Whatever It Takes (Bad Reputation Duet Book 1) Read online

  Fuck their EDM.

  I put on my favorite band.

  Interpol. The song “Evil” starts out slow and builds up, but it emits from my speaker so fucking loud that it’s like I’m in a competition with my neighbor. Whose eardrums can we blast out first? Truth, I’d be fine getting a permanent migraine from listening to Interpol. It’d be worth it.

  Barely a minute later, a knock slams on my door. “Hey!”

  The guy says something else, but I can’t make it out. Suddenly, the EDM music cuts off.

  “HEY!” he screams, more clearly now. “Turn your shit down, man!” He bangs his fist at my door, and my pulse ratchets up.

  She flashes in my head.

  If Willow were here, she’d tell me to turn it down. Don’t start a confrontation. Don’t be that guy.

  But she’s not here.

  I stand up.

  The pounding on my door intensifies. “Fuck, can you hear me?!”

  Striding over, each second there feels like someone is clenching my heart in their fist. Pump. Pump. Trying to wake the cold, lifeless organ.

  The chorus starts as I put my hand on the knob. I’ve listened to this song a million-and-one times, but tonight it sounds different in my head. I should turn it off. But something is wrong with me. I feel it deep inside me like dark ink bleeding into paper, and Willow can’t change me.

  No one can.

  I open the door.

  My neighbor’s angered brown eyes pierce me. Baseball cap turned backward. Penn shirt and khakis. He looks like he should be at the Alpha Omega Zeta house, not some apartment building in Center City.

  “Yeah?” I ask, not needing to raise my voice over the music since we’re close enough.

  He holds out his hand. “I’m Jared, your neighbor. Sorry, man, I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself yet.”

  I moved into this building the same time Willow left for Wakefield. I wanted a change. But it’s been a week, and Jared and I have crossed paths a few times already. He’s never said a word to me before. So this pseudo-fake-nice bullshit is just all for show.

  “Cool,” I say, but I don’t shake his hand.

  Jared pauses for a second and then drops his arm. “Hey, you think you can turn down your music? I’m kind of having a party. It’s my girlfriend’s birthday.”

  I glance towards his apartment and notice three girls and two guys wedged in his doorway, watching our interaction. I’m not even sure how many more people are inside his place.

  “Then it looks like I’m giving your girlfriend a birthday present.” I swing my head back to Jared. “Being introduced to Interpol is probably the best gift she’s going to get tonight.”

  Jared laughs dryly, annoyance flashing in his eyes. “Look, we don’t want to listen to your music.”

  “You’re right, yours is so much better,” I say, sarcasm on my lips. “It’s been nothing but pure bliss for the past hour.”

  “Dude, I’m sorry.” Jared holds up his hands in defense. “We didn’t mean to be so loud. Maybe we can come to some sort of understanding.” His eyes scan me from my bare feet to my head. “You go to Penn? Come grab a beer with us. We’ve got plenty in the room.”

  Three years ago, I might have taken that offer.

  Today, I just want to be alone.

  “I don’t want your beer. Just stop knocking into my walls—”

  “Holy shit,” a girl from the doorway exclaims loudly. Her friends huddle around her, staring at the cell in her clutch. “You’re Garrison Abbey!”

  Jared frowns, brows knotting. “Ana, am I supposed to know who that is?”

  Ana glides over in heels, her blonde hair in a tight ponytail that looks honest-to-God painful. I don’t know how girls do that. She puts a hand to Jared’s chest. “Ignore my boyfriend. He isn’t well-acquainted with entertainment news or Celebrity Crush.”

  I almost roll my eyes at the trash tabloid. Okay, I have picked up the magazine at the grocery checkout before. But it’s certified crap.

  Jared shakes his head. “Wait, he’s been in Celebrity Crush?”

  “Yeah, with the Calloway sisters,” Ana says, pointing to me like I’m not right here.

  Jared looks me up and down like he’s trying to figure me out now. “So are you dating one of the Calloway sisters then?”

  I almost laugh.

  They’re all married.

