Wow, so underhanded. And sneaky. The sort of maneuver that deserves a response in kind.
Max is shaking his head. “Look, I can’t talk about this. You’re my baby sister. Just trust me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Devlin
After the talk with Becca, I go back to my suite. I can’t believe my life has spiraled out of control so hard and so fast, but I have to cope, since Becca isn’t going to let me off the hook.
It’s only for a year. Or until she gets the house. And I get to have sex with her and figure out why my dick hasn’t worked reliably since our night in New York.
Still, I loathe the idea of being forced into doing something. When I turned eighteen, I flipped my dad the bird and declared my independence. The tight-assed fucker wanted me to go to Harvard for an undergraduate degree in biochem, and then to Harvard Medical School to study cardiology. He didn’t care about my dreams; he only wanted to have a doctor in the family. And not just any doctor, but a cardiologist from Harvard. When I was still in the fucking private high school he sent me to, he guilt-tripped me, stripped me of my allowance, grounded me and heaped on all sorts of ridiculous restrictions and rules, trying to bend me to his will.
So I played his game. Got a perfect score on the SAT and a perfect GPA. Was chosen to be the valedictorian of all the one-percenter kids and got accepted into Harvard. My old man laughed and talked in his obnoxiously booming voice about how he’d made a great man out of me, and I was going to be even greater.
But I can be very patient when I want something. Traits inherited from my father, only I’m younger and meaner. At the graduation ceremony, instead of reading the bullshit speech he and his PR team put together, I read my own. It was short and on point, since I wrote it right before the ceremony.
It started with “My high school experience has been…well, ‘a preview of hell’ would probably be the most accurate description” and concluded with “No thank you, fuck off and die.” I appended a big, wide smile.
Principal Whittaker turned so red in the face I thought he was having a heart attack. It was good he remained upright, because no teacher around him would’ve caught him. They were too busy clutching their collective pearls.
Dad went more purple than red. If the school hadn’t been a gun-free zone, he might literally have shot me.
I walked off the stage and never looked back. And I never went to Harvard or any other college. The only thing cardiology and Devlin share are the letters D, L and I.
It’s just too bad I can’t say, “No thank you and fuck off,” and walk away from Becca. That would upset her, which means Max would angst for a moment on which is worse: his sister in distress or me and her together. But given how Max coddles and indulges his sister, he’d end up killing me, and Axelrod is my dream, my baby. So I’ll have to suck it up and be the best husband I can be for Becca while we’re married so he has nothing to complain about.
Since my marriage is going to hit the news sooner or later, I call Mom. I don’t want her to find out on some gossip site. Dad, on the other hand, can find out via Twitter. Or never.
“Hey, Mom,” I say when she picks up the phone.
“Hello, Devlin. How are you? Have you already arrived?” she says, her voice as clear and high as a young girl’s. Anticipation and pleasure bubble in her words. They’re just barely accented, but the Swedish-French-Spanish mélange of an accent isn’t real—she was raised in the States. But she’s spent a lot of time in Europe and says an accent makes her feel sophisticated and fun. “If so, I can wait on dinner. Rinaldo won’t mind.”
Rinaldo the trust fund dude who collects obscure artifacts. He and Mom hooked up in Portugal last year and came to our concert when we hit Lisbon.
I sigh. “Actually… I won’t be going to Barcelona this month.”
“How come?” She isn’t concerned, just curious. She respects that I’m an adult and do my own things. “You almost always spend a month or two in Spain after your tours.”
I divide my time between Mom and girls. Sometimes Mom’s somewhere else in Europe or back home, in which case it’s wall-to-wall girls.
“Unless you found a group of hot young things to hang out with elsewhere?” she teases. My reputation doesn’t bother her—very Euro and all. Dad, of course, acts like I’m out publicly fucking corpses around the world.
“No. I, uh, kind of got married.”
She laughs. “Did you make it official? How does being Mrs. Axelrod feel?”
She always jokes I’m married to the band, and the women I’m seen with are just mistresses.
“No, to a woman,” I correct her, wondering how the hell Becca thinks we’re going to pull this pretense off when even my own mother, maybe the person who knows me best, doesn’t buy it. “Becca. Max’s younger sister.”
“The one who doesn’t speak much? The guitarist?” Mom says.
“Yes.”
“I thought he was quite…traditional.” That’s her way of saying Max is uptight when it comes to sex. He doesn’t particularly care for my free-love lifestyle.
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”