Page 60 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Clara

L abor Day means another event. I’m forced into an all-white outfit and ushered onto the family yacht, a glass of sparkling water pressed into my hand by a passing waiter, while everyone else gets champagne. Wishful thinking there, Papa Westerhouse.

Mattie finds me immediately, her auburn hair tied in an elaborate French braid, her lips pulled into an angry pout. I nudge her with my heel. “What’s with the face?”

She glances around, dragging me to the back of the boat, but staying silent until we pull away from the slip.

Trips catches my eye from the side of the big boat, and I shake my head, so he stays where he is.

The hum of the motor picking up has Mattie leaning down to whisper in my ear, what’s likely her last growth spurt putting her a few inches above me. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Exciting! So, what’s with the grumpy face?”

She huffs, crossing her arms, then uncrossing them.

“I’m keeping him a secret. Father’s weird about guys.

I swear sometimes he lives a hundred years ago with all his talk of family lineage and marriage and shit.

I mean, I’m sure you know all about it. There’s no way you and Archie would choose this farce.

I know you’re locked up and separate most of the time.

If you’d chosen to be engaged, there’d be no reason to keep you two as prisoners. ”

Yet another wish to add to the list—to not have a fifteen-year-old worried about marriage or her brother and me locked up on the regular. Archibald Clarence Westerhouse, the second, has a lot to answer for.

“I like your brother, Mattie, but you’re right. This isn’t what we’d choose for ourselves.”

“So, you get why I’m keeping him a secret.”

I nod.

“But it’s getting complicated.”

“How so?”

“My father tracks me. I know it, even if he’s never said it straight up. But if I go someplace he doesn’t think I should be, twenty minutes later some guard shows up and drags me home. So, seeing my boyfriend is…difficult.”

“That would be tough. Maybe you could find a reason to stay late at school and hang out then?”

I’m giving Trips’ sister tips on how to hide her boyfriend.

This isn’t a role I ever thought I’d have.

I may have nannied for years, but I wasn’t the best at it.

And I’ve never been or had a sister, so I’m not sure I should treat her the way I would Emma.

But the way Mattie just plows forward tells me it might be the right tact to take.

“I would if he went to my school, but he doesn’t. And I’m running out of places I can visit without guards following me.”

“How’d you meet him?” I ask, while I try to figure out another way for Mattie to get to her high school crush.

“At a fencing meet last winter. He’s just, ugh, he’s so handsome and smart and just, I’ve never felt so seen, you know?”

“It feels good to be seen,” I say, the loneliness of the last few weeks aching in my chest. “Could you see him at fencing?”

She shakes her head. “I’m dropped off and picked up with barely enough time to get my kit on and off. And he’s not always there at the same time I am.”

“You could bring a friend in on it. Go to the movies, split up there, and meet back when the movie is almost done.”

She chuckles. “So, you’re saying it’s time I became a lover of the cinema?”

“It could get you a day a week without it looking weird.”

She chinks her own champagne flute against mine. The appearance of the alcohol has me reaching for it as she dances back. “You’re smart, Clara. I get why Archie likes you.”

Then she swallows the whole glass and hands the empty to me, skipping back toward the front of the boat, my silly solution improving her mood.

If only all my plans were so easily implemented.

Trips joins me at the back of the boat, his gaze locked on his sister. “What’d she want?”

“Advice on a dating problem.” I set the empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray.

His eyes darken. “Mattie’s dating?”

I punch him in the arm. “Give it a rest. She’s fifteen. She should be making out with boys in the back of the movie theater. Let her have some fun. You know exactly how little of that she gets.”

He grips his champagne flute, and I’m worried he’s going to break it. “I know you’re right, but she’s my kid sister, Crash.”

“If you ever meet the guy, you have permission to glare extra hard. But you don’t get to dictate what Mattie can or cannot do. Your dad does more than enough of that for the both of you.”

He pushes his hand through his hair, and I can’t help but admire how he looks in his white get-up.

While I look like I’m wearing my grandmother’s clothes, the white washing me out, Trips looks like he belongs on the cover of a boating magazine.

The red in his hair is brighter in the direct sun, his eyes extra blue, the freckles on his muscled arms strangely boyish and charming.

A few steps away stands Trips’ personal guard, Falk.

From what I’ve seen, his job isn’t to protect Trips, but to protect everyone else from Trips.

I can’t help but wonder what he thinks about his assignment.

Trips might lose himself sometimes, but I can’t believe that a former special ops guy thinks guarding a rich kid with a temper is the best use of his skill set.

Which reminds me that everyone under Trips’ father’s thumb is there because they have to be. A kingdom built on blackmail and coerced loyalty.

You don’t have to be a historian to know that kind of kingdom is doomed to fail. I just want to be the one who tears down the throne.

Trips steps closer, the heat of him mixing with the smell of gas from the motor and the scent of whatever expensive cologne he uses. “It’s been a few days,” he says, his face grim.

“Yeah. Do you think we’ll be locked together tonight?”

He glares out at the wake behind us. Whenever sex comes up, it’s like he can’t look me in the eye. Not since that night after the wedding, when he’d just finished washing the blood off his hands, has he looked at me while we fake our violent dance.

The boat passes a no wake sign, waves rocking against the shore and a passing pontoon full of drunk kids our age.

They’re going slowly. We aren’t. I guess erosion control doesn’t apply to the uber-wealthy.

Trips turns back to me. “My father is chipper today. I don’t know if it has anything to do with us or if it’s a business thing. But if it’s us…”

“Then his good mood is bad news. Noted.”

My skin tingles, and I look up to the second floor of the yacht (because of course there are floors on this thing) and catch Trevor staring at me, a creepy half smile on his face. He salutes his drink at me before turning back to his conversation.

Trips tracks where I’m looking. “Should I be worried about Trevor?”

I take the last sip of my sparkling water. “Maybe. Why isn’t he with his lovely bride out east?”

“Because his work is here. He’ll fly out every other weekend to see her until she graduates.”

“Rich people are weird.”

Trips chuckles, and it feels so normal that my heart clenches in my chest. So I take a risk and lean my head against his broad chest. Because I need more. And when his arms band around me, just for a moment, it’s so comfortable, so right, that I remember why we’re doing this.

We all deserve to feel safe, to be loved, to choose our futures. And when it comes down to it, I choose Trips. Just the same as I chose Walker, Jansen, and RJ. They’re all mine. And if it takes surviving five months in hell to keep them, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.