Spectacularly Broken (2 page)

“Mr. Shepherd says to get dressed,” she informed me jovially, the slightest hint of an accent shining through like it always did when she was upset or excited. “Quickly!”

“Mr. Shepherd can go fuck himself,” I groaned.

“Language, Lysander!”

“What about it? It’s English,” I informed her and inspected the shirt she’d thrown my way. “Oh hell no, I’m not wearing that. I don’t even know why I own that; it’s way too butch. Hand me a Henley or something.”

She did, disapproval written plainly on her face. We got along well enough when it was just her and me and occasionally the gardener and the pool boy, but when my father was home, she supported his infrequent attempts to parent me, and that pissed me off every single time. I mean, I was goddamn nineteen. That ship had sailed a long time ago.

I rolled out of bed, slipped on the Henley and a random pair of jeans, allowed Sheri to tousle my towheaded mop of hair—she was the only person in the world who got away with doing that—and followed her downstairs. The house smelled of buttermilk lemon pancakes, and that made me love her again. It was one of my favorite indulgences.

She plopped me into a chair in the sunroom and served me a delicious stack of pancakes. By the time I was halfway through my portion, my mood had lifted considerably. I still didn’t understand why the hell I had to get up so early, but I was willing to overlook it in favor of lemony gooey goodness melting in my mouth. Closing my eyes, I hummed happily as I chewed.

Loud footsteps shattered the moment. I dropped my fork and glared at my father. “What?”

“Finish your breakfast.” He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite me. “You’re going on a trip.”

My eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

“A trip, Lysander. I’m sending you away for a few weeks. Your behavior has escalated to an unacceptable level, and Dr. Marquette and I have come to the conclusion that this environment is not conducive to fixing that.”

“What the fuck? Why are you talking to your shrink about me?”

“Because it’s necessary, and you’ve refused to go and talk to him.”

“’Cause he’s a douche.”

“He’s still right.” My father leaned forward, meeting my eyes. “It stops here, Lysander. No more.”

“No more what?”

“No more drugs, no more irresponsible parties, no more self-destructive behavior. No more apathy, for God’s sake. You have been given all you could possibly want to be happy, and yet you insist on wasting and destroying your entire life.”

“Great speech, Dad.” I stabbed my fork into the pancakes with a little more force than strictly necessary. “So what?”

“So you’re going to go to therapy.”

I snorted with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. “What the fuck?”

“It’s a retreat for troubled teenagers Janice recommended. They won’t treat you with kid gloves there. I think it might help. And you
need
help, Lysander.”

“The hell I do.”

“It isn’t negotiable.”

“Yeah? What are you gonna do, make me go? I’m an adult, in case that slipped your mind.”

“I know that.” He leaned back, folded his arms, and regarded me in a way I didn’t care for in the slightest. “I can’t make you go, no. But I can cancel your credit cards. I can revoke your trust fund. I can even write you out of my will, if it comes to that.”

That left me utterly stunned. For several minutes, I couldn’t even speak. Never in my life had I imagined that my father would play hardball like this.

Finally I found my voice. “You wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would. You aren’t leaving me much of a choice, you know. I care too much about you to let this go on, even if you’ll hate me for it.”

For a long moment we were both silent, staring at each other while I systematically turned the remainder of my breakfast into lemon-scented mush. I considered pointing out that I already hated him, but that seemed counterproductive.

Instead I collected myself marginally and narrowed my eyes at him. “Since when do you and Janice talk about this stuff?”

Janice was my aunt, his only sister. They passionately disapproved of each other’s life choices, though they were cordial these days. I talked to her on the phone once a year at Christmas, which was always a stilted, uncomfortable conversation, and she sent me a card on my birthday. That was the extent of our relationship. I hadn’t seen her in years.

“That’s between Janice and me,” my father hedged. “She sent Lane there two years ago after he got into some trouble, and she thinks it’ll be good for you.”

“Well, if it worked for
Lane
,” I drawled.

Just for the record, my cousin is a tool. His IQ is around the same number as his shoe size.

