Crowne jewel, p.1
Crowne Jewel, page 1
part #1 of The Crowne Brothers Series
CROWNE JEWEL
THE CROWNE BROTHERS
CD REISS
CROWNE JEWEL
by CD Reiss
© 2023 Flip City Media Inc.
All rights reserved
If you think anyone in this story resembles you or someone you know so much that you can take me to court for it, I’ll buy you a drink, toast the hot coolness of you and your friends, then give you my lawyer’s number.
Pirating this book, either as uploader or downloader, will trigger a malware virus designed to silently infect every device you own for six years, after which time your fucking around is going to have a big find out phase. Try me.
CONTENTS
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
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue One
Epilogue Two
Afterword
Also By Me
Acknowledgments and Warnings
CHAPTER 1
LYRIC
Hey my Luxies, I’m doing a table-for-five thing at the exclusive, members-only Noho Room with my besties. Check out this salad! It looks like a pastry LOL. What are you doing tonight? I hope you love your life as much as I love mine! Crowne out!
#luxies #luxelife #lifestylesofInstagram #lyriccrowne #Lyricsluxies
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars to put that phone down.” Anton taps the table with three fingers. He’s wearing a silver bracelet. The top of his hand has a Ukrainian trident tattooed on it.
He didn’t have that in New York.
“I’m working,” I say, tapping out an Instagram post and then speeding it off into the cloud. Now I have no excuse to look at my screen, but I’m not taking orders from Anton, so I scroll around for funsies and pretend to ignore him.
“Is that what you call it?”
The muscles under Anton’s Issey Miyake black turtleneck have filled out in the last three years. They’re smacking Kelly silent. Once we’re out of here, the pent-up verbiage is going to come spilling out of her like a pot of rice that’s been on the burner too long.
Dinner’s been torture. I’m supposed to be talking to Laing about boosting his content, but before my drink even arrived, my worst-ex-ever decided to accept an invitation shouted at a traffic light. It’s been tense ever since.
“How about,” I say, still not looking up, “I’ll give you two thousand to tell us what you’ve been doing for a living.”
“Put it away and I’ll accept your two grand.”
That’s an offer I won’t refuse, and it’s not even the money. I put the phone, glass-down, onto the table and fold my hands over it. Jake’s trying to get the check. Colleen looks as if she wants to crawl under a rock. Liang and Kelly watch, rapt, as Anton takes a pause, appearing to chew on the inside of his mouth before wiping his lips with his pristine napkin.
The scruffy half-beard is new. The brown hair’s a little shorter and better cared-for. His voice is deeper and his skin’s lost that dewy, still-officially-in-his-twenties texture. He still pauses before he answers a question. Still as cocky as a man whose momma never told him no. Still the best-looking guy in a restaurant full of good-looking guys.
“Tell us, Anton, about your exciting life. In detail.”
“I’ve been working for the government.” He places the napkin on the table. That’s the answer. Six words that account for something like fourteen percent of the entire US population.
“So you’ve been… a garbage man?” I get a burst of laughter from Liang.
Anton and I are locked in a battle of stares. His eyes are a darker brown, but mine are prettier. He breaks first.
“I take Venmo,” he says.
Every girl in this room wants him. I’ve already seen two get sneaky selfies with him focused in the frame. He’s only paying attention to me because we had a thing years ago and I’ve spent the entire meal ignoring him.
“I’d have to pick up my phone to Venmo you a thousand dollars.”
“It was two thousand.” He holds up two fingers.
“You gave me half an answer.”
“Oh, shit…” Liang laughs so hard his face is red and tears smudge his mascara, but he’s not making a sound. This is how he gets when he’s tired.
Tucking each hand into the opposite elbow, Anton leans on the table, talking low as if there’s a secret he’s willing to tell in the Noho Room.
He leans into me, tapping the table. “If you didn’t have all your little accounts to tell you how to think and feel, who would you be?”
I mirror his posture. We’re locked in a stare that could drill a hole in a cinderblock wall.
“First off, I don’t have any little accounts. Second off, I’d think and feel like Lyric Crowne, thank you, so I’d be the same badass bitch you see right in front of you. Who would you be, Anton? If we weren’t stuck at the same light this afternoon? If Liang hadn’t recognized you in the car next to us? If he hadn’t invited you here, would you even exist? Or would you be just another LA asshole with lots of money and no job?”
That tight mouth loosens then tightens the other way when the control of his smirk goes out the window. I’m not satisfied though—frown defenestration notwithstanding—because I have his attention. The fact that I even want it is breaking my brain.
“You’re giving me the choice between invisibility and dinner?” he asks.
“Don’t be invisible,” Kelly says from the universe outside our stare. “That would be a crime.”
“Invisible would be an improvement,” Jake mutters, patting down the front of his pressed blue shirt.
Fuck this shit.
I take my gaze away and pick up my phone. Notifications. Comments on a week-old post from Cheetah Club, because Meta has no sense of time. Liang’s back-of-the limo shot, posted the day after, comes across my feed. I helped him filter the color so his lipstick matched his jacket.
“You’re getting love!” I show him my screen.
Liang’s makeup tips for men deserve a better following, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to help him get it. He gave up on acting. I won’t let him give this up.
“That was all you,” he says.
“Not even.” I heart some of the comments.
“Well, they finally boosted it. Oh, look at—”
Anton takes my phone.
