by Tracy Wolff
“That’s what everyone thinks,” Chloe argues. “But the truth is, she’s actually pretty fragile. She acts all tough, but that’s just to hide her vulnerability.”
I think back on when she got here, on the defiant chin tilt and the narrowed eyes and the fact that her hands trembled when she didn’t think I was looking. And have to concede, “Maybe you’re right.”
With a groan, I throw back the covers and climb out of bed. “I’ll go check on her.”
“Tell her to call me, will you? Please.”
“Sure. If you don’t hear from her in the next couple of hours, call back. I’ll put her on my phone.”
“Thanks, Miles.” Chloe sounds relieved.
“So now that that’s out of the way,” I say as I walk into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. “How’s my beautiful niece?”
“Beautiful!” she answers. “Amazing, wonderful, fantastic. Did you get the pictures I sent yesterday of her playing on the beach?”
“I did. She’s gorgeous.”
“She really is, isn’t she? Must get that from her dad.”
“She must, considering you’re such an ugly duckling.” Laying the phone down I splash water on my face.
“Miiiiiiles…” I can all but see her rolling her eyes at me.
“It’s true,” I continue as I dry my face, then head into the closet for a shirt. “You were always such a homely child. I tried not to let on, of course. Didn’t want you to feel bad about yourself and all that—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay.” I stop metaphorically pulling her pigtails as I shrug into an old Aerosmith T-shirt. “How are you doing? How’s school?”
“Hard.”
I snort. “It’s Stanford Law. Of course it’s hard.”
“I know,” she says, her voice pitched to just a little bit of a whine. “But it’s really hard.”
“Yeah, but do you like it?”
She laughs then. “I love it so much I don’t even know how to tell you how much I love it. I have this amazing professor who started her career clerking for Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall!” she repeats, like she can’t even believe her luck. “She’s amazing. And another one of my professors won most of the major environmental cases of the eighties and nineties against corporations. The stories are insane.”
“I can imagine. I’m glad you like it.”
“I do. I really do.”
“And Ethan?” I ask as I make my way out of my room and down the hall to Tori’s. If she’s awake, maybe I can hand the phone over now and put Chloe out of her misery.
“He’s doing great. You know, same old Ethan. Working, taking care of the baby, taking care of me…”
“Yeah? Things still good on that front?”
“They’re fine, Miles. Better than fine. And you know it.”
“Hey, I’m your big brother. It’s my job to ask. To make sure you’re happy.” For a second, the past hangs between us. The fact that, for so long, I didn’t do my job. Didn’t take care of her. Didn’t make sure she was happy. And suddenly I want to kick myself. Despite her worry about Tori, Chloe sounds good, really good. The last thing she needs is me dragging up the past in a pathetic effort to make myself feel better.
I wait for her to call me on it, but she wouldn’t be my sister if she did that. Instead she just says, “I’m deliriously happy. Everything is going perfectly—Ethan makes sure of it. So stop worrying about me and worry about yourself instead.”
“Why do I need to worry about myself?” I demand as I knock lightly on Tori’s door. “I’m doing great.”
“Oh yeah? So when’s the last time you went on a date? Or did something that didn’t involve working in your lab all night, every night?”
There’s no answer, so I knock a little harder. “Excuse me, but I went to a party just last night.”
She snorts. “How many times do I tell you that a gathering of engineering nerds where you all sit around talking about totally obscure stuff and how it will make your current inventions better is so not a party.”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that,” I tell her. “But I will have you know, this wasn’t that kind of party.”
“No?” She sounds skeptical.
“No. I promise. I even danced with a beautiful woman and talked to people who aren’t engineers.”
“Yeah, well, just so you know, robots don’t actually count as people. Or beautiful women.”
“I’m hanging up now,” I say, echoing her words from earlier when I was giving her a hard time.
“Okay, okay.” She laughs for a second, then grows serious. “Have Tori call me as soon as she can, okay? I’m going to be worried until I hear her voice.”
“I will. And you keep taking the world of Stanford Law by storm.”
“I think you’ve got that reversed. Currently, it’s taking me by storm.” She sounds like she’s loving every second of it.
“Yeah, well, all the best graduate programs do.” Tori still hasn’t answered my knock and it’s making me more nervous than it should. But with Chloe’s words about how vulnerable she is fresh in my mind, I can’t help worrying. Not that I think Tori would do anything to hurt herself, but still, I’ll feel better once I can talk to her. See her face-to-face. “Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Okay. Take care of Tori for me. And make sure she calls me!”
“I will,” I promise for the second time in as many minutes. “Bye, sis.”
“Bye, bro.”
“You are such a brat.”
“Takes one to know one,” she answers with a bright giggle right before she cuts the connection.
I’m left staring at Tori’s closed door, with a bunch of increasingly upsetting scenarios running through my head. What if she fell and hit her head in the shower? What if she took too many sleeping pills by accident and is passed out on the bed? What if she deliberately tried to hurt herself because she couldn’t take all the shit currently going on in her life?
