by Misti Murphy
He side eyes me too. While we wait for our drinks. When we collect them. As we walk toward the exit. It’s like he’s trying to see through me. Inside me. Like he’s trying to piece it together; why he probably feels like I’m familiar. It’s nerve-wracking.
We stop on the pavement outside the café. He’s still staring at me. The ridges in his forehead have deepened under the bill of his black Lakers cap. And there are crinkles at the corners of his eyes. They make him look even more handsome.
My heartbeat is in my ears. My stomach is in my throat. Here’s where he tells me he knows me.
“You figured it out yet?”
“S-sorry?”
“Who I am.” He smiles. “It’s okay. It happens all the time. People have a hard time placing me. Or they think I’m a character from a film they watched.”
I shake my head and try to burrow my gaze through the lid of my cup. “You’re Rogue Maddox.”
And he has no idea who I am at all.
“You go to school here?” He drinks his coffee as he glances in the direction of campus.
“Yes,” I tell my coffee. Bunny ears. Bunny ears. Bunny ears. I can’t believe he isn’t even slightly aware that he knows me. My chest hurts and I rub at it until I remember that I burnt it with the coffee I spilled when he ran into me.
He peers at me again. “You remind me of someone. I can’t place it. But maybe I saw you last week when we came out to shoot. We’re filming a movie on campus.”
“Oh.” The longer we stand here with him peering at me so intently the harder it is to imagine that I’m in costume. He wouldn’t be so oblivious if I were dressed up. A part of me wishes he’d see through me and realize I’m Uma. Part of me wants him to see through me literally. Like I’m invisible. “M-maybe.”
“It was nice to meet you. And sorry about the coffee again. I was a little preoccupied. It’s a crazy story.” He rubs his fingers over his stubble. It shades his jaw so beautifully. “I won’t bore you with the details.”
I want to feel it under my fingertips. I want it to abrade my skin while he kisses me senseless. My phone starts to ring. It’s Adira. I hold the screen to my chest so he doesn’t see.
“I should go.” He pushes a thumb over his shoulder and gives me a wicked smile. He’s so charming. “I better run. Otherwise I’ll be late. Directors hate that.”
I watch him as he spins on his heel and takes off at a brisk pace before crossing the road. When he disappears around a corner I finally glance down at my phone, clutched against my ruined shirt. I don’t have another one so I’m going to have to go to class like this.
My phone starts to ring for a second time. Adira again.
I swipe my thumb across the screen before I lift it to my ear as I hurry toward class. I’m going to be late too. “You will never believe what just happened. Rogue Maddox just bought me a cup of coffee.”
“What?” he shrills down the phone. “I need details. Were you you or Uma you? What were you wearing?”
“He didn’t recognize me.” I can’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. When I’m Uma there is such a connection between us. How can that just vanish? “He ran into me. I spilled my coffee. He bought me another one. I talked to him. And he still didn’t recognize me.”
“Hold up. Wait. Go back. You talked to him? What?”
“I was going to tell you.” I hurry toward campus. There’s a man taking photos and I swear he aims the lens at me as I pass him. Probably because he saw me with Rogue. I duck my head and move quicker, hoping he won’t manage to take a decent shot. I don’t want to be tomorrow’s news. Nicole would kill me if she thought something was going on between me and the Hollywood bad boy. “Dr. Keller suggested I try to imagine I’m wearing a costume whenever I talk to people I normally wouldn’t. It helped a little. I almost talked to this guy from my statistics class. And then Rogue came in. Did you know they’re shooting a movie on campus?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “Maybe you’ll run into each other again then. And maybe he’ll fall for sweet little Ivy.”
“I doubt it.” I roll my gaze at the fluffy goat shaped cloud overhead. “He doesn’t know I’m alive. Except when I’m Uma. Which reminds me…I might have spilled that you and Uma are friends the other night.”
“I still can’t believe you kept that from me.”
“I know. I’m sorry, but can we please stay on topic?”
