KYLE

“Good morning, Momma P.” I brushed past my stepmom, Rebecca, and headed straight for the pile of bacon.

“Kyle, it is no ready,” Loretta, our housemaid, sang as she batted me away with the towel in her hands.

“Come on, I’m starving.” I flashed her a wide grin and her scowl melted away as she rolled her eyes.

“That smile, it will break hearts, no?”

“He breaks mine daily,” Rebecca added, draining her coffee and placing the mug in the sink. “Kyle, I don’t know how many times I’ve already asked, but please do not call me—”

“Momma P,” I said stuffing bacon into my mouth.

Cussing under her breath she levelled me with her best mom-look. “I have an event at The Coastal tonight and your father is working late. Try not to get into any trouble.”

I shrugged in a ‘who me?’ way and she cussed again. “When your sisters decide to get out of bed, tell them I’ll see them tomorrow. And behave, all of you.”

Offering her a two-fingered salute, I went back to my plate of bacon, loading extra pieces on. Loretta moved quietly around the vast kitchen, dusting and wiping while humming a tune. For an exuberant over-the-top Mexican woman, she sure knew how to dial it down.

“Good morning.” Summer breezed into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Do I smell bacon?”

“I tried to stop him, Miss Summer,” Loretta mumbled, disappearing into the hallway.

“Seriously, Kyle,” Summer said taking a seat opposite me. “Where do you put it all?”

“What? I’m hungry.”

“You just ate a whole pig.”

“And I loved every bit of it.” I smirked, and she poked her tongue out at me. “So, Sis, what are your plans for this beautiful day?”

“Nick’s coming over.”

“Oh, is he indeed? Well I had strict orders from Momma P that we’re all to behave. So downstairs, where I can keep an eye on the two of you, got it?”

“Kyle!”

“Summer...” My brows quirked up.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Does this face look like it’s kidding?” I pointed at myself.

“You’re not my babysitter.”

“Oh, but I am. I’m the eldest, ergo you baby,”—I jabbed my finger at her and then at myself—“me sitter.”

“If you want to play who’s eldest, I think you’ll find it's Maverick, then me, then you, Kyle.” Macey, my stepsister, came into the kitchen looking like something off The Walking Dead. “So technically, you’re the little brother.”

“Mace, that you under all those eye bags? Geez.” I fake shuddered, biting back a smile. Summer shot me a silencing look, but it only spurred me on. Any chance to yank Macey’s chain, and I was all over that like white on rice.

“Kyle, I don’t have the energy for your bullshit this morning.”

“Late night, dearest sister? Come to think of it, I can’t remember hearing you come in?” I pushed off my stool and approached her. “You stayed out.”

“Fuck off.” Her walls slammed up, but Macey Prince didn’t scare me.

“So, who’s the lucky guy?”

Macey’s eyes flashed at me and then she slunk away toward the coffeemaker. “I’m right, aren’t I?” I pushed. “There is a guy. Wait until I tell Ric—”

“Kyle,” Summer warned.

“Fine.” I threw up my hands and started my retreat. “I’ll back off, for now. I’m out anyway. Summer, no funny business with Nick under my roof. Mace, I think you need coffee, a shower, and a shit ton of Advil. Have a great day, sisters of mine.”

“I hate him.” Macey ground out, but I was already going out the back door. When I reached the pool house I contemplated walking straight in, but decided against it, rapping my knuckle against the glass instead. Maverick appeared, sporting bed hair and no shirt. Thank God for knocking.

“What?” he growled.

“Do you have to walk around like that? I’ll get an inferiority complex.” I barged past him and made a beeline for the couch, flopping down between the cushions.

“Come in,” Rick said. “Make yourself at home. It’s not like you don't live here or anything, oh wait, you don’t.”

“But I could.” I stretched out, gracing him with a lazy smile. “Yeah, I think when you move to SU, I could definitely see myself out here.”

“Not. Happening. I’ll be home on a weekend. Besides, I want Lo to have this place in case—”

“In case what?” Lo appeared—fully dressed, thank fuck. Maverick looped his arm around her and pulled her close. “In case you want to feel close to me.”

I stared at him, aware that I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, but that was their deal, not mine. No doubt when the truth came out, and the shit hit the fan, I’d be the one to pick up the pieces, but until then, I had my own troubles to deal with.

“You’ve changed, Prince.” I skated over his blatant lie and dropped my gaze to his junk with a smirk.

“Fuck off,” he barked. “Did you come over here to annoy us, or did you actually need something?”

“I’m going to make coffee. You want?” Lo asked Maverick and then looked to me.

“No, but I’d take a juice.”

“See those things attached to your torso?” She stared at me, disbelief glittering in her eyes. “They’re called legs, Kyle. Use them.”

“Someone’s in a good mood this morning, Cous.”

Maverick left Lo to it and came over to the couch, dropping in the chair opposite. “Really, why are you here?”

“I can’t come hang out now? You wound me, Prince. Wound. Me.”

“Kyle, come on. This is me.” I froze up at his choice of words. Kyle. He’d called me Kyle, he never called me Kyle. It was always Stone, or asshat, or occasionally motherfucker. But never Kyle.

“We’re on a first name basis now?”

