Didn’t mean it would be easy.
Or fun.
Plus, it meant I’d now have to find a new band.
I’d happily form a band with Cary again, in a hot fucking minute, if he had any interest in that. But I was pretty sure that was never happening. I couldn’t get him out of the house for a beer, much less to form another band. The guy was pretty much a fucking recluse these days.
Ever since the accident.
Four years ago now.
I reached to tap the photo before I’d even realized I was doing it. Fucking instinct. But my knuckle brushed air.
It wasn’t there.
I looked around. The framed photo of me and Cary and Gabe that was always on the dresser… Where the fuck was it?
I dug through the garbage bags, quickly, as my pulse started thrumming in my skull. But I didn’t find it. I didn’t often lose my cool, but fuck this bullshit. I was pretty fucking close to losing it with her.
I went back into the house and straight up to Courteney’s room. I burst right in without knocking. And yes, the thought—What if she’s changing or something?—flitted by. I just didn’t give a fuck.
She wasn’t changing. She was lying on her stomach on the bed, fully clothed, looking through a big photo album. But the neck of her shirt gaped down and I saw the swell of her tits.
The flash of her honey-lava-pit eyes, when she looked up, went directly to my dick.
Her jaw dropped as she gaped at me. “What the fuck, Xander?”
“Where’s the photo?”
She snapped out of her shock and scrambled off the bed, standing in front of me with her fists clenched. “What photo?”
“The one that was on my dresser,” I gritted out.
“I don’t know. I put all your shit in the garbage. I didn’t notice any stupid photo.”
“You didn’t notice a photo of Gabe on my dresser,” I said, fucking slowly.
She paled.
“What did you do with it?”
She hugged herself. “Nothing,” she said, her voice suddenly small. “I just put everything in the garbage bags.”
I took a deep, slow breath and calmed the fuck down. I believed her, unfortunately.
I glanced at her stuff all spread out on the bed. Piles of papers and books she seemed to be sorting through. The half-emptied boxes strewn around as she unpacked.
The open closet had a ton of clothes hanging in it. She’d brought a hell of a lot of stuff with her… Didn’t exactly look like she was just here for the week.
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Working,” she said, all attitude. “If you must know.”
“What?”
“My brother’s paying me to be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he hired me.”
Huh? What the fuck was she talking about?
“Hired you to do what?”
“Producer’s Assistant.” She didn’t look me in the eye when she said that. She looked defensive as fuck, her arms locked over her chest. Her shoulders tight. Kinda seemed like she had as little clue what she was doing in a job like that as I did.
Cary had never once mentioned wanting to hire his sister, or mentioned his sister wanting to work for him. The last assistant he’d hired—his first—he’d fired within a week. Said he didn’t need or want anyone all up in his private business.
And now he’d hired his little sister to be all up in his business?
Wasn’t she leaving for college in a few weeks? Pre-law at some university in Ottawa, then law school in England… wasn’t that the plan?
I glanced around at her stuff again. Maybe some girls overpacked, brought more clothes with them than they needed. But she’d already hung up some pictures over her little desk and everything, gotten out a hammer and nails to do it. Framed photos of her and her girlfriends, a couple of them from her posh girls’ school, both in and out of uniform.
Definitely looked like she was moving in, long term.
When I saw Cary on Saturday, he seemed to be doing about the same as usual. Not any better, not any worse. Hard to know how the news about Fetterman would set him back, but no doubt it could. This time of year was always tough for him as it was.
Last week was the anniversary of Gabe’s death.
I’d tried to talk to him about it, but he just avoided the whole topic.
No surprise there.
But now his sister was suddenly working for him—and moving in with him?
Not a good sign.
Was she worried about him?
Would she tell me if she was?
No. Probably fucking not.
“The poolhouse is mine,” I told her. “Just stay out.”
“Gladly,” she snapped back.
I headed back out to the poolhouse. Courteney definitely looked like she was staying put, and if that was the case, she needed to stay the fuck out of my space.
Because as of right now, I was staying put, too.
And that had nothing to do with her and what happened between us in my car, three weeks ago.
Or the way she looked lying on her bed when I burst into her room just now…
There were way more important things at work here.
I sent a text to my long-suffering personal assistant, Jordan, and let her know the update.
Me: I’m staying at Cary’s. Send everything here.
I had a laundry service, grocery delivery, all kinds of shit that Jordan took care of for me, behind-the-scenes, to make my life run smoothly. A simple decision on my part like I’m staying at Cary’s meant I’d just dumped a bunch of extra work in her lap.
On second thought, I sent another text.
Me: I’ll take you shopping.
Jo replied with an eye-roll emoji.
Of course, I was the one who liked shopping, not her.
Me: Buy you something nice, promise.
The girl might not like clothes as much as I did, but she could be placated with concert tickets. Or a bottle of that coconut rum she loved.
