Busted (Stacked Deck Book 11)

by Emilia Finn

  “Emma, stop.”

  When Luke tries to grab me and disguise it as a hug, I sidestep his hold and dash into the hall.

  “Robert-fucking-Hart,” I shout and skid to a stop at the first door. My fucking stomach wants to drop to the floor when I find Grace Risotto sitting on Rob’s bed. “What the fuck?”

  Grace wears skintight jeans and a floaty shirt – an outfit that would already piss me off, considering she’s wearing a push-up bra three cups too small to maximize spillage. But it’s worse. So much fucking worse that she’s sitting in Rob’s room, on Rob’s bed. She’s sitting on the side of the bed that I sleep. Touching the fucking pillow that my head rested on last night. She’s in my space, and Rob is doing nothing to make it stop.

  “What the actual fuck?”

  “We’re in the middle of something right now,” Grace smirks.

  My eyes flick between her and Rob – the slut and, for some insane reason, the coward who won’t look me in the eye.

  “Rob?”

  “So, crack and strippers?” Luke jokes. “I guess Grace is back for the month, which means Emma needs a distraction before she gets violent.”

  “No!” I slap Luke’s hand away and glare at Rob. “We’re not doing that anymore. No more.”

  We’re together now! I shout it in my head. Dammit, Rob. Things have changed.

  “Move along,” Grace dismisses me with a flick of her wrist. “We’re not done here.”

  “Listen here, bitch!” I storm forward, only to be lifted from the ground and swung around in Luke’s arms, but I don’t miss the way Rob steps in front of Grace. Stopping me. Protecting her.

  No, the universe makes sure I see that.

  “You need to leave, slut! This is my home too, and I’m telling you to get the fuck out!” I claw at Luke’s hands, draw blood with my nails, and risk his face when I swing my head back and attempt to dislodge his hold. “I’m gonna take your face off!”

  “EmKat, stop.”

  “Don’t tell me to stop!” I scramble to look over Luke’s shoulder. “Don’t call me EmKat! Tell her to get out!”

  “I can’t,” Rob chokes out.

  My heart stumbles, and my stomach hollows.

  “What?”

  “Emma…” His voice drips with pain. “Can you go home? I’ll call you tomorrow or something.”

  “You’ll call me?” My eyes whip to Grace and her arrogant grin. Her perfectly styled hair with the curled ends that tempt me to grab on and tear it the fuck out. Her exceptionally fake tits pushed up to spill out of her bra. Then I look back to Rob. “You’ll call me? You’re seriously asking me to leave, so she can stay, and you’re just gonna pencil me into your schedule, or something?”

  “Go away.” Grace is either unbelievably brave, or stupid. Or, more likely, secure in the knowledge that Rob will protect her. “We don’t need you here right now.”

  “Bitch!” I escape Luke’s arms and bound forward, making it a couple steps into the room before he grabs me again. Rob stays exactly where he is – Grace’s protector. “I want to speak to my best fucking friend,” I snarl. “I do not need to garner your permission for that.”

  “Don’t you?” She stands on heels that are ridiculous for this bullshit occasion. Straightening her long legs, shaking back her silky hair, she steps in front of Rob and preens. “I think perhaps things have changed… again. I’m going to need you to move along.”

  “I’ve tolerated you! Prom, high school, after graduation. I’ve tolerated your skank ass treating him like shit, and you never deserved him! But if you don’t walk away right now, I’m gonna boot your flat ass out the fucking window.” I look to Rob and demand, “I want to talk to you. Now!”

  “EmKat,” he groans. “You need to stop.”

  “Stop what?” I try again to move forward, only for the air to leave my lungs and my heart to come to a screeching stop when his hand goes to her hip. Not protection anymore, but… affection? Loyalty? “What the—”

  “I need you to go.” His eyes drop when Grace brings her chin up. He chooses her, but I guess he has the presence of mind to not want her to antagonize me. “I have some stuff here I have to take care of, so maybe you could just…”

  “Don’t fuck this up, Robert Hart. You only get one chance not to break my heart.”