It’s this thought that has me knocking harder, has me calling out her name. And when she still doesn’t answer, it’s this thought that has me pushing her door open, expecting the worst but praying for the best.
Turns out, all my worry is for nothing because Tori isn’t in there. Her bag is open next to the bed, though, and Chloe’s fuzzy pink slippers are nowhere in sight, both of which I take as good signs.
After closing the door behind me, I jog down the steps and do a cursory sweep of the downstairs. I expect to find her on the patio sunbathing, or maybe watching TV in the family or media room, but instead she’s in the kitchen, her back turned to me as she loads her arms up with ingredients from the fridge.
She’s dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and a plain white tank top and for a second I can do nothing but stare. Partly because of the luscious curve of her ass as she bends over in the yoga pants and partly because of the fact that she looks really vulnerable like this. I’m used to seeing her dressed in designer or punk outfits, face perfectly made up and wearing enough attitude to give a street gang a run for their money.
But like this…she looks different. Sweeter. As vulnerable as Chloe warned me that she is.
As she turns to put things on the counter, I feel like a total perv for getting off to images of her in the shower earlier. Because with her hair swept back to the side and held in place by a flower barrette and her face washed clean of the omnipresent makeup she wears like armor, she looks about fifteen.
But she isn’t, I remind myself as I clear my throat to make my presence known. She’s in her twenties, and is currently the victim of a sex-tape scandal that’s obviously shaken her. So definitely not the naïve fifteen-year-old she resembles right now, but still definitely vulnerable.
Which is why, as I walk closer, I shove my hands into my pockets to ensure I won’t do anything stupid—like slide a finger down the gorgeous swirls of ink on her bare arm or across the sliver of skin between the bottom of
her tank top and the top of her pants.
“I thought you’d still be napping,” I say as I stop on the other side of the center island from her.
“Couldn’t sleep.” She dumps a carton of organic blackberries in a bowl, then turns toward the sink to wash them. “So I figured I’d blend.”
“Blend?”
“Yep.” She nods toward where Ethan’s prize Vitamix sits in a position of honor. “Your brother-in-law is always going on about the stress-relieving properties of making smoothies—and drinking them—so I thought I’d give it a try.”
She reaches for a carton of strawberries next, and after washing them begins to clean them.
“I didn’t know you knew how to…” I trail off because I’m not sure whether or not to call what she’s doing cooking. But she is currently hulling those strawberries like a pro.
“Do anything?” She finishes my sentence with a self-deprecating laugh, but one with a slight edge to it. “Yeah, you’re not the only one.”
There’s a story there—poor little rich girl, and all that—but I’m not up for digging around to find it. And won’t be until I have a cup of coffee…or six. “I was going to say I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I know it’s a shock, but I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she says with a shrug. “Besides, there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“I could say the same thing to you, you know.”
“As if,” she answers with a snort. “I know everything I need to know about you.”
“I’m more than the mistake I made more than seven years ago.”
“It was a pretty big mistake.”
“Yeah, it was. But yours is a pretty raunchy sex tape and I’m guessing there’s more to you than what’s on that video. Or are you really just ‘the most spankable piece of ass on the planet’?” I quote Parson’s lame bedroom talk back to her.
“Parsons is an asshole.”
“No doubt. So are my parents, obviously. I’m willing to take responsibility for being an ignorant dick who didn’t question what he should have when it came to the money my parents used to start the company, but that mistake—no matter how bad it was—isn’t all I am.” To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s Tori I’m hoping to convince, or myself. Because I’m not, I continue, “Just like that sex tape isn’t all you are, no matter what it feels like right now.”
She slams the strawberry bowl onto the counter with a thump, and I brace myself for the explosion I can see brewing in the depths of her eyes. But in the end, she doesn’t explode. In fact, she doesn’t say anything at all. Instead she grabs two bananas from the bunch and starts peeling them.
I wait a few seconds, just to see what’s going to happen. But when nothing does, I make my way around the island to the coffeemaker. After all, pushing her buttons is usually as fun for me as pushing mine is for her. But not if she doesn’t push back. Then I just feel like a bully, and that’s a feeling I can’t abide.
Tori starts the blender at the same time I begin grinding the beans, and for a couple of minutes the noise in the kitchen is bad enough that neither of us can say anything with any hope of being heard.
I watch out of the corner of my eye as Tori finishes up the smoothies, then pours them into two glasses. Before I can say anything about how I prefer coffee, she reaches past me and turns the coffeemaker off before it can so much as get started brewing.
Then she pushes a smoothie at me with a look that tells me I’d better take it. But all she says is, “Too much caffeine makes you impotent,” as she breezes past me and out onto the large patio that overlooks the ocean.
For a second, I think about brewing the coffee anyway—just for spite—but the smoothie she made looks too inviting to turn down. So in the end I grab it and follow her onto the patio. Just because I want to pass along Chloe’s message, I assure myself. Not because I actually want to talk to her.