Or both.
I tossed my phone aside. Then I dug carefully through the half-full garbage bags until I found the framed photo of me and my two best friends.
Gabe and Cary. The two friends I’d lost.
One in death.
One in mourning, depression, workaholism…
I put it back on the dresser. The glass had cracked clean through the middle, but I could always get it reframed.
Chapter Three
Courteney
I woke up late on Wednesday morning and almost forgot where I was. It was my third day at my brother’s house, and already I’d figured out that there was no reason to set an alarm.
I took my time in the shower. There was no point rushing to start my day, either.
Yes, I was supposed to be “working.” But this job was basically bullshit. Cary had given me literally not one thing to do.
I’d spent Monday settling in and avoiding Xander. He totally hogged the pool area all afternoon. No nasty mankini, but still.
I’d spent most of Tuesday trying to invent things to do, but no one would exactly let me. Rose came to do her weekly cleaning, and I’d had lunch with her, so at least I wasn’t alone all day.
I hadn’t even seen my brother yet.
His staff, who mostly worked remotely and were as invisible as ghosts, were incredibly efficient at their jobs. And way more experienced than me.
Between the security service that monitored the security system and personally checked the grounds once a week, the part-time housekeeper, the part-time groundskeeper, and the team at Little Black Hole—the recording studio my brother owned over in Mount Pleasant—he was pretty damn covered. He didn’t really need an assistant.
Maybe if he ever left the house.
Fully dressed and ready to start my workday—in cutoff sweats and an oversized T-shirt; no point dressing up for this, either—I opened my laptop. I had it sitting on my desk next
to my backpack, which I figured I’d unpack in-between checking my emails and figuring out what the hell I was actually doing with the rest of my summer.
I’d gone to my parents’ house for dinner last night out of sheer boredom—big mistake—and grabbed a few more of my things. Which basically meant enduring the bullshit-questions-that-deserved-bullshit-answers lightning round.
How’s your brother?
He’s fine. (I haven’t seen him.)
How’s the new job?
It’s good. (It’s not a real job.)
Is he happy with what you’re doing?
I think so. (I’m doing crap-all, but I’m sure he’s delighted about it, thanks for asking.)
At least I was trying to do a job, even if I didn’t quite know what it was.
Yesterday, I’d emailed the staff at Little Black Hole to “introduce” myself. I’d met them before, but never really had much contact. My brother had emailed me the list of contact info I’d asked for, so there was that.
I knew the studio manager worked pretty closely with Cary, and the studio assistants sometimes ran deliveries between the studio and his home; mail, equipment, whatever. I wanted them to know who I was, where I was, and how to reach me. Please let me know if there’s anything at all I can do to help.
They’d already emailed me back, quickly and incredibly politely. My brother definitely kept top notch staff.
Something told me, though, that they were never going to ask me for anything.
Which meant I had no real job to do.
Last month, when I’d finished high school, I came to see my brother as soon as I got home from school. And when I talked to him and to Rose, I’d pieced together the fact that he’d barely set foot outside of his home studio in like five straight weeks or something. He was working on his latest album, producing for this up-and-coming band he was obsessed with.
Nothing new, exactly, but this time, I’d gotten really worried.
I was already worried about him enough. But now, lucky me, I had the guilt of knowing that I was leaving for college in the fall. I was moving across the country.
I was worried that when I wasn’t around, my brother might backslide into the Dark Place.
I’d been to the Dark Place myself for a little while. Or at least, I’d peeked in the door and had a little look around—before turning tail and running like hell in the other direction.
Not a good place to be.
I’d managed to calm my worries, somewhat, by coming up with what I hoped was a brilliant solution: to help my brother hire an assistant. I’d gone ahead and done that, thinking he’d now have someone involved in his daily life, who would help to keep him engaged in life—instead of just closing everything out to work obsessively.
And keeping tabs on him for me, of course. Making sure he was okay.
Someone who could let me know if he wasn’t doing well.
That was the idea.
Then last week, when I got the news about Joseph Fetterman… it was two days before the anniversary of Gabe’s death. Not great timing. I’d dropped by to check in on Cary. I didn’t actually see him, but I saw Rose. And after I’d pretty much begged her and threatened her with tears, she admitted to me that he’d fired the assistant, but didn’t tell me.
After that, there were real tears. I went home feeling physically sick about leaving for university at the end of summer.
I hardly ever saw my brother as it was, and yet I felt like I was one of his last true connections to the outside world.
How could I take that away from him?
And that was when I proposed the idea that he hire me.
Of course, Cary hired me. I was his little cupcake, after all. He’d probably do anything—short of emerging from his cave—to make me happy.
Including hiring me for a job I pretty much invented and probably wasn’t even qualified for.
Producer’s Assistant. Whatever the fuck that was.