  “I just…” He shakes his head. “I can’t… This… I can’t right now. I have other things, pressing things I have to—”

  “Pressing things?” I demand venomously. “More pressing than me walking out right now?”

  “Yep.” Grace – fucking slut Grace – answers for him with a cruel smile. “He’s busy here, and you’re only embarrassing yourself, so…”

  “Embarrassing myself?” I jump forward again. It’s useless, because my other best friend is stronger than I’ll ever be, and his reflexes are fast.

  Luke sweeps me up and spins me away, but I shout anyway.

  “Embarrassing myself?” Do not cry. Do not fucking cry while being held back by the wrong effing twin. “The only person embarrassed here is gonna be you, slut, when I rearrange your face and it just so happens to look better afterwards.”

  “EmKat! I need you to leave. Right now, I need you to go.”

  “I will not leave!” I roar and almost escape Luke’s hold. “This is my place to be, not hers!”

  “Just go!” Rob shouts when his last thread of patience severs.

  My thrashing stops. My shouting and demands. They all stop at the hardness in his voice.

  “Just leave, Em. Fuck! Why can’t you take a fucking hint?”

  For the first time since I was a teen, my voice cracks, and in my chest, my heart thuds with pain. “You want me to take a hint?”

  “Really,” Grace sneers. “Most chicks tend to figure it out the second or third time a man says to go away.”

  “I just…” If I stare at Grace any longer, I’m going to rip her face off. So I look to Rob instead.

  Sadly, this might be the worse option.

  “Rob. But we… It all changed.”

  “Enough,” he groans. “Just fucking stop, Em.”

  “Fart!”

  “Please leave.” The words literally hurt him. His eyes shutter, and his shoulders bow. He doesn’t want to say it, but still, the words pass his kissable lips. “Go away, Em. I’ll call you when I can.”

  “You will, huh?” I jolt and dislodge Luke’s steely hold. “You’ll summon me when it’s convenient for you?”

  “EmKat…”

  “Fuck yourself, Fart.” Shaking my head – anything to hide the tears in my eyes – I spin out of the room and slam my palm against the wall in the hall.

  I steamroll through the living room, the kitchen, and when I catch sight of the Star Wars glassware I bought stacked on the counter, I slap them so the whole set pings into each other and topples. Glass explodes, shattering against tile and bouncing off the six-foot-tall ice cream statue standing beside the fridge.

  I hiss at the shards that nick my legs, but yanking the door open, I storm into the hall and stop again at the sight of Mabel standing on the opposite side of the walkway.

  “Sorry for the noise.” I slam Rob’s door closed at my back, and hiding my face, bring a hand up and swipe the tears that pool under my eyes. “Maybe don’t call me if they’re causing trouble,” I choke out and pray my heart doesn’t fall onto the floor in front of me. “Pretty sure I was just dumped and dismissed.”

  “Boys are stupid,” the sweet old lady murmurs. “When they’re eight, when they’re twenty-eight, and still when they’re in their eighties. Always so stupid.” She takes a step back and opens her door to reveal her entrance. “Come inside, honey. It just so happens I baked this morning. You can have a cookie, and as punishment, since those boys are stupid, they won’t get any.”

  Rob

  Judgment Day

  “What the fuck was that?” Luke stands in my doorway, in shock as Grace slithers out of my hold and goes back to sit on my bed.


  She likes Luke as much as he likes her… not even a little bit. So now that EmKat has gone – her only competition in this world – she drops her defensive bit and steps away so I can face my brother on my own.

  “You just sent Emma away!” Luke roars. “So Grace Risotto could stay?”

  “Leave it alone, Luke.”

  I storm forward with the intention to shove my brother out and slam the door in his face, but he’s focused, and I’m working through the biggest fucking shock of my life, so instead of letting himself be shoved out, he grabs on and swings me out with him.

  He manages to grab the door and slam it closed, then he stands in the way with his hands behind his back; I suspect to keep the door closed.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he whisper-growls. “We do not choose snatch over family. I know sex is fun and all, but Emma is one of us, asshole!”

  He has no clue EmKat and I are more. No clue that my whole world is falling apart… or that I just kicked my whole world out the door.

