Dangerously Ours

ONE

Hailey

You're saying it's already noon?" I ask while I slip out of black rumpled bedsheets. I pat my arms and limbs to ensure I'm real.

This is real.

I'm not lost in my head. I'm not asleep. I don't think.

I slip my fingers down my fair skin, brushing over my hip bones and a camo-green lacy thong, then up to a strappy neon-blue sports bra. My underwear choices are on-brand for my life right now.

Mismatched. Mixed-up. Disordered.

I bolt for the digital clock at my bedside and crouch down to inspect the numbers. It says 12:03 p.m.-and logically, I should believe my own eyes, but historically speaking, I'm having a little bit of a hard time with the concept. Two weeks ago, I experienced a hallucination so vivid, I ran barefoot through the grounds of the Koning estate and found myself locked in an old storm shelter. Where I believed I was being violently murdered.

Turns out, I locked myself in there. Alone.

Big, big whoops.

Reality washed away the delusion . . . eventually, and I found the answers about our births that I'd been searching sleeplessly for. But the aftereffects of being bamboozled, deceived, conned by the people we trusted most-the godmothers and godfather: the ones who raised me, my two brothers, and the Graves triplets-have seeped deeper into me than maybe they have for my best friend, Phoebe.

I question everything at every turn. I don't want to. I want to believe the wall is a real fucking wall and my feet are truly planted on the floorboards. That I'm really in this cute little loft above Baubles & Bookends, a bookstore in Victoria, Connecticut.

My reality.

One I created. I asked Phebs to live honestly with me on the coast of New England last summer. I asked Phebs to join my Mystic Pizza dream, where we were supposed to have normal romances and normal jobs (we are still country club servers, at least). I advertised this version of us living our best Julia Roberts lives. Perfect, lush hair days. Romantic small-town entanglements worthy of the big screen.

No deception.

No cons.

But it's been hard for me to stop what I was raised to do, and the only reason I wanted to retire this trade was for Phoebe. I would've done anything to get Phebs to quit the family business. Her role is damaging. I saw it damaging her . . . maybe before she even did, and I couldn't watch anymore.

We're grifters. We move. We run once our pockets are loaded and it's time to choose a new rich mark, but I want to stay in this reality I've created for my best friend. I want it to be mine, too. So the ground has to be stable. This has to be real.

But . . . "It-it can't be noon," I stammer. "It was just nine in the morning." I back up from the digital clock like it's a mini explosive.

"Hailstorm."

I freeze at the deep, comforting voice behind me. Familiar. Masculine. He's a strong, soothing rush of cold water against my mind. I wake up to the sound of Oliver Graves.

His fingertips touch the top of my head, and I rotate with the movement of his fingers, like he's twisting a tiny porcelain version of me in a music box.

I peer up at his twinkling caramel-flecked brown eyes. Ones I've stared into for so long that I can't reliably count the exact years. Facts: I'm twenty-four, and I've known Oliver since I was born, but memory recollection is said to begin around three and a half to four years old and is typically tied to an emotional or unusual event.

I remember him when I believe I was four.

I remember his arm curving over my shoulders as he tried to comfort me. We were left on a windowsill nook in a fancy Newport estate. I can't remember whose home it was. I can barely remember what we were doing there.

I do remember feeling lost. I remember wondering why I couldn't play with Phoebe. So I kept to myself. Said very little. Gazed out the window. Even in my quiet shell, Oliver found me and gave me a great sense of relief.

Fear has no home in my body when he's around. Strange how that is, but everything about my life could be classified as abnormal.

I skate my eyes over his mesmeric features. Olly is beautiful. Pieces of his hair curl around his ears-the strands not long enough to be a bother, but not short either. I've sunk my fingers into his glossy hair at its natural dark-chocolate-brown color, and I've slipped them into the dyed lighter walnut shade he has today. Grabbing and clutching as he pistoned into me.

Like he did late last night.

He's not naked now. His white tank shows off carved biceps. The elastic waistband of his black boxer briefs accentuates the toned V-line of his muscles that I've trailed my tongue down once or twice. Okay, closer to a hundred times.