By the time I make my way outside, Tori is already on the other side of the pool, leaning up against the waist-high rock wall that edges the patio—and the cliff that it’s built on. Beyond her is the blue Pacific, and though it’s a nice day, the water is choppy and rough, the waves pounding against the sand below us with a roar that’s impossible to ignore.
It’s loud enough—and insistent enough—that I glance at the sky and wonder if a storm is brewing. But before I can so much as reach for my phone to confirm what I’m thinking, Tori turns to me with a smirk. “Glad to see you’re taking my warning seriously,” she says, eyeing the smoothie in my hand.
“I like smoothies. So shoot me.”
“Yeah, like that’s all it is.” She glances—very deliberately—down at my crotch, and it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep my dick under control. I might be a big coffee drinker, but impotence is the last thing I’m worried about, especially not when Tori’s around.
“So, Chloe called me. She’s worried about you.”
Tori tenses, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she just keeps looking out at the ocean, her shoulders and her whole body stiff. It’s not the reaction I’m expecting, especially considering how protective Tori usually is of my sister, so I poke a little, trying to figure out what’s going on.
“She’s been trying to get in touch with you all day but you haven’t answered her texts or calls. I told her you were sleeping, but that’s obviously not the case.”
When she still doesn’t answer, I lean against the wall next to her, bump her gently with my shoulder. “She’s not judging you, you know.”
She nods even as she continues staring out at the sea.
“Seriously. She’s upset for you and wants to help. You should let her.”
“There’s nothing she can do to help.”
“She can listen. Help you plot revenge against Parsons, the life-sized dick.”
“You should probably come up with a different nickname for him. His dick really isn’t impressive enough for a name like that.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
She finally looks at me. “You watched it.”
“Only about the first thirty seconds.” I don’t tell her just how many times I’ve seen those first thirty seconds as I’ve checked up on the bots, made sure they were doing what I designed them to do. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Everyone else has seen it. Why shouldn’t you have?” But the ducking of her head, the hunching of her shoulders as if she’s preparing for a blow, says otherwise.
“Don’t,” I say, because I can’t stand to see the usually acerbic, kick-life-in-the-balls Tori so beaten down. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, you know. The release of this sex tape—that’s on him, not you.”
“I know that.”
“Do you really? Because you’re not acting like it.”
She turns to glare at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you should be looking for a way to hit back at Parsons, not hiding out here and trying unsuccessfully to blend your damn stress away.”
“The video is already out there. What exactly do you think I can do about it now?”
“I don’t have a clue. I’m an inventor, not a spin doctor. But you’ve got one of the best PR departments in the world at your disposal and instead of using it, you’re dodging calls from my sister.”
“Frost Industries? You want me to ask Ethan to help me?” She shakes her head.
“I don’t think you have to ask him for help. I think he and Chloe are dying to offer it. You just need to pick up the phone and say yes.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Nothing good ever is. But Jesus Christ, Tori, you can’t just sit here and take it like this. The press is having a fucking field day at your expense even though he’s the douchebag here.”
“Isn’t that the way it always is? Alexander’s the stud and I’m the whore.”
“So change the fucking conversation.” I grab her shoulders, shake her a little. “Call Chloe. Let her and Ethan help you
deal with this. Alexander is an opportunistic bastard who betrayed your trust for a little publicity. Why not call him on it, let the world see who he really is?”
“Nobody cares what the truth is.”
“Maybe not, but you won’t know until you put it out there. You have to take better care of yourself, Tori. You have to stick up for yourself. You can’t blame people for believing his hype if you don’t give them your side of the story.”
For long seconds, she doesn’t say anything else. Instead she just stands there quietly, drinking her smoothie and—I hope—pondering what I’ve said. Eventually, though, the smoothie is gone. And so is the defeated look in her eyes.
“He did this,” she says as she puts her glass down on the nearest table. “Not me. I shouldn’t be the only one paying because he’s an asshole.”
“Exactly,” I agree with a nod.
“I’ll call Chloe, but I need to borrow your phone to do it.”
“My phone?” I ask, even as I reach into my pocket and pull out my iPhone. “What’s wrong with yours?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. Unless you count it currently being in my father’s possession.”
“Your father? Why is that?” I hold my phone out to her.
She takes the phone and a deep breath. Then says, “Because he disowned me this morning.”
Chapter 9
Tori
“Disowned you?” Miles sputters, even as he stares at me like he’s never heard the word before in his life. “What exactly does that mean?”
“You know, disowned. As in, no longer belonging to. As in, no longer his responsibility. As in, no longer allowed access to my trust fund—or the apartment, car, laptop, cellphone, and everything else that I’ve paid for with it. Disowned.”
He still looks confused—which in other circumstances would amuse me, as I never thought it’d be little old me who’d be able to say something to stump the resident genius—so I start to give him yet another definition of the word. But he’s got his hand up in the universal gesture for stop talking, so I do. It’s not like I really wanted to hash it all out again anyway.