  “Rob!” he explodes when I say nothing.

  “You need to leave it alone,” I squeeze my eyes closed. “Please just leave it alone.”

  “It’s Grace Risotto! She’s a chick, sure, and she ain’t ugly. But she’s not quality, Rob. She’s casual fun.”

  “You need to stop!” I open my eyes and snarl, “Just fucking stop! Jesus, Luke. You’re like Em; won’t take a hint when I ask for a second of peace.”

  “We don’t have to take a fucking hint,” he growls. “We’re Luke and Em. We are excluded from taking hints! We get to push, push, push until you own up to your shit and tell the fucking truth about why you just asked Emma fucking Kincaid to leave, but Grace Alfredo got to stay.”

  “I can hear you, asshole!”

  “Good!” Luke shoves the door open to reveal Grace resting on my bed – it’s unmade, and littered with clothes I’ve yet to put away. “Hear me, homewrecker! You ain’t shit. You’re a bitch that he sometimes likes to fuck. I never liked you, but just like Em, I tolerated you. Now you’ve gone and hurt Em’s feelings, which means you don’t get tolerance anymore. You get a boot up your ass until you leave again, and you,” he turns back to me, “get a claw fucking hammer to the side of your head until you smarten the hell up. Maybe, mayyyyybe,” he drags the word out, “if you’d found your forever chick, I would excuse you for being a prick to Em. Not really,” he adds, “because shitting on family is never okay, but I guess I could sorta understand it. I could smooth out the edges for you. But not Grace. Keeping her and sending Em away was the stupidest shit you have ever done.”

  “You have no clue what you’re talking about.” I grab Luke and yank him back out of my room and into the hall. “When you don’t have all the information, you don’t get an opinion. So sit down and shut the fuck up.”

  I step into my bedroom and grab the door handle before he can barrel past and shove his way back in. “Go clean up whatever the hell Em just destroyed in the kitchen, and until I can get my life straightened out, stay the fuck out of my way.”

  “For Grace Ravioli?” he booms. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “Rob?” Grace’s voice is soft, gentle and smug.

  I close my eyes, squeeze them shut, and shake my head. I just need a second. A minute.

  A fucking reset.

  Opening my eyes again, I meet Luke’s confused gaze and sigh. “I need space. I need you to stay away for a minute.”

  Then I close the door and shit on the second most important person in my world.

  My mom and dad are important to me. My aunts and uncles. My cousins, nieces, and nephews. All of these people make up the foundations of my life. But on top of them is Em and Luke.

  It’s always been Em and Luke.

  But now there’s one more. And I have to put her on top.

  I have to.

  “Good work.” Grace purrs and brings the hair on my arms to stand on end.

  Her voice alone makes my spine tingle, but it’s not a pleasant feeling. It’s not a sensation I enjoy. In fact, if I could go back to high school and say no to her prom invitation, I would. I’d say no, I’d tell Em to decline her date, then we would stay in together.

  And there, that year – that night – I would tell her how I feel. I would make our relationship a reality, and I wouldn’t make us wait years, until she was the one who decided to make a move.

  If I made different choices way back at prom, then none of this would be happening.

  I angle forward and drop my forehead against my door with a deep thunk.

  “Rob? Honey? I’m thirsty. Could you get me a glass of water?”

  I draw a sigh so deep, so filling, that my chest expands and pushes me away from the door. Then I exhale again and feel an actual ache settle into my bones.

  “Rob? Water.”

  “Yeah.”

  My eyes burn, and my throat aches, but I swallow to lubricate it, and I man up. Because this is what it’s all about, right? Taking responsibility for my actions. Accepting them, and not skipping out because something else would be more fun.

  Opening my door without turning to look at Grace, I step into the hall with tears burning my eyes. But I ignore them. And I ignore Grace. I make my way down the hall and into the living room and, stopping on the threshold, I catch sight of Luke sweeping up broken glass with a tea towel, since we don’t have a broom yet.

  “You chose wrong.” He doesn’t look up at me. He makes no other reaction to my presence. He only works, and focuses on getting all of the broken glass. “You fucked up, brother. And hell, usually the fuck-up in our duo is me.”