The problem: I've hallucinated Oliver before. I followed him into the storm shelter-or rather, a figment of him. One that I could never physically catch and grab.

Yet, gazing at Olly here and now, I'm not scared.

I feel myself ease, even as I say, "There's a probability I never woke up this morning. That I'm still dreaming."

"Hands." Oliver holds out his, and I instinctually place my hands in his hands. His eyes never leave mine. His smile stretches as he rubs his thumbs along my palms. "She feels real to me."

I nearly smile back. "Really anxious?"

"No, you have steady hands, Hails." He lifts my palms to his cheeks, rests them tenderly against his jaw, and I breathe deeper, feeling-truly feeling Oliver. I glide my fingers over his slight stubble from not shaving yesterday. I thumb the soft skin beneath his glittering eyes.

The stress tensing my body begins to slip away. Because he's not staring at me as if losing my mind is synonymous with a face full of pus-laden boils. He's staring at me as if I'm perfectly Hailey.

As if I'm pretty.

Inside. Out.

Mad and all.

It's what he's good at-making people feel loved. He's a trained flirt. He could cause a married woman to fall head over heels for him at first casual greeting. Which he has done. Multiple times for various con jobs. One of which I even constructed.

He's the chameleon. An integral player on the board. I'm the mastermind. The one moving the pieces.

It's not our roles that made me think we'd be an ill-fated couple. I've just never believed we could be anything more than fuck buddies, given both our proclivities to sleep around and bang anyone with a pulse. But lately, he's only been sleeping with me, and I've only been sleeping with him and . . . Jake Koning Waterford.

Which he knows.

They both know about each other, but they've been avoiding each other to uncomplicate what should just be casual sex. I'm having casual sex with my best friend's charming brother Oliver. And with the town's treasured resident Jake.

Not to mention, Phoebe has spent a good majority of the year fake dating Jake while I was fucking him, so yeah . . . I am a great friend.

"Hails?" Oliver lifts my chin, and I realize my hands have slid off his face. "Where'd she go?"

"Down the rabbit hole."

"Not without me, I hope." He's more serious. It's hard to detect because he can expertly control his facial muscles, and the light never dims from his eyes. But I know Oliver well enough to see what he likes to hide. Before I ask for the real time, he's already telling me, "Twelve-oh-five."

"But I did wake up at nine this morning?"

"We did. Then I started reading to you." He grasps my shoulders, holding me still so I don't swivel in a dazed circle. "Which made you fall back asleep."

I blink hard, remembering. "Little Red Riding Hood."

He smiles. "Your obsession with wolves endures."

I have been researching all about them. "Thanks for indulging."

"Always and for never," Oliver teases after I peel out of his grasp and search the bed for my phone. I feel him staring at my bare ass. He can't see the smile trying to pinch my lips or the stinging heat against my face. I try not to advertise how much I enjoy our banter.

Because maybe he'd overdo it if he knew. I'd be just another girl he's reeled in emotionally and spit back out. And this isn't about emotions.

Not for me. Not for him. It is just sex.

Which . . . is precisely the cause of my current predicament. Sex. Intercourse. Sperm meet egg.

I'm pregnant.

The fact shoots to my brain every now and then, most especially when I'm clutching a toilet and spilling my guts up. But when I'm with Oliver, I'd like this knowledge to take a backseat.

Tell him. No, not today. He'll ask, Who's the dad? And the truth is, I don't know whose sperm defied the condom and rebelliously fertilized my egg. I'm luckily in a period of my life where there are only two possibilities.

Thank God.

It could have been worse, I've been telling myself. I've been sleeping around since I was a teenager. Sex is an energy release. It's the purge of adrenaline after a job. It's necessary in my life, like coffee in the morning or dessert after dinner.

I know the risks, but I've always used protection.

It could have been worse.

My two possibilities aren't even bad. I just hate that this will change the status quo. I'm not ready for it to. Which is why only Phoebe knows, and it will remain purely an only Phoebe situation until I gather the mental fortitude to include the others.