  None of them to me. And if any of the Calloway sisters heard that question, they would most likely die in their own fit of laughter. Willow—she’d probably wrap her arms around me. I’d wrap mine around her. Just to say this one is mine.

  “Oh my God.” Ana’s face roasts a shade of red. “Please stop talking, Jared.” To me, she says, “I’m so sorry. The second I have the chance, he’s bingeing Princesses of Philly.” I haven’t heard someone mention PoPhilly in a while. The short-lived reality show happened years ago. I wasn’t in it. I didn’t even know the Calloway sisters back then.

  A docuseries featuring the sisters and their men is ongoing and more current, but We Are Calloway is critically acclaimed and covers serious topics like addiction and PTSD. Maybe too highbrow for this girl since she doesn’t mention it.

  I’m not in the mood to explain how I’m connected to the Calloways, but luckily I have Ana here willing to do it for me.

  She’s focused on her boyfriend. “You do know who Loren Hale is, right? If not, we can no longer date.” She crosses her arms over her chest, like she’s serious about this.

  Jesus.

  This is dumb.

  It’s like watching a fucking train wreck with Interpol still blaring in the background. Loren Hale should never be the decider for any relationship. If he were, mine would have ended before it even began.

  Jared doesn’t blink. “Everyone knows Loren Hale.”

  That’s just not true, but okay.

  “Prove it.” Ana arches a brow.

  “He owns Superheroes & Scones and Hale Co. I have his baby oil in my shower.” Way too much information from my neighbor. And it’s not specifically Loren’s bottle of baby oil. The family-owned company manufactures baby products. Hale Co. is one of the most well-known brands in the country.

  Jared looks to me. “Loren is also married to the sex addict Calloway sister.”

  My skin crawls with how Jared just described Lily Calloway. Like that’s all she’s fucking known for. Not the fact that she’s the one who actually owns Superheroes & Scones. At one point in my life, I even worked for her.

  Jared looks to me and continues on. “But I don’t get it. How do you know Loren Hale?”

  I open my mouth.

  But Ana answers first. “He’s dating Loren Hale’s little sister.”

  And there it is.

  I shouldn’t be famous. I shouldn’t be recognizable, especially when I’m not always around Loren or any of the Calloways. But it’s happening. And there’s only a small comfort in knowing that Ana at least took a few minutes to double check her phone before being able to recognize me.

  It wasn’t instant recognition.

  Good.

  “Huh,” Jared muses.

  “I’m going to turn my music down,” I say before either of them can jump in. “Keep the banging to a minimum and we won’t have problems.”

  “Wait, it’s my birthday.” Ana hooks her arm with Jared’s. “Do you think you could like call Loren and have him wish me a happy birthday. Just really quick. It doesn’t even need to be FaceTime. Hearing his voice would be the literal best birthday present ever. I’m a huge fan.”

  I glance to her boyfriend.

  Jared’s gaze is pleading. Practically saying, come on, man, help me out. Like he wants me to give him points with his girl so he can get a blow job later tonight.

  I do have Loren Hale’s number.

  My gaze settles on Ana. “I already gave you your birthday present,” I say. “Ask your boyfriend about it.”

  I shut the door on them.

  Immediately, I go to my stereo, low
ering the music to a tolerable level. My ears ring. My head throbs. I collapse on my mattress and stare up at a yellow stain on the ceiling. Seconds later, the EDM starts up next door again. But it’s softer and no longer vibrates my walls and desk.

  Willow did the right thing—leaving.

  She can’t make real connections here. Everyone eventually recognizes her as Loren Hale’s sister, and in London, she has a chance to fall under the radar.

  My phone vibrates.

  It’s now almost 3 a.m. Which means it’s almost 8 a.m. in London.

  Excitement thrums my veins, thinking it’s her, but when I see the text, it’s worse than a balloon pop. It’s like someone shot a bullet at a blimp.

  The person who texted me… It’s my boss.

  Connor Cobalt: Meeting tomorrow. 11 a.m. My office.