“Okay.”
I chew the side of my thumb. At least I’d had the clarity to keep from spilling about him being my cousin. “He might come looking for me.”
“And you want me to…?”
“Uma doesn’t exist,” I say. “It was one night. That’s all. You know it can’t be more complicated than that. You know how Nicole will be. And my brother. I need you to tell him you don’t know me. I don’t exist.”
“Ivy…” He sounds frustrated, and I know what he’s thinking. If Rogue comes looking for me, shouldn’t I at least tell him the truth?
But I don’t have that kind of willpower. All he has to do is crook a little finger or smile at me and I’m going to forget just how complicated my life is. It has to be this way. “Promise me.”
“Fine.” He huffs out a breath.
“Thank you.” Disappointment settles over me, but it really is for the best. I’m already obsessed with Rogue.
“How did it go with Nicole anyway?” Adira asks.
“She’s Nicole,” I say. She has something to say about everything, and even more to say about me. “You know how it goes. My hair needs a cut. I should be wearing contacts because they make my face look prettier. I’ve put on weight. I should probably consider going back on the sleeping pills because I can’t eat if I’m asleep.”
“She did not.”
“She did.” I grimace. That one especially hurt, but the thing is, I don’t think she even registered what she’d said.
“Let me at that stone cold bitch,” Adira snarls. “I don’t care who she is, I’ll kick her scrawny ass for talking to you like that.”
I sigh and move on. “Mostly she wanted to remind me that she’s paying my college tuition and I better not be wasting her time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Adira says.
“Nathaniel was there,” I say. Again. It’s like I can’t turn around without running into him. “She couldn’t sing his praises enough.”
“Your mother is a psychopath,” Adira says. “Seriously, that woman has the emotional bandwidth of a troll. You told her you needed time. Space.”
“She’s impatient. She thinks I’m wasting her time, experiencing life on my own terms when we both know I’m going to fall in line and do what she wants me to once this year is up.”
We’ve never seen eye to eye but it’s been worse these last few years. And lately it’s become almost impossible.
Adira groans. “I don’t know why you still deal with her.”
“You know why.” The lecture hall comes into sight and I book it toward the building.
“Big Dick Love would roll over in his grave, sweetie. You know that. This isn’t what he wanted for you.”
“I promised him.” I jog up the steps and push open the door while I check the time on the slim bracelet watch at my wrist. Two minutes left.
“I don’t think he’d want that for you now though. If he knew. If he was still here—”
“He’s not.” And it breaks my heart. It’s been a year and a half since my dad was killed in a car accident. There was nothing I could do about it. But I can keep my promise to him. I can do that. Somehow. Even if Nicole makes it so damn difficult.
“Ivy—”
“Class is about to start,” I say as I duck into the auditorium and make my way to my usual seat. “I’ve got to go.”
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Adira says.
Ben Duffy glances up and smiles from the spot beside mine. Looks like he meant it when he suggested we should be friends.
“Sure.” I hang up on Adira
just as the professor steps up to the dais. Slip into my seat.
“You made it,” Ben says.
I smile at him. Bunny ears. “I-I did.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rogue
“Get out of my house,” Rebel snarls when I interrupt him and Summer going at it on the kitchen island.
“Oh my God,” Summer says breathlessly, her voice octaves higher than normal.
“Christ.” I shield my eyes with a hand. “Do you have to do that here? Food is prepared on that spot, guys.”
My brother groans gutturally. He’s breathing like a freight train. Something round and hard hits the side of my head. “Get the hell out.”
“So I’ll just…” I wave a thumb over my shoulder. “Go wait. In there. With Dog then. Unless…do you want me to join in? Ever considered getting double teamed, Sum? You’d probably enjoy it.”
“Oh my God,” Summer squeals again, but this time I think I’m the one that elicits that response.
I grin like a cheese ball. “Gods. Plural, kitten.”
Another hard round object hits me in the shoulder. “Get the fuck out.”