My friends approved of this move, because it would keep me here, with them, instead of leaving for college. My three closest girlfriends were all older than me, all lived here and weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
My parents also thought it was wonderful.
My mom and dad wanted me at university, in law school, making them proud. But no one had ever made them prouder than my rock-star-turned-brilliant-music-producer brother. Why not put off university for a year to work with him?
It’ll be an exciting new adventure for both of you!
Yeah, right.
Working for my brother, in his empty house, would be the last thing from an exciting adventure.
And yet… even working for him didn’t seem like enough. I needed to be as close to him as I could.
Therefore, I was moving in.
I sold it to my brother as: I’d love to hang out by the pool over summer anyway. The pool was nice and all, but really, I wanted to keep an eye on Cary. If he knew it, he didn’t let on. I was pretty sure he’d let me hang around as long as I wanted to.
Didn’t mean he’d let me into his lair.
Two different things.
I didn’t even acknowledge to myself, until I’d withdrawn my enrollment from university, how much I’d wanted to withdraw. How desperate I’d been for a way out.
I’d thought I had to go to school, so I’d been trying to accept it.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to go.
I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Just because I’d done well in school, got excellent grades—and I’d followed the court case after Gabe’s death so carefully and showed an interest in that—didn’t mean I wanted to go to law school. I’d never wanted to study law, or even go to university, particularly.
That was what my parents wanted.
I’d sold this all to myself that this just bought me more time to figure my life out. But I already knew what I wanted to do with my life, and it had nothing to do with law school.
It had a lot more to do with that secret photo album I kept stashed in the closet.
But either way, here I was.
Some girls from my school were traveling Europe for a year, or getting ready to head off to their posh colleges.
I was moving in with my brother, to avoid going away to school and starting down a path I did not want to travel. And I was “working” a job that didn’t exist, because I loved Cary too much to leave him in the dark.
I was here because I felt like my brother needed me.
My parents would never understand that.
They were far too in denial about my brother’s… issues. Dad kept waiting for Cary to just “buck up” and act like he did—like everything was normal, even when it wasn’t. As if that would magically make it normal? Mom was worse. She acted like she actually believed everything was normal.
They’d always been so unwilling to see their son as he really was.
I mean, they didn’t really see me as I was, either.
But I was determined to see Cary.
I wouldn’t let him—or Gabe—fade away.
I sent my brother an email, with links to a couple of new songs by bands I liked that I thought were pretty awesome. In case he hadn’t heard them. Yes, we were now under the same roof, and I was sending him an email.
That’s what it had come to.
Then I gave up on the laptop and started pulling things out of my backpack. I found my newly minted high school diploma and peeled it out of the frame my mom had put it in.
I dug out the big photo album from the back of the closet, and sat on the bed to open it. I’d been looking through it the other day when Xander burst in on me.
On that thought, I got up and locked the door. Then I went back to the album.
There weren’t many photos in it. It was mostly newspaper clippings, media coverage about the trial. Some items that Gabe had given me; stickers he’d signed, a backstage pass.
Stuff I really didn’t want my parents to find.
I loved my mom and dad. I really di
d. I knew they meant well. But my mom was one of those caring-yet-nosy moms with boundary issues. The kind who still thought she had a right to go through my things, even though I was eighteen, just because I lived under her roof.
If she ever saw what was in this book… she’d probably burn it while I was away at school. Or worse, she’d panic and call in the Sadness Experts again.
Counselors. Psychologists. I’d seen them all.
Apparently, when you felt sad because someone you loved died, and you didn’t stop feeling sad about it soon enough for some people, they felt the need to call in the Experts.
In this book was the hard evidence that I still thought about Gabe and what happened to him, and yes, still sometimes felt things about it. Including sadness. But in my mom’s mind, we weren’t supposed to think about what happened anymore. Thinking about such things led to feeling about them, and that was a no-go.
As if not thinking about them would make them unhappen or something?
Gabe’s obituary was tucked in the back, along with the little pamphlet from his memorial service.
My parents wanted to hang my diploma on their dining room wall, but this felt more fitting. This was where I filed away all the shit in life that hurt the most. Stuff that I didn’t yet know how to make sense of, no matter how many Sadness Experts they called in.
Maybe if I filed it all away for later… and kept coming back to it… one day I’d figure it out.
I tucked my diploma in the back.
Some hurts were bigger than others, sure. No one died at my high school graduation. But my brother didn’t come to see me graduate, and that hurt more than anything in recent memory. I’d graduated with honors, from the exclusive private school my parents had sent me to and my brother had paid for, and I knew Cary was proud of me. He just didn’t come.
No matter how much he loved me—and I knew he did—in my heart, I knew he wouldn’t come. I still wanted him to. I still hoped he would. Since he paid for the education, maybe I’d convinced myself that he might?
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 4