Anyway, I only learned that I'm incubating a human a week ago. It's sunk in about as well as a pool floatie. If not for the nausea and my nipples being so sore that shower water feels like a form of archaic torture, I would demand the doctor to run the test again.

Eight weeks.

I'm only eight weeks pregnant. I have time. As long as I stop losing sense of it, that is.

Hurrying around, I peek under pillows, detangling the fluffy comforter. No phone appears.

My mind whirls in too many directions. So . . . I fell back to sleep while Oliver read to me then. I didn't intend to sleep this late, but he must've wanted me to. Which is good. I need sleep. I've been trying to sleep more, in fact. Insomnia is a beast I've needed help to beat, and it still rears its horned head every single night.

The name of my new personal game: Do Not Lose This Baby. I can't think about whether I'll even be a good mom when I'm terrified I might cause this baby's demise before it's even born. Lately I've felt like a wrecking ball inside my own body. Like I cause more harm than good, and I want to prove to myself that I won't harm this baby.

I snatch my phone deep under the sheets, and my eyes widen at a missed message from Addison Tinrock. My mom. Just not in the biological sense. "Shit, shit."

"What shit?" Oliver asks while I shove my phone in his chest and beeline for the closet.

My pulse is going haywire as I fling aside grungy shirts and cargo pants. "Today is Saturday, April 21, 2012."

Oliver flips my phone in his hand like a pancake. "Is there something significant about the date? Other than the obvious."

"The obvious?" Why do I have so many cargo pants? I need a dress. Uh, not that dress. Too see-through. Very nightclub in Miami, which is the last place I wore it.

"The obvious: it being two weeks since your little brother decided that poison was a practical tool to pull like it's the fifteenth century and we're the Borgias." He catches my gaze, and his smile peeks out. "Down with the queen. Off with her head."

Claudia Koning Waterford is . . . deceased.

Jake's mom.

By Trevor Tinrock's doing. My nineteen-year-old brother-he went off-script. It was unplanned. A mistake . . . well, okay, it was premeditated by Trev, but for the rest of us, it was unintended. Claudia was our mark, but Phoebe should've pulled the rope via blackmail.

We never had the opportunity to cage Claudia in her own misdeeds.

Two weeks have passed, and everything is messier since Jake didn't inherit the entire Koning fortune and all assets, but rather, Claudia's will detailed a complicated split between her firstborn and thirdborn son.

Trent (asshole) and Jake (not an asshole . . . very sweet, actually).

All we wanted was for Jake to become sole heir. He needed to obtain everything. Then he'd pay us out.

But it's not impossible to salvage the scattered pieces of the Koning job. It's still alive.

I tear a simple black dress off the hanger. Prada-one of the last designer dresses I kept and didn't sell on the internet for cash, just to pay rent. "It's not the obvious," I say quickly to Oliver while I shimmy out of my strappy sports bra.

He comes over and helps tug the dress down over my head. "Then what?"

I fix my platinum-blonde hair out of my face while he zips the fabric at my hip. I try not to concentrate on the tingling sensation as his knuckles brush my bare flesh, the zipper ascending with his hand. "Um"-I breathe out-"Phebs and I made lunch plans with the godmothers."

Surprise coats his eyes. "That's big."

"I know." Heat bathes my face again. This time with nerves. The lunch is the first big olive branch we've extended to our moms since they confessed their lies in the storm shelter. Both Phoebe's brothers and mine knew we'd been toying with the idea of mending broken fences with the godmothers.

Rocky was the most irritable, but that's to be expected. He never loved the godmothers the way that we did. The way that we still somewhat do.

Oliver has a hand on my lower back. It's casual, reassuring. I've always liked his touch. His gaze falls to my phone, which he's clutching. He reads my mom's text aloud: "Where is Cogsworth?" He arches his brows at me. "I thought my sister told Addison to stop with the riddles?"

"Phoebe thinks they're distressing me, but uncovering a riddle isn't what's distressing. It's the fact that she's saying I'm late." I pull out of his reach and find heels at the bottom of my closet, explaining fast: "Cogsworth is the clock from Beauty and the Beast. She's reminding me to check the time."