  He attached a screenshot of the drug test I took my first day on the job.

  It came back positive.

  Fuck.

  3 PRESENT DAY – September

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  GARRISON ABBEY

  Age 20

  He shouldn’t have given me this job. It’s what I know as I face the twenty-nine-year-old business titan. Connor Cobalt is the CEO of Cobalt Inc., a company that has a hand in just about everything you can think of. Magnets. Paints. Diamonds. The list goes on and on. One big company owning smaller subsidiaries.

  So the day Connor looked at me and said he wanted me to create something for him—I should have rejected the offer. There’s no way this is going any other direction than south. Fast.

  I don’t even look like I should be working here.

  He fixes the cuffs to his thousand-dollar Armani suit.

  I’m wearing black jeans and a hoodie. Though, he did tell me on the first day that I could wear whatever the fuck I wanted. So that’s on him.

  His blue eyes collide with mine as he reaches for his coffee. Intimidating is probably too delicate a word to describe this guy. He oozes I’m fucking better than you charisma. And don’t ask me how it’s charismatic. It should come across like he’s an asshole, but it actually doesn’t.

  I don’t get it.

  Supreme confidence. That has to be it.

  He sips his coffee. Silence lingering, and his eyes focus on me even harder.

  It feels hot in here all of a sudden. I push up the sleeves of my hoodie.

  “Garrison,” Connor says after a tense beat. “I don’t want to waste your time. I don’t think you want to waste mine.” He sets down the coffee cup and slides a printed piece of paper across the table. I recognize it instantly as the attachment he sent last night.

  My failed drug test.

  Awesome.

  I read the small details quickly. The chart has a spike for increased levels of THC. Marijuana. I smoked a blunt a couple days before Willow left for London. If I’d known there was going to be a drug test at Cobalt Inc., I wouldn’t have smoked—but this is my first corporate job.

  The only other place I’ve worked is Superheroes & Scones, and the employees there were all nerds, geeks, or broken toys needing a home. No one even needs a reference to get hired at S&S.

  “You’re firing me,” I assume.

  Connor is a hard book to read. Face impassive. He could bluff his way out of any poker hand. It makes this interaction more uncomfortable. I shift in my seat.

  “You really think I’d fire you over marijuana?” Connor asks, voice calm.

  “I mean…maybe.” I glance around the glass walls and the cubicles outside his office. Women walk around in pantsuits and pencil skirts. Men take phone calls and sit in meetings in boardrooms. Every wall is glass.

  Like they want you to see how fucking important they are. I can’t imagine any of his other employees smoking on their free time.

  Connor leans back in his chair. “Garrison.” He draws my attention back to him. “I don’t care if you smoke, as long as it doesn’t hinder your performance here.”

  My shoulders relax and I release a breath. “It won’t,” I say, almost hurried. It even surprises me. How much I want to keep this job. It’s the only thing I have right now. “I don’t usually smoke weed. I’m not a pot head or anything. It just helps me mellow out sometimes.”

  Connor nods like he already assumed this about me. “Company policy is to have you take a confirmation test to make sure the first drug test wasn’t a false positive. But I’ll take this conversation as proof that it wasn’t.” He passes another paper to me. “Because you failed the first, you’re going to have to undergo random drug tests throughout your first year here.”

  Sounds fair. Shit, I’m just happy I still have a job.

  He glances at the clock on his wall, then back to me. “Make no mistake, Garrison. If I find you’re taking harder drugs like opiates or cocaine, you won’t have a job here. This isn’t Wolf of Wall Street. My employees are useless to me if their health is at risk.”

  “Noted.” I don’t mention how I’ve tried most drugs. Most I couldn’t care less about. And I’m not around people who’d pressure me to do them anymore.

  Connor puts his fingers to his temple. “Let’s talk about your project.”

  I grimace. Honestly, I’d much rather talk about my failed drug test again. “It’s going splendidly.” My sarcasm is broken because it sure as hell wasn’t supposed to come out during a meeting with my boss.

  “You don’t have an idea of what you’re creating yet.” Connor assumes correctly again.