“Mock away, but you’re still going. I will not back down on this. Therapy, or I’m cutting you off.”

That sounded like he had practiced it in front of a mirror. I lowered my gaze to my plate and rigidly stirred pancake mush. My insides felt like they’d frozen. God, I was pissed, but that wasn’t going to help me at the moment.

“Fine,” I said eventually. “When am I going?”

“Right now,” he said, and I seriously considered patricide.

Chapter Two

I hated to admit it, but his strategy wasn’t bad at all. If I’d know about his plan in advance, I probably would have found a way to get out of it, or rebelled by partying so hard it would have landed me in the hospital, or enlisted Logan’s help to hide enough contraband in my luggage to supply an entire rave party.

But instead I was sitting in a car with my dad’s driver, stewing in my own animosity and texting up a storm with Sawyer. I used every swearword in my vocabulary at least twice and then started inventing new ones.

Eventually I fell asleep and didn’t wake until we had reached the Montgomery residence in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.

My father and my aunt Janice were fraternal twins who had probably started resenting each other in the womb. Judging by the stories I’d been told over the years and by my dad’s Wikipedia page, Joel Shepherd had been lucky to get away from his small-minded family when he had. He’d moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting—which my grandparents had condemned as a life of sin—and not talked to them or his sister for years. It might have stayed that way if not for a string of family deaths, culminating in the out-of-control grease fire that took the lives of both my grandparents before I would ever have a chance to meet them—not that I regretted the fact. Apparently reconciliation works really well when you’re in the process of burying your parents together. Who’d have thought?

Aunt Janice was standing on the tiny porch when I got out of the car. She looked quite a few years older than my dad, probably because she’s a single mom, while he has regular Botox injections. She also seemed just about as thrilled to have me standing in her driveway as I was.

Behind me, my dad’s driver unloaded the suitcases Sheri had packed while I’d eaten breakfast. I ignored him and them and shuffled toward the house.

“Hi,” I said, for lack of a better opening.

“Hello, Lysander.”

Janice sounded distant and tired. There were bags under her eyes. She had her lips pressed so tightly together that they resembled bloodless lines. Her skin was sallow. Her blonde hair was dry and brittle and streaked with gray, which did not become her. She needed a facial and a hair salon, like, yesterday.

“So.” I stood and hooked my thumbs into the belt loops of my pants. “Well. This isn’t awkward or anything.”

“Point taken,” she said drily and waved me closer. “Come in.”

I followed her through the door and into a claustrophobic entryway, where she asked me to take off my boots. With a put-upon sigh, I obliged.

“Did you have a nice drive?”

“Spectacular,” I said while balancing on one leg. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought I was headed directly to Camp Naughty. What exactly am I doing here?”

That got a dark, humorless laugh from her, which she suppressed almost immediately.

“Finn is headed there too,” she replied. “You’ll just go with him tomorrow.”

“What’d he do, knock over a convenience store?”

She did not reply.

Finn was the insufferable Lane’s little brother. He wasn’t much younger than me, and as far as I remembered, slightly less of a jackass than his idiot jock brother. That did not mean I was looking forward to spending time with him, but it could have been worse.

Janice led me into their living room. It was all gloomy dark colors and dark wood, curtains drawn. The only light came from the TV, cool and flickering.

“I need to get going, sweetheart,” Janice said in the direction of the couch. “Supper is in the microwave. Show Lysander where he’ll be sleeping, please.”

Silence was the only reply. She sighed, shook her head, and left the room. I stepped forward until I could see the boy sitting on the couch.

I didn’t have all that many memories of my cousins, but I’d seen enough cheesy Christmas pictures to know that Lane was brunet and broad and took very much after his father. Finn, on the other hand, had inherited the Shepherd slenderness and blond hair. As I looked at him now, it occurred to me that I would have been a more likely brother to him than Lane. His hair was a touch darker than mine, my features more fine-boned than his, but the family resemblance was immediately obvious. The biggest visual difference between us was his utterly appalling fashion sense. His saggy jeans alone made me want to run screaming, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. There were holes in his shirt seams, for fuck’s sake. I wouldn’t have used that thing for a cleaning rag. Not that I did a lot of cleaning, but that was a whole other story.

