Rafe collapsed into a fit of laughter. His mischievous look took ten years off of him, reminding me of the prankster teen who had tormented me with slugs plucked from the garden, tossing them onto my schoolbooks while I was trying to do homework.
Boys sucked.
“It’s not funny, Rafe,” I said, once he regained some control over his laughter. His mouth twitched up, but he kept himself in check. “I can’t stay there. I can’t go back to your dad’s mansion, since Mom has it locked up in the divorce proceedings. What do I do? Pitch a tent next to the La Brea Tar Pits?”
“See if you can get into the dorms,” he said, like it was that simple. “Maybe they’re not all filled up.”
My left eye twitched. “No. The dorms are not an option.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “They gotta have room. Someone has to be blowing off this semester. Can you call someone?”
A slight headache bloomed behind the twitching eye. “It’s not an option,” I repeated.
“Did you even ask? Or are you just making a stupid-ass assumption?”
“I’m not stupid, Rafe,” I snapped back. “The dorms are not an option.”
He angled his body up, reached into his front pocket, pulled out his phone, and began swiping. “We’ll see about that.”
I reached out and grabbed the phone out of his hands. “No, really. Just stop.”
His hand shot across the table, and I thought he was going to take the phone. Instead, he wrapped his hand around mine. My heart slammed against my chest cavity when he leveled a look at me. It wasn’t anger. It was confusion. It was concern. It was stunning. I closed my eyes, etching that beautiful face into my soul.
“What the fuck, Beanpole? What’s going on?”
My eyes snapped open at Rafe’s words, and I came back to reality. I yanked my hand away from his.
“Vince didn’t pay this semester’s tuition.”
His sexy mouth angled into a frown. “What?”
My own eyes burned, and it was only through sheer force of will that I didn’t burst into tears. “Vince. He didn’t pay this semester’s tuition. I’m out, Rafe. Kicked out.”
Not only did I lose my home, but I lost the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world: a college education.
“Dad skipped out on the bill? Damn,” Rafe said. He reached across the table and grabbed my hand again, this time giving it a squeeze. I ignored the electric jolt that passed between us. “Did you ask him what happened?”
“His assistant fobbed me off on George,” I said, pulling my hand away once again. I used it to push my empty cup through some spilled sugar crystals.
Rafe gave a low whistle. “She just passed you off to his business manager? That’s cold.” I nodded miserably. “What’d George say?”
“What do you think?” I snapped. “He said that because of the contentious split, Pamela was tying up the money and Vince was having a cash flow problem.”
Rafe lifted his hands in a no-big-deal gesture. “And there you have it. Ask him to throw it on the Amex. Deal with it later.”
I stared at Rafe’s hands. They were powerful hands, with long and dexterous fingers. Those hands made him one of the top ten guitarists in rock right now. They had to be good for playing more than just strings.
I blinked myself back to the real world. My real world, which didn’t include those dexterous hands on my body or a place to live. My head was seeking distractions anywhere it could find them. If there was ever a time I needed to focus, it was now.
“Then George said that the lawyers thought it best that Vince remove any financial support for me and my sisters, since we weren’t his kids. Anything would look untoward, and”— my fingers curled into my palms—“Mom is gossiping.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Pamela’s gossiping? About what?”
I slumped deeper into the booth. I didn’t want to talk about this. Definitely not this. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Come on, Jett, spill,” he said. “Better I hear it from you than from some reporter, don’t you think?”
I swallowed. He was right. I could share, but maybe not everything. I leaned forward and whispered, “That Vince is nailing one of us.”
“Nailing?” He made a circle with one hand and moved his index finger from the other hand into the hole, a crude sign language for sex. “As in?”
I slapped his hands down before someone noticed. It was a nasty, vicious rumor, and my mother was a nasty, vicious woman. But I never imagined she would take her Vince vengeance out on us. As far as stepdads went, he wasn’t awful. Never tried to be our father but acted as a mentor to Presley and even tried to mentor Nikki (being Nik, she wasn’t having it). He’d encouraged me to go to college and was footing the bill. Until now.
“Damn, when Pamela holds a grudge…” he said after a low whistle. “And you’re not even the one sleeping with Dad. She should have just kicked out Presley.”
I leveled him with a killer look. “Why do you assume it was Presley?”
His eyebrows shot up, and he directed a “you must be joking” look at me. “It’s not Nik. And it’s definitely not you.”
My back straightened at that. Not like I wanted to have an affair with my stepfather, but the implication was that I was not attractive enough. That wasn’t wrong either, but it was rude.
“Presley is not sleeping with Vince,” I hissed.
I worked to force that visual out of my mind. For a guy well into middle age, Vince had retained his sex appeal, but still. Ew.
“Then it is you?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting back up.
“Oh my God! No!”
Jesus.
He spread his hands out. “Voilà! Presley.”
“You done Sherlock Holmesing?” I snapped. He gave me his sexy Rafe grin, and I shoved the feeling that it was just for me deep, deep down, because as much as I wanted that to be true, I needed to stay grounded in reality. “My mom’s just mental. Everyone knows that.”
“Mental’s not even the word for her,” he muttered, his eyes moving over my shoulder.
When Rafe’s lips thinned and his face went tight, I twisted in the booth to look behind me. I didn’t see much. Students studying with coffees in front of them. A group of tourists digging into avocado toast. My eyes flicked up, and that’s when I saw it.
Behind the counter was a TV, and on that TV was the E! channel, and on the E! channel was Reesie Allen.
The one who got away.
From Rafe, I mean.
Reesie was tall and slim, with a booty and the boobs to go with it. She was gliding down a catwalk in a clingy dress. The top was cut to her navel, with a high slit up the front, showcasing all her curves and a lot of leg. Her thick auburn hair bounced along her back (Presley swore she had extensions) as she walked.
I scowled at the TV and willed her to trip.
Reesie fucking Allen.
I turned back to the table. “You okay?”
Rafe’s eyes flicked back to me, his expression unreadable. “Never better.”
Then he flashed his sexy gap-toothed smile at the waitress as she strolled past.
She practically skidded to a stop, eyes sparkling. “And what can I get you, hon?” Her own smile rivaled his.