“Kyle, man, seriously, what’s gotten into you?”

Damn him. He always knew. But maybe that’s why I was here, outstaying my welcome, pushing myself where they didn’t want me to be. Because I wanted someone to drag the truth from me.

“I’m just feeling the pressure.” Liar.

“With USC? But I thought Coach Munford said it was a dead cert? Their coaches have been watching you, you’ve got the grades, it’s in the bag.”

My eyes traced the blemishes in the ceiling when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Sliding it out, I held it over my face.

“Laurie?” Maverick asked, and I said, “Yeah.”

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t Laurie at all.

And that was the problem.

“Everything okay?” Suspicion hung in Maverick’s words, and I realized I was still clutching my phone, staring at it as if it was a bomb about to detonate and I had no clue how to stop it.

“Yeah, she wants me to call her. I’ll be back.” I leaped up and made my way out into the yard. The sun was already beating down, a sign it was going to be another hot one. Moving under the canopy, I dropped into one of the garden chairs, staring at the text message.

Unknown: Please, Kyle. Just half an hour. Surely you can give me that?

My fingers hammered the screen as if the person on the other end might feel it and take a hint, although after her persistence the last few months, I doubted that.

Kyle: No.

Unknown: Please...

Anger simmered in my blood, rushing through my veins like acid. I wasn’t an angry person, it wasn’t my style, and yet, lately, it wasn’t something I could control. She was turning me into someone I barely recognized. Enough was enough. I highlighted the number and hit dial. Before she could get a word out, I snapped. “You need to stop texting me. I’m not interested. I have nothing to say to you. Nothing. Whatever sick fantasy you’ve got in your head about a happy reunion between us, it’s never going to happen. In the words of Elsa or Ana or whatever the fuck she was called, Let. It. Go.”

“Son, please...”

“Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that. Sixteen years, it’s been sixteen years. I don’t even remember what you look like. You’re no one to me. No one. I have a family. I have Dad and Rebecca, and my brother and sisters. I have a perfectly good life.”

She choked over the line and for a split-second, I felt guilty, felt it tighten around my heart until I couldn’t breathe. But she didn’t deserve it. She left me. Sixteen years ago, Maria Lessinger abandoned me. And until three months ago, I gave her little thought. I had a family. Okay, so we weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but in our own brand of fucked-up, it worked. I was happy. I had everything I needed. Good friends. A shot at playing football for The Trojans. The girl of my dreams by my side. And then I received a text message from an unknown number and everything had started to turn to shit. It wasn’t guilt I needed to feel, it was hate. Maria Lessinger—the woman who didn’t deserve the title of mom—was ruining things.

Forcing down my misguided feelings, I inhaled a deep breath and glanced around to make sure no one had come out here. “This needs to end. Don’t call me again.”

I didn’t add the warning on the tip of my tongue because I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Dad knew people. He wouldn’t hesitate to slap an injunction or restraining order on her. But that would mean telling him that my estranged mother, his ex, was harassing me.

Yeah, I wasn’t going there anytime soon. He didn’t need that on his plate. Not with everything he’d just been through with Rebecca, and Maverick’s dad, Alec Prince. I just had to hope she got the message and stopped calling, so things could go back to how they were before.

My cell phone lit up again and my fingers tightened ready to smash the thing against the wall, but Laurie’s name flashed across the screen and I breathed a sigh of relief. But it quickly evaporated, my stomach dropping as I realized there was no going back now. Because even if she never texted me again, even if she dropped off the face of the earth, for a fleeting second, I had a mom.

The real kind.

Living, breathing. Flesh and blood.

She wasn’t a story my dad used to tell me when I was a kid and I asked him why I didn’t have a mom. So for as much as I didn’t want to rip open old wounds and listen to her strung out junkie excuses, she was no longer a myth. A distant childhood memory.

She was real.

Maria Lessinger was real, and I’d just heard her voice for the first time in my life.

And I didn’t know how to deal with that.

I punched accept and said, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Laurie sounded so distant and I fucking hated it. “I know we said we’d hang out with Lo and Maverick today, but Mom wants to take me shopping before she leaves for Cabo, so I have to bail. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool. I’ll hit up the guys and see if they want to come over here and hang. Rebecca and Dad are working all day.”

“Oh, okay, well I could swing by when I’m done with Mom?”

“Yeah, if you want to.”

Silence filled the line, and I tilted my head back, shutting my eyes tight. Part of me wanted to beg her to come over, to wrap her arms around me and tell me everything was going to be okay, but how could she do that when I hadn’t even told her what was going on?

“Kyle,” Laurie’s voice pulled me from my reverie. “You’d tell me, right, if something was the matter?”

“Nothing’s up, babe,” I said with ease, the lies just rolling off my tongue. Because that was the problem with lies—the more you told, the easier they became. “Everything is fine, I promise.”

Lies.

Lies.

All fucking lies.

I was lying to her.

To myself.

To my family.

But what other choice did I have? If I told Laurie the truth, it would mean admitting I lied. And when she ran off to Lo and told her best friend, they’d all know. Maverick. Macey. Summer... Rebecca. I wouldn’t only be outing myself, I’d be outing Dad too, and life as we knew it would become a freak show.

It was better this way.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.