“Hey, Finn,” I said.

“Hi,” he replied without even looking at me.

“Nice place.”

That got me an incredulous look. I smirked at him. He rolled his eyes at me.

“You can sit down,” he said magnanimously.

“That’s very kind of you,” I said and dropped down next to him. “So. What’d you do to get stuck with this bullshit?”

He tensed visibly. “None of your business.”

“Really? Is that how it’s gonna be? I’m not judging, cupcake. I’ve got my own issues.”

“I just really don’t want to talk about it.” He glanced at me, the reflection of the TV flickering in his eyes. “Nothing personal.”

“Fine,” I sighed and leaned back comfortably, turning my attention to the TV.

He was watching some FBI crime-solving drama I didn’t know. It didn’t interest me in the slightest, but anything was better than pondering my situation, so I got lost in the show.

During the next commercial break, Finn muted the volume. “What’d you do?” he asked into the sudden silence.

“Partied too hard.”

His lip curled up into a derisive sneer. “Must be such a hard life.”

“You don’t know shit about my life, so stop judging, asshole.”

His fingers tightened around the remote. “Oh fuck off, poor little rich boy.”

So much for my hope that Finn might be a potential ally. This was going well.

Without another word, I left the couch and found my way upstairs. I found three doors, and the first one I opened led to a bathroom. The second door was either Lane’s or Finn’s room. I didn’t bother switching on the light to find out. Instead I threw myself onto the unmade bed, spitefully wishing I’d left my boots on, and stared at the ceiling.

Fuck.

I’d never felt so alone in my life. Sure, I could have texted Sawyer again, but he was a state away and would hardly come pick me up. Even if he did, my father’s threat hung over me like the sword of Damocles. Once I gained access to my trust fund, which happened in another year and a half, I could tell him to fuck off, but in the meantime, I was dependent on him. He had never before bothered to do so much as put a limit on my spending. As long as it didn’t reach astronomical amounts, he didn’t care. I was so used to him ignoring me that his sudden overreaction to what had actually been a fairly tame party had blindsided me completely.

And now I was in goddamn bum-fuck Egypt with nothing but three suitcases of designer clothes and a hell of a grudge.

The door opened. I’d been drifting off, so it caught me by surprise, and I sat up hastily.

“Hey.” The light from the hallway outlined Finn’s silhouette as he stood in the doorway.

“Um. Hey?” I didn’t really get the point of the salutation. We’d already done this downstairs.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier.” He shifted nervously. “You want some food?”

The microwave was already blasting its contents when we entered the kitchen. Finn wordlessly pulled out a chair for me and went to grab a couple of bowls from the cupboard. He handed me one and sat down as well, and we stared at the microwave as though it were about to reveal the secret of the universe.

“It just makes me angry,” Finn said randomly. It took me a moment to realize he was continuing our earlier conversation. “Mom works two jobs and runs herself ragged, and we still barely manage to cover bills each month. So you talking about how your biggest problem is
partying
…” He pressed his lips together tightly. “It’s not easy to listen to.”

“Dad’s given your mom money,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, and he never lets her forget it. She can only swallow her pride so many times.”

“So if you have no money, how come you get to go to psycho summer camp instead of working a job?”

“Because I need to,” was Finn’s only answer.

The microwave beeped aggressively. Finn grabbed the contents with potholders and spooned soup into both our bowls. I stirred it, waiting for it to cool. There were hot dog bits swimming around in it, which I carefully fished out and deposited on a paper napkin.

“Are you a vegetarian or something?” Finn asked in the kind of tone someone might use to ask,
Are you a serial killer or something?

“Yeah,” I replied and didn’t bother to elaborate. “You want these?”

“Well, you shouldn’t just toss them out.”

Right. Household on an actual budget. I pushed the napkin Finn’s way, and he dumped the extra meat into his bowl.

“So what’s it like?” he demanded to know. “Living like you do.”