Chapter 17
Learn the Hard Way
Bash
“It’s mortifying, Sebastian. I can’t show my face in public. I’m living like a hermit. Are you sure you don’t want to fly to Rome for a week? We can hit up all your favorite shops and I’ll even go with you to the Colosseum this time.” My mother sounded frantic, and she must be desperate if she was offering to actually do something as basic as seeing one of Italy’s biggest tourist destinations. Last time we’d been in Rome, all I wanted to do was see the Vatican and the Colosseum. My parents refused, telling me our time was better spent dining at the finest restaurants and spending obscene amounts of money in every designer shop we stumbled upon. It was the same in every city. My mom wouldn’t dare be photographed at the Eiffel tower or along the canals of Venice, but there were no less than a thousand paparazzi shots of her coming and going from Louis Vuitton and Chanel.
I squeezed my cell between my cheek and my shoulder, as I concentrated on getting the black nail polish off my fingers. Apparently, my father had been snapped in an intimate embrace with an up-and-coming actress, twenty years younger than my mother. In fact, she was only a year older than I was. It wasn’t anything new; the only difference was I wasn’t around for my mother to drag out like a show pony. I wasn’t there to deflect attention away from their sham of a marriage.
“My stylist knows that supermodel Devante. He’s in Milan right now working for Valentino. I bet she would hook you up with him if I asked her.” There was no asking with my mother. She would demand the woman make magic happen, and if the poor woman didn’t follow through, she would be ruined. My mother was not the forgive-and-forget-type. “Just think how much the press would love my beautiful boy hooking up with a supermodel. They would lose their minds for pictures of the two of you together.”
I studied my naked nails and waited until I didn’t want to bite her selfish head off before replying. “I can’t go to Rome. I have midterms coming up.”
She sighed dramatically and I could hear her long nails tapping on something. “This is serious, Sebastian. There’s more than one picture floating around out there. I’m going to look like a fool if I don’t leave him this time. We’re your family. Every opportunity you’ve had is because of your father and me. Don’t you want what’s best for all of us?”
I groaned and dropped my head so my forehead banged on the keyboard of my laptop. Why did I even bother answering the phone when she called? Nothing ever changed. I was so twisted up about the situation with Edge and Cutter, and so stressed from avoiding both of them, I wasn’t thinking straight.
“No, Mom. I want what’s best for me for once. I want to ace my midterms and to visit NYU over spring break. I do not want to be a diversion for you to look good in the press while Dad sticks his dick anywhere he pleases.” She gasped so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “And what’s best for you is to stop putting up with his garbage. Stop trying to spin everything to make it look like you’re still in love and happy together. You’re never going to convince anyone he’s a good man, or you’re a good woman.” Or a good mother, but it wasn’t like she cared about my opinion one way or the other. “If you want a story that’s guaranteed to take attention off of his latest tramp, leave him. You’ll be in every headline in every paper.” It was an old argument, one I never won.
She scoffed at me and I heard the tapping start up again. “I’m not leaving him, but maybe it’s time I stop letting him hog the spotlight. I wonder how he would like it if I was the one getting snapped with a young, devastatingly attractive replacement. I need to find someone more famous than your father, someone relevant and shocking.” I could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. My mother was no stranger to infidelity, but out of the two of them, she tended to be discreet and quiet. She was the one with the tarnished reputation and the figurative scarlet letter on her chest. She didn’t need the world knowing my father’s previous marriage wasn’t the only one she’d ruined.
I lifted my head and let it fall. I was working on a short story for my creative writing class. It was a good one. We were supposed to be using the setting to describe moods and build the atmosphere, and since everything right now felt heavy and bleak, I was having a field day with subtext and the underlying emotion. I wasn’t typically a romance fan, leaning more toward mystery and suspense, but everything I was feeling toward Edge bled from the words on my laptop screen. I had to admit that until my mother called, it was very liberating.
“You know, that isn’t the kind of information most mothers would share with their kid?” The woman was clueless and really incapable of seeing beyond herself.
She scoffed at me again. “Who else am I going to tell? Anyone else would run straight to the tabloids. You’re all I have.” Sadly, that was true. She didn’t have friends, or confidants. Whenever anyone got close, without fail, they tried to exploit both of my parents—her last close female friend fucked my dad when they went away on vacation together.
“If I’m all you have, Mom, you might want to do a better job taking care of me.” I said it sarcastically, but I meant it. I was the one she always turned to, but she was never, ever there when I needed her. “Did you even hear me when I told you I got into both NYU and Columbia?”
She made a humming noise, but I could tell I’d lost her. She was formulating her plan for revenge against my father, and once again, I was insignificant.
“New York is dreadful in both the summer and winter. Why would you ever want to live there?” She launched into some story about sharing an apartment with five other girls when she had started out modeling. I listened absently, cringing when my phone beeped indicating another call was coming through. It had to be Edge. He called at least six times a day, texted triple that amount, and showed up at the door at least once. It’d been a week since I walked in on that kiss between him and Cutter.