“Right.” My lips twitch. I was joking, obviously. Summer is like a sister to me. I adore her for what she’s done to my brother. In fact I adore her so much there’s no way I could possibly stick my dick in her. But when you’re the funny, perverted brother you have to put the work in.
Uma comes to mind as I leave them and their soundtrack of sex noises behind. Try as hard as I might I can’t shake her out. On Sunday morning when I woke up alone I figured maybe she needed space. Like a guy. It’s not like I’ve never committed to disappearing after sex before. Except we hadn’t fucked.
Dog is laying on his back on the couch, legs splayed and belly ready for pats as usual. The tip of his tongue pokes out between his teeth. I whistle and he sighs as he purposefully looks away from me.
“Come on, you.” I tap my leg a couple of times.
Another groan and he drags himself to his feet and hops off the couch to follow me outside. We make our way off the deck and around the pool to the lawn where a couple of his toys are.
I pick up one of Dog’s squeaky balls—the kind that isn’t covered in fur like a tennis ball, because apparently they wear down a dog’s teeth—and toss it for the old champ. He watches the ball roll across the short lawn until it comes to a stop. Then looks at me like he expects me to do it again.
“I don’t think so, buddy. Not until you go get that one.”
He huffs and then trots across the grass. Straight past the ball. A couple of yards later he stops to squat.
I leave him to it. Retrieving a beer from the fridge on the deck, I check the time on my phone. It’s almost five o’clock and my notifications are pretty bland. I use my thumb to knock the cap off my bottle and toss it in the trash before I take a seat on one of the comfy outdoor lounges to scroll through my messages.
Bianca Del Ray is hosting a Halloween party. When is that anyway? Two weeks from now. Riot will be home from his tour by then. Linc will be back from Europe. It’ll definitely be fun. Bianca’s parties are always hectic.
I text Ro to see if she’s going.
Scroll through a couple of messages from girls I’ve dated who can’t get enough of the Maddox D. Unlike some people who promised to go to breakfast with me then disappeared in the middle of the night.
I figured I’d give her three days to come find me. Surely she’d be wound up and in need of another orgasm by then. And since she knows Adira, who has my digits and a hankering for the dramatic, there’s no way he wouldn’t hand them over if Uma—whatever her real name is—asked for them.
Except apparently my plan to blue ball her backfired and the only one addicted here is me. It’s been over a week and I’m still thinking about her.
The bright pink ball rolls across the deck in front of me as Dog drops down beside me. “Yep, we both have ball troubles, don’t we, buddy?”
“What are you doing here?” Rebel asks as he finally appears through the sliding doors. Barefoot and shirtless, he grabs himself a beer. “And why are you drinking my beer? I thought you were staying at your place again.”
What he means is he wishes I would stay at my penthouse instead of crashing at his house. But I’m not here to make his life easy. I’m here to keep it fun. “Get mauled by a tiger?”
“Huh?” He scrubs a hand through his hair and sits down opposite me. Plunking his bare feet on his coffee table, he twists the cap off his Heineken and raises it to his lips.
“Summer ripped strips off you.”
He grins. “Yeah, she did.”
A message comes in and I pounce on it faster than Satan’s kitten on a ball of yarn.
“Let me guess.” He rolls his gaze at the metal ceiling fan overhead. “Hot date?”
“Hmm. No. Apparently I’ve been avoiding paying my taxes. And now I’m going to be arrested unless I transfer sixty-thousand dollars to this number. It’s legit, right?” I push my phone at him. “Look legit to you?”
“You’re a fucking moron.” He laughs.
My brother carries too much weight on his shoulders. He’s like the damn Godfather of our Brady Bunch of Hollywood rejects. He doesn’t give a shit what people think of him and he walks around with a permanent scowl. It’s my mission in life to crack his composure at every available opportunity. “Whatever.”
“Did that say Ro is going to Bianca’s Halloween birthday bonanza?”
“Looks like it.” I smile.
