by Piper Lennox
Lost King
A Durham Boys Novel
Piper Lennox
Copyright © 2021 by Piper Lennox
All rights reserved.
Cover Photographer: Furious Fotog
Model: Jonny Reid
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Freeman, forever
How can I trust anyone else
When I can barely trust myself
I am who I am
You know I'll bend the truth
I'll break it, too.…
“I Am Who I Am,” The Cab feat. Eloquent
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Also by Piper Lennox
About the Author
Prologue
Seven Years Ago
Age 15
“Ruby, sweetheart, you still haven’t finished these windows? Mr. Greaves is due home any minute.”
Mom clucked at what little progress I’d made on the massive windows in her client’s home office. I was only a third of the way finished. If she were handling it, the inside and outside would be sparkling like diamonds by now.
Craning my neck to the ceiling, I surveyed the glass I’d yet to reach. There weren’t even fingerprints on it. Why the hell were we doing this?
“Here,” she sighed, taking the supplies from me. “I’ll do it. You go empty the mop water.” As I left, dragging my hands along the leather-bound books in the shelves, she called, “Don’t forget, it goes—”
“In the drain in the poolhouse,” I finished, my snark getting lost in the echo. All her clients’ houses echoed, no matter how many imported rugs and handcrafted tapestries they filled them with.
Mrs. Greaves hated the scent of cleansers, dust, mop water, grime—anything that wasn’t $200 an ounce from some European perfumery, really—so we weren’t allowed to dump our buckets down any drains in the main house. Two years ago, I tried. They weren’t due at the house for a week; I picked the bathroom in the game room downstairs, where I knew the woman never stepped foot.
When Mrs. Greaves found out, she threatened to fire my mother. Only extensive groveling on my part reversed the tide.
“Told you she has a sensitive nose,” Mom said as we drove home that evening.
Sensitive nose, my ass. More like motion-sensitive cameras, sprinkled all over that house.
Now, as I wheeled the mop buckets from the Tuscan-style kitchen the Greaves never cooked in, out through the side door they never used, I gave a pointed stare to the camera nestled in the fake bird’s nest overhead. I considered flipping it off, but didn’t. For Mom’s sake.
The poolhouse was at the back of the property. Stone paths rattled the buckets all the way there, sloshing filthy black water on my jeans.
“Ruby! What did I tell you about all that heavy lifting, huh?”
I looked up from wringing the water out of my cuffs to find Ronan, the gardener, giving me a fake look of disapproval.
Like my mother, Ronan employed his children. Cill, the oldest, was transplanting some dahlias that Mrs. Greaves would probably make him move again, assuming they even survived this round.
Callum, two years older than me, blushed when our eyes met, and smiled down at his wheelbarrow of mulch until I looked back at their father.
“Really, Ro, I’ve got it. It’s not that heavy.”
“Ah,” he nodded, taking my hands off the bucket handles and turning them upward, “but look at this! Such pretty skin, all pruny and dirty now. Let us dump the buckets.” He held up his hands and waggled his own fingers at me. “Callouses are waterproof, you know.”
With a smile, I rolled my eyes and let him take one. Callum stabilized his wheelbarrow and rushed to grab the other, turning red again when I thanked him by name.
While they dumped the buckets in the poolhouse shower, I climbed past bags of fertilizer to stand on the overlook. The wind pulling through the bay cleared every molecule of bleach and fake-lemon cleaner from my nose.
“Looks like the kids are starting early,” Ronan said. “Hope they know what they’re doing. That bonfire looks pretty high.”
“They’re probably high,” Callum muttered, and I turned to laugh at him. We all ragged on the owners. They made it so easy. Especially the kids.
“Look at that one.” He pointed to a girl way down the shore, breaking away from the bonfire crowd to spin in the ankle-deep water like a top, arms outstretched in the sun. “She’s definitely high.”
“Don’t act like you never smoke.” I elbowed him and fought my urge to tell him her name. Paige was always like that, truthfully: free-spirited and silly. My friend-crush intensified every time I saw her. I’d never spoken to her, but she seemed impossibly kind.
Vivi and Cate, however, were not. I’d run into them enough times during cleanups to know they inherited their mother’s pageant looks and their father’s cruel mind. Tripping me on their staircase, spewing insults, and crumbling food on the floors I’d just cleaned were standard.
Also at the bonfire were the Peyton triplets, the Hasler cousins, the Engles’ daughter (riding the highs of some boarding school sex scandal that got two teachers fired, if rumors were to be believed), and almost every other summer kid that swooped down to the bay this time of year. When I noted that one had a haircut, Callum shook his head.