I hadn’t lied; I wasn’t mad at him—at either of them. What I was, was confused and unsure of how much deeper I wanted to get in with a guy I was pretty sure I didn’t have the means to keep anyway. Senior year was flying by. I had a solid plan for what my life was going to look like after I graduated, and I wasn’t convinced there was a place in that vision for someone who took up as much space and demanded as much effort as Rutledge Darby did.
I must have muttered his name or let it slip out on a sigh because the next thing I knew my mother stopped mid-sentence and demanded, “Do you know Alexander Darby’s son? I heard he went to that school you insisted on us sending you to. Have you introduced yourself to him? Is he gay? There have been rumors for years. Alex Darby supposedly pays major cash to keep everything about his kid quiet. Oh, my God. If you hooked up with him that would be even better than Devante. The press would go apoplectic to get a picture of you with the elusive billionaire heir.”
I lifted my head off my keyboard and rocked back in my chair. Jesus, if my mom was shipping us then it had to be the worst idea ever.
“We have a class together. I run into him occasionally. We don’t exactly move in the same circles.” Unless we were naked, then we definitely moved in the same circles.
“Would it kill you to try and get in with the right people, Bash?” She was close to losing her temper if she was calling me Bash—she said it sounded uncouth and dirty. She never used it unless she was trying to hammer a point home.
“You got in with all the right people, Mom. Can you tell me you’re happy? Is this how you always imagined your life? Disappointed in your son, and always trying to one-up your husband?” I bit out each word, exhausted from the conversation and from thinking things would ever be different. This was the mother I was given, and there was no changing that.
“Stop being difficult. I’ve seen pictures of him. He’s gorgeous. Why wouldn’t you want to get close to a boy who looks like that, and has more money and influence than God? I swear, if you didn’t look like me, I would have no trouble believing you’d been switched at birth.” She rattled off a few more insults and told me I should reconsider my stance on Edge. Finally, enough was enough, and I cut her off. I told her I had to study and I hoped everything would work out for her. I had no doubt next time she called it would be because she’d put her plan in motion.
After I hung up, I threw the phone at the bed and glared at it like it had personally done me wrong.
Mac picked that moment to saunter back into the room. He tossed me an orange and lifted his eyebrows at me. “How was Mommie Dearest?” He perched on the end of the bed, watching me closely.
“The same as always.” I started peeling the orange. “She wants me to make a move on Edge. It’ll look good if it gets out.”
He snorted. “It would never get out. That boy is not shy and has never been a saint. His family buries it all and the world keeps on guessing.” He nudged me with his foot. “But for what it’s worth, I also think it’s time you make a move. Either cut him loose or reel him in, Bash. Keeping him on the hook isn’t fair to either of you. He’s trying. That’s something he’s never had to do before.”
I threw a piece of the peel at him. “What if trying isn’t enough?”
He shook his head, red hair flopping in his emerald eyes. “Honey, that’s all anyone can do. They have to try so they can succeed or fail.”
“It’s easy to say that, but failing is really scary. Everyone who was ever supposed to care has let me down, Mac. Not sure I can take that when it comes to him.”
He tossed the orange peel back at me and flopped back on the bed. “He will let you down, and you’ll let him down. It happens. We’re human, so we aren’t perfect. What matters is that you’re sorry when it happens, and you learn that lesson so it doesn’t happen again.” He picked my phone up when it pinged again. “It’s Edge. He’s headed to the gym. He’d really like you to text him, or call him back when you get a second. He’s practically begging you, Bash. You aren’t stupid. You know guys like Edge don’t put this kind of effort into getting laid. You matter to him.”
His words knocked something loose in my head. I’d been so focused on how much I’d hurt, and how bad I would feel when we inevitably crashed and burned, I didn’t give his feelings a second thought. I was pretty messed up and not the best at dealing with people. There was a good chance I was the one who was going to screw this up, but Edge wasn’t running away from that. He was willing to give me a chance to work through all the things I didn’t know.
“Are you sure you’re the son of a mob boss and not the son of a shrink?” I said it teasingly, but Mac still lifted a foot and kicked me in the side of the thigh as I threw the now peeled orange at him. He didn’t hesitate to pry into anyone and everyone’s life. There were no secrets hidden from Malachi O’Shea. But he was far less eager to share anything about his life and skeletons. The boy was an enigma, and I was starting to realize how lucky I was no one else could handle him. My time at Castle Pines was going to be full of fond memories and would make excellent stories out in the real world, mostly because of him.
“Get off your ass and go get your man. I’m tired of watching you both mope around, and I miss cuddling between the two of you in the morning.” He pointed to the door.
“You know, that wasn’t exactly Edge’s favorite part of spending the night in our room.” I caught the piece of orange he threw at me and took a bite out of it.
“Honey, if it was his favorite, I’d be offering to show you what you’re doing wrong between the sheets.”
He was laughing when I bent over him to snatch my phone up. I dropped a kiss on his cheek and whispered a sincere, “Thank you.”
I was stubborn, but I wasn’t stupid. Sometimes I just needed a nudge in the right direction… or a forceful shove if the person helping me along was Mac.