“That’s…”
“She’s trying,” I say. “It’s gotta be hard.”
“Should I not go then?” His face contorts as his emotions bubble to the surface. He misses Ro but he wants to give her space too.
“No. We’re all going. I’m even going to bring Uma Cookie.”
“Are we back to that again?” He finishes his beer and gets up to collect two more. Handing one to me, he says, “I thought we’d decided she wasn’t real.”
“She’s real. I’m not hallucinating. And she looks great in costume.” I’m not losing my mind. I’m not having a mental breakdown. I’m not like Mom. “That’s who I spent Saturday night with.”
“Wait. Hang on. You left me to deal with your date, who was kind of pissed by the way, so you could get frisky with a woman who calls herself Uma Cookie? I’m going to have to find Dog a new groomer, thanks to you.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” It does sound a little out there. Plus, we were only mildly frisky. We spent most of the evening talking. I enjoyed every minute of it.
“What the fuck is that look?” he says.
“What look?” I realize I’m simpering like some nostalgic fool and get rid of that shit quick.
“I don’t know.” He holds his beer between his knees as he leans forward to study me. “You didn’t fuck her, did you?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“So no.”
I crack under the intense interrogation of his stare. “Fuck it. No, I didn’t.”
Summer comes outside with a glass of wine. She’s smiling and wearing Rebel’s absent T-shirt. Curling up on the couch beside him, she settles one hand on his thigh while he automatically wraps an arm around her.
Rebel shakes his head. “He didn’t fuck her.”
“Who are we talking about?” Summer asks. “Is this the girl whose dad shot at you? Do I need to make another statement? Was she…too young?”
“Jesus, Sum.” I’m insulted. “You know I have some standards.”
“Christ, kitten. Really?” Rebel echoes the sentiment. “He has standards.”
She shrugs. “Sometimes bad shit happens to good people. You two know this.”
“She was old enough,” I growl. “I don’t troll schools and campuses looking for children. I date full grown women who are old enough to go to a fucking bar.”
If I was going to change my standards, I might have asked out that cute girl I spilled coffee all over. But
I don’t do that. I would never do that.
She’d been weirdly familiar too. Couldn’t place her for the life of me though. Was too busy staring at the pap across the road taking pictures to even ask her name. Not that it matters. She’s not Uma Cookie.
“Okay.” Summer puts her hands up in surrender. “Settle down. I wasn’t saying you did.”
“Uma Cookie.” Rebel brings us back on topic. “Apparently he spent the night with her on Saturday. Didn’t fuck her though.”
“Hey, I don’t fuck everything that walks,” I retort.
“No, but you’re obsessed with this chick. You totally would have fucked her. Unless you ended up drunk and walking around by yourself.”
“Again. I would like to reiterate that I am not having a mental breakdown.” I pull out my phone and scroll to my brother’s name and pull up the chat box which I’ve carefully avoided using to preserve her text. “She left me a message.”
Rebel takes my phone and peers at the screen. Summer reads it over his shoulder and purses her lips.
“It hasn’t been sent,” Rebel says. “And it’s in a chat box to me. This isn’t definitive proof of anything.”
“She’s real.” I huff out a breath as I snatch my phone back.
“Well, don’t make any babies then.” Rebel laughs. “They might come out chocolate-chip.”
“You’re a jackass,” I clap back. “Summer, kitten, how do you put up with this asshole? Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to trade him in for a better model?”
“What, the sports model? Zero to done in thirty seconds?”
“Oh, baby.” I run a hand down my torso and cup my junk. “I can go all night long.”
“Cut that shit the fuck out,” Rebel growls.
“He’s just stirring,” Summer says. “Because he knows it pushes your buttons.”
“Kitten.” He picks her up and deposits her on his lap. “Hawthorne fucking threatened to hurt you. I’m on edge and my asshole twin thinks it’s funny to say shit like that to the woman I love. I want to smack him around a little bit, to be honest.”