“What?”
“You. Learning their names, actually caring if they got a haircut—”
“It’s, like...eighteen inches, gone! That’s not caring. It’s just noticing.”
“You do this every year. The summer people come back, and you get all caught up in them like a soap opera.”
“Do not.” I balled up my pant cuffs and wrung out more filth. “I’m around them a lot more than you are, that’s all. You work outside. I’m in their houses.”
“As the help.”
“Sometimes I...hang out with them,” I stammered, and my hands even did some weird motion that looked like I was reaching, because I totally was. Even the summer kids who were nice to me weren’t being friendly, per se. Just making conversation with the maid and her kid.
And those were rare. Most of them simply ignored me. True, it was better to be ignored than targeted, but both were getting old.
If they could just get t
o know me....
“Don’t.” Callum stared at me. “I know that look. Please tell me you’re not going down there.”
“It’s a bonfire, not some posh pool party. Open to the public.” Looking down at my clothes—which, other than the mop water stain, were still in good shape—I added, “What if I’m just walking along the shore and happen to make conversation? You know? Like, who can stop me?”
He shook his head again, giving a long sigh that smelled like Cherry Coke. “You’ll never be happy until you’re one of them.”
“Shut up.” I shoved him. He laughed and let me.
“Hey, hey,” Ronan called, “no flirting on the clock.”
My eye roll should have been met by one of Callum’s. Every summer since we were tall enough to hold hedge clippers or feather dusters, our parents joked we’d end up together. A workplace romance. We often gagged in response.
But now he blushed again, no eye roll in sight, and I felt bad for brushing it off so quickly.
I also felt bad that, if he did like me, only a small piece of me liked him back. The rest was hopelessly reserved for someone else.
And there he was, appearing on the shore below right at that moment.
“That’s it, I’m going.” I clapped my hands and shook them out, like I was preparing to dive off the overlook into the water. My primping in the reflection of the poolhouse door didn’t go unnoticed by Ronan, who cocked his head with a confused smile.
“How do I look?” I called to him, striking a wobbly pose that probably looked as awkward as it felt. Only I could roll my ankle in flats.
“Like you don’t belong,” Callum muttered.
“Stunning,” Ronan said.
Both were wrong. I was far from stunning.
But I could still belong down there. It was the solstice: the first real day of the summer. A new chance to make this one completely, wonderfully different.
“What do I tell your mom?” Ronan leaned on his shovel at the top of the stairs, watching me navigate my shaky limbs down to the rocks.
“Nothing. I won’t be long.”
His laugh reached me all the way at the water. “Good luck, kiddo.”
Paige was the first to see me. With my hands in my pockets, eyes half-shut against the blinding sun, I tried my best to look like I was just sauntering by. No big deal. No expectations.
“Hey.” She skipped out of the water to hop in front of me. “You’re Serena’s daughter, right? Serena…oh, gosh, uh”—she snapped her fingers—“Jackson? She works for my neighbors.”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s Jacobs, but…yeah. She works there.” I swallowed and risked a glance at the group. No one here knew my name, even the ones whose parents had employed my mother for over a decade. Introductions weren’t really a thing in my world. You were rarely seen, and almost never heard.
“My name’s Aria,” I told her, shrugging instead of offering my hand. These kids didn’t shake. Not with each other, at least. I’d watched them long enough to know every move by heart.
Giving her my middle name wasn’t part of the plan, but it suddenly felt way too right. Of course that had been my problem, up until now: nobody envied a Ruby. Nobody wanted little Ruby to join their pool parties and late-night diner trips. Ruby didn’t shop at the Harbor.
But Aria…she could be anyone.
Paige smiled, then called to the group to get me a drink.
My heart thundered, but I took the cup a boy offered and sipped without hesitation. Sure, Ruby was terrified her mother would see. Ruby didn’t drink, aside from a few warm beers here and there with theater kids back home after the winter musical.
Aria could do anything, though.
Besides, I reasoned, the Greaves’ house was angled so that you had to stand on the overlook to see this part of the shore. There was no vantage point for Mom to see, and I knew Ro and his boys wouldn’t rat me out.
“Thanks,” I told Paige, and took a long, burning sip before following her to the fire drum.
“Hey, look,” Vivi stage-whispered to her sister from their seat on a broad, flat rock. “Cross-Eyes decided to crash the party.”
My face filled with heat, equal parts fury and shame. Yeah, I had a wandering eye that no amount of patches had totally fixed yet. But so what? It was only really noticeable when you got close to me. And none of them ever had.