  “Luke, just…”

  He glances over with pure grief in his eyes. “Typical, that when you choose to become me, you go big. You told Em to leave, and you let Grace stay. That was a massive fucking deal.”

  “She’s pregnant.” I exhale the words, I share them, offload them, and pray that maybe, somehow, I can make the load a little lighter simply by sharing them with my big brother. Tears fill my eyes, they flood in the corners, and spill over into my lashes.

  Luke’s back snaps straight when he processes the words. His shoulders broaden, and the pile of glass he’d collected scatters as he drops the pieces and the towel to the floor. “She…” He pushes up to stand. Slowly. Purposely. “What?”

  “She’s pregnant,” I choke out and try – I swear I try – to swallow down the cry that wants to tear along my throat. “That’s why she’s calling all the damn time. She needed to tell me, but I kept ignoring her calls.”

  “She’s… uh…” Luke’s chest lifts and drops. His face pales. But in the tops of his cheeks, two rosy patches of red form. And I’m not sure that’s ever happened before. “You… um…” And then he drops down onto his ass the way a sack of rice might collapse when being dropped. “Fuck.”

  “I didn’t choose wrong.”

  I breathe past my mourning; of Em, of my life as I knew it, of my twenties and my lifestyle. I say goodbye to the relationship I have with my twin brother, and with my parents. I say goodbye to my carefree life of work, then home, fighting, then chilling the fuck out. I say goodbye to Robert Hart, and worst of all, I say goodbye to the relationship Emma and I have just begun… because after this, nothing is going to be the same.

  Then I say hello to Rob: dad, husband-probably. Grace’s little bitch.

  To be in my child’s life will mean to be in Grace’s. And I would be lying to myself if I pretended she might somehow mellow out and stop being a total bitch.

  Motherhood isn’t going to mellow her out – if anything, it’s going to make her a million times more uptight. And if I want any kind of relationship with my child, then I’ll have no choice but to tolerate that behavior.

  For the rest of my fucking life.

  “I chose wrong back in high school,” I croak out. “But I didn’t choose wrong today. I had to choose my baby.”

  “Yeah.”

  Luke crawls across the floor in the glass, in the me
ss Emma left behind. He crawls on his hands and knees, and when he reaches my side, he grabs my hand and yanks me down until I sit beside him. Then, curled up beside the table, he hugs me so fucking tight that my tears fall freely, and the cry that tears along my throat echoes in the kitchen.

  “It’s gonna be okay.” He hugs my face to his chest and squeezes me close, even as his voice breaks. “It’ll be okay. Everything will be fine.”

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad yet. I’m not– I can’t—”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” he promises. “Not a soul.”

  “Emma deserves better,” I cry. I fucking cry, like a baby, and I honestly have no clue the last time I did that. “I can’t tell her yet.”

  “When the time is right, we’ll tell her,” he promises. “She’ll be okay. She’ll smack you for asking her to leave, then she’ll toss a bag of chips into your lap and turn a movie on. She’ll be your baby’s aunt, just like it was always gonna be.”

  “My baby’s aunt,” I repeat on a groan.

  “You were eventually gonna procreate, stupid. It’s happening sooner than we expected, and with a fucking bitch, but the main points remain the same. You’re gonna be a dad.”

  And I think those words being said out loud – ‘You’re gonna be a dad’, rather than ‘Grace is pregnant’ – is when it truly hits him. That changes the focus, it changes responsibility.

  “Fuck,” he breathes out. “You’re gonna be a dad.”

  Rob

  Time Passes

  I work in the octagon inside my family’s gym. It’s September, which means the Stacked Deck tournament is just a few months away. Fifteen weeks.

  My life is now reduced to week-long blocks.

  It’s been three weeks since I last spoke to EmKat.

  Two more weeks until Grace and I go in for a scan to see the baby.

  Four weeks until my next appointment at Inkalot; kinda wondering if I’ll be missing that slot.

  Fifteen weeks until the tournament.

  Twenty-nine-ish weeks until the baby’s supposed due date.