right now. So if we could keep this on the down-low, one scandal at a time is about all I can handle."

"That's what you used to say about cocks, too."

"Touché."

"Fuckin' hell, East. I don't know what to say."

Now that was a first.

"But don't think I'm not going to ask a million questions when shit settles down."

"I'd expect nothing less. But right now, I need to go and get myself another martini."

"Wait, so, are you…with them now?"

I wasn't sure exactly how much to reveal, so I merely shrugged and said, "I'll call you again soon."

"I can't call you?"

"No phone, remember?"

"Oh yeah—well, just know I'm here if you need anything."

"I know." And I did. West was the best friend a guy could have. The kind you knew you could count on under any circumstance, and I'd given him plenty to bail from. But he never had. He'd always pulled through, always been there. Just like he knew I would be for him. "Thanks, West."

"No problem. See you soon."

"See you."

I ended the call and lay there in the quiet of the bathroom for a minute, letting my new reality set in. But when the noise in my head started up again, I decided it might not be so smart to sit there by myself wallowing, where I might be tempted to fill the tub and drown out the noise.

Instead, I decided to go and track down the other two in the house, shocked to realize that—for the first time in my life—I'd rather have human comfort over an empty bathtub's solitary embrace.