“Snaggle-Tooth,” her sister chuckled to herself. “And God, those jeans.”
“Right? Someone should tell her not everybody can pull off low-riders.”
“I get the feeling no one’s ever pulled shit off her.”
I took another sip and ignored their laughter, migrating to the other side of the burn barrel so my reddening face would look natural.
“This is Aria.” Paige looped her arm through mine and led me around the bonfire, introducing me to everyone. I already knew most of their names, even the ones my mom didn’t work for. I’d learned them steadily, summer after summer, in late conversations floating in pieces to me on the breeze.
A few nodded and said hey. Some even smiled.
“Theo!” Paige let go of my arm and bounced to the boy wearing...good God. Not much of anything.
Keep your eyes on his face, I told myself as he brought those tanned, carved muscles into my weakening orbit.
It didn’t help. His face was just as beautiful: a square jaw, already painted with light stubble; pink lips, windburned and parting with a smile; and wet hair that graced his forehead with one lucky bead of water at a time. They ran straight down his nose, sinking into his lips when he’d stop to press them together.
But his eyes were what did me in.
They were brilliant, deep green, my favorite color. His gaze held steady when he nodded hello as, through a cacophony of static and my own pulse, I heard Paige introduce us.
“Hi,” I managed, and was startled when he offered a handshake, after all.
I’d memorized every last detail of this group from afar, including Theo Durham. But evidently, I still had a lot to learn about him.
The idea absolutely thrilled me.
Paige stood on her tiptoes to whisper in Theo’s ear. I noticed he winced as she got close, quickly nudging her back to arm’s length, but I figured he just didn’t like invasions of his personal space. I made a mental note of it: if, God willing, I ever had a chance to get close to him, I should proceed slowly.
He didn’t take his eyes off me as he listened.
“Sure,” he told her, nodding goodbye to me before tightening his swimsuit strings—God, how could something so simple make my heart pound so much?—and rejoining some other boys in the water.
“Wh— I meant for you to invite her!” Paige called. “It’s your party.”
Theo merely waved his hand at me, as if to tell her, You’ve got this.
With a flustered laugh, she turned back to me. “Theo’s weird like that. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” I liked weird. Adored it. Lived it.
“Anyway,” she exhaled, “we’re having a party tonight at his place, if you want to stop by.”
This isn’t the party? I thought, glancing at the roaring fire and flowing liquor.
Then I thought, Of course it’s not. Just an appetizer. Kids like these would never bestow that title on such a small get-together.
Not when Theo Durham, the prince of parties, opened his palace doors.
1
Present Day
“Gilmour Durham, Durham Real Estate.”
Ah, the client greeting. Dad’s got his headset on, no time to check caller IDs.
“Did you know there’s a nail sticking out of the cellar steps?” I dab at the blood oozing from my calf onto his bathroom floor and measure my breathing. If I faint, I doubt he’ll register the thunk as me cracking my skull open. Just bad reception, he’d think.
“Theo?” Papers shuffle; he mutters something to Kimberly, his secretary. “Which cellar?”
“Hamptons.”
“You’re still o
ut there? It’s November. Everyone’s left.” Clacking keys fill the room, along with slurping—probably a smoothie, instead of a real lunch. The soundtrack of a chronic multi-tasker.
“It cut my leg open.” I finish dressing the wound and get myself some water until the dizziness passes. “Where’s the hammer? I’ll fix it.”
“Hammer....” He hums, but he’s not really thinking about my question: just working through his current task, until his brain frees up enough cells to remember what a hammer actually is. “Oh! Hammer. Yeah, you know...I don’t think we have one. Call Jack.”
“I’m not calling a contractor over one nail, Dad.” I scrub my face and look at my reflection. The paleness is fading, but the circles under my eyes still look like bruises. I should be catching up on sleep.
Instead, here I am looking up the nearest hardware store to buy a hammer, to fix a single rogue nail, on stairs I never use unless guests are here.
And, as my father so astutely pointed out: everyone’s left.
We hang up when his secretary reminds him he’s got a meeting in two minutes. He tells me he’ll call later tonight. I pretend I believe it.
Downstairs, I wipe up the blood I left at the top of the wine cellar steps. The smell gets to me the most: like digging through a jar of patina-riddled pennies.
Next on the agenda is the wine I dropped when I fell, on the way to put it back. After all, there’s no one to drink it with. My last guests of the summer are long gone, having stayed until Halloween out of some combination of pity and having nowhere else to be.