  “I mean, it’s kind of difficult when you said I could create anything,” I tell him. When it comes to tech development, that’s a wide fucking spectrum, and I want to choose the right thing. It’s just figuring out what it is.

  “Take your time,” Connor says. “You don’t have a deadline.”

  That scares me even more. Because Connor Cobalt is the kind of guy where you don’t want to waste his time. And he’s giving me infinite quantities of it.

  I’m also really aware that not a lot of people get this kind of opportunity. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s married to a Calloway sister—therefore has ties to my girlfriend—maybe I wouldn’t be in this position right now. It feels like nepotism. But I’m not going to throw it away.

  “What if I take years to even come up with an idea?” I ask. I can’t believe he’d ignore his bottom line just for me. He’s a business guy. They tend to give a shit about money, and I’m currently on an eighty-thousand dollar salary with benefits.

  “Then you take years,” Connor says like it doesn’t bother him. “But I don’t think you will. And I’m always right.”

  He’s always right.

  A part of me wants to prove him wrong. And I don’t know what that says about me.

  Later tonight in my studio apartment, I toss a frozen pizza in the oven, sink onto my couch and scroll through Willow’s videos she sent me. Re-watching them for the third time.

  She’s lounging on her bed in a baggie Superheroes & Scones T-shirt that has to be at least three years old—I recognize the design from a line of shirts when we first started working at S&S.

  X-Men posters are taped to the walls above her head. She rubs at her eyes, her glasses already off for the night. Watching her makes me miss her more, but maybe I’m some sort of masochist because I can’t stop. And I just want more.

  “So my classes aren’t that bad so far,” she tells me. “Except for Intro to Marketing. Ugh…” She buries her face in a pillow. “They’re making us do a group project.” Her words are muffled, and she pops back up after a second. “I thought I had abandoned those at Dalton Academy. But no, they’re in college too, and they are the literal worst.”

  “Agreed,” I say to the video.

  She brushes hair off her cheeks and her hazel eyes drift to the screen. She holds back tears. “Garrison.” She says my name like she’s mourning it. “Could you…could you call me when you get off work? Even if it’s super early my time. It’s nothing important. I just want to hear your voice.”
>
  My chest hurts like someone dropped a fifty-pound dumbbell on it.

  I didn’t call her. It was midnight by the time I left the office, and that’s 5 a.m. her time. She’s got a “hellishly” difficult morning class, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t fuck with her studies. College isn’t easy, and I’d hate myself if I distracted her.

  My plan: call her during her break between classes tomorrow afternoon.

  The oven beeps, my pizza done, and just as I rise off the couch, my phone lights up. Vibrates loudly. Her name is big across the screen. WILLOW.

  I catch myself smiling. Selfishly, the first thing I feel is happiness. Like a tidal wave, it surges through me.

  My lips downturn fast. And then worry follows close behind. I stand and click speakerphone. “Hey, Willow, isn’t it early there?”

  “It’s six,” she says into a yawn. “Did you watch my video?”

  I could lie. But that’s not something I ever want to do with her. “Yeah,” I admit. “I was planning on calling during lunch, so you could sleep in.”

  She yawns again. “You’re too nice, and also I’d rather talk to you than sleep.”

  Too nice is not something most people say about me. And the fact that she’s willing to go without sleep for me is what I didn’t want.

  I lean against my kitchen counter, eyes transfixed on the screen, even though I can’t see her. “Everything okay?”

  “I just miss hearing your voice. In real time. Not like through a video clip. How was work?”

  I tell her all about my failed drug test, and how Connor didn’t even care that I smoked weed. When I end the story, Willow says, “He’s right, you know. You’re going to figure out what you want to create faster than you think.”

  Her confidence in me is like a drug. I close my eyes and grip the edge of the counter. It hurts to be away from someone you love so much. God, it fucking hurts.

  “Garrison,” Willow breathes. “Are you still there?”

  I swallow a lump in my throat. “Yeah.”

  A beat passes before she says, “You remember the night we had sex.”