“Hey!” I try to grab it back. He holds it out of reach. I tamp down a raging fury that’s too big and hot for the Noho Room.
“What would happen if you didn’t have this?”
“I’d be as boring as you,” I say with my hand out. “Give. It.”
He holds it out on his palm, and when I take it, his thumb twitches and runs along the length of my pinkie. Besides the explosive line of sparking nerve endings, I don’t feel anything. Nothing at all. Not a shot of arousal to my core or a warm melting inside my thighs. I am a cold rock of resentment.
This is what I tell myself.
The check gets placed in front of Jake, who asked for it, and now stares at it as if it’s going to fly up his nose and suffocate him.
Anton picks it up before I can get it.
Fine. He can have this one. He owes me.
CHAPTER 2
LYRIC
I’m sorry.
This is unbearable.
I am weak without you.
I am useless with you.
That was his note. Four lines, like a broken, postmodern five-line poem he didn’t finish because he couldn’t find anything that rhymed with unbearable. I stood at the kitchen table of my SoHo apartment with the paper tilted toward the sunlight, trying to see the impression of what came next.
Was he choosing frailty or futility?
He wasn’t useless. Not to me. He had to know that.
I would have told him as much. Reassured him. Explained that once I didn’t feel cornered, I’d be able to think about everything with a clear head. But I got sent to voicemail over, and over, and over. That was his answer. He didn’t want reassurance or explanation. He wanted out.
I never forgave him for choosing weakness.
After he left, I came back to Los Angeles with Liang—who starred in the movie I’d made after college—swearing I’d start something new.
I never speak of those two years. It’s as if it never happened, which is how I like it.
&nbs
We’re at the valet. Anton stands a little aside from us, talking to Colleen.
“Yeah,” I scoff. “Dante thinks he’s hot shit.”
“Yeah,” Jake agrees with a shrug, tucking his fall of hair behind his ear.
I wish we hadn’t run into Anton at that stoplight because frankly, it hurts to look at him.
“I’m sorry I invited him,” Liang says. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am. It’s fine. He’s the reason I leave men alone.”
Well, he’s part of the reason. The other reason is that the men have sucked, and I’m unfortunately not into women.
“I thought it was Neville,” Jake says.
He asked me out a bunch of times the first month I knew him, but finally got the hint when I wrote the word NO on a piece of paper and told him to look at it the next time he imagined me saying yes. He apologized and hasn’t brought it up in, like, four months—but some days, it seems as if he wants to give it one more shot. He’s a good-looking guy. Doable—if you like hapless and socially awkward—but it’s still a no.
“Neville was the experiment that proved the hypothesis.”
“It’s masked cowboy theme!” Kelly holds her phone up to show us. “Partnership with Ozzie Dots on costumes.” She looks back down to read the text. “Invitations go out on the 15th. They’re saying it’s going to be really hard to get into.”
“Manufactured desire. Dante is such a dork,” I mutter, waving to Colleen as she gets into her Tesla.
Kelly’s car is right behind. The valet asks Liang if he has the Honda, which means he’s next. The herd is thinning.
Where’s my freaking car?
Where’s Anton’s car?
Where are the aliens to tractor beam me up to space?
There’s a weight on my shoulder. Anton’s hand. My whole body turns into the camphor he used to rub into the back of my neck. Thick. Gelatinous. Hot and cold at the same time.
“What?” I snap.
“Are you all right?”
Am I? Why is he asking? Why does he even care? I move away from Jake, pulling Anton to the side.
“What the fuck is your deal?” I demand.
“Why do I have to have a deal?”
“You disappeared three and a half years ago. Now you show up two and a half thousand miles away and want a thousand dollars for half an answer.”
He dips his head a little, coming close enough for me to get a breath of his cologne, which is nice. Really nice. Thick like bread that melts on your tongue with spice on the roof of the mouth.
Also, hard. Unyielding. Musky. It’s like burned things.
In New York, he wore something sweeter.
“I answered your questions,” he says. “You’re just not hearing me.”
I’m still not hearing him. I can’t hear anything over the rush in my head. All the thoughts I’ve avoided push against the wall I’ve built to keep them away. I should just walk away from this conversation, but I can’t move.
“You owe me an explanation.”
“You have all the information you need.” He says it slowly, as if he’s tasting the words. “There’s nothing more to say.”
“You see, Anton.” I put my hand on his chest and pinch a crease of wool between two fingers. Speaking as slowly and seductively as he did. “That’s why you are, and have always been, a fucking bore.”
“There’s no one more boring than the bored.”
“That explains why you hung around me for how long?”
“You were different then. You didn’t do so much talking without saying a single thing.”
I push away from him and stand back to look at my Insta. I never claimed to be deep. At least, not since New York, and I’m happier this way. I’m annoyed that he’s insinuating it’s a bad thing.
No, I’m annoyed that I’m thinking about this at all. It’s like squeezing the bottom of a half-filled balloon. The rubber in the hand gets loose and thick while the taut bubble on top is membrane-thin. Everything was even and cool, but now there’s an imbalance. The bottom is starved, and the top is ready to burst.
“You never paid me the thousand dollars you owe me.” Anton’s suddenly right there. I didn’t even see him coming.
I jump and look up from the phone. His eyes seem blacker, and his lips are definitely more relaxed.
“You never gave me your Venmo.”
“It’s in your contacts.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Check.”
With a sigh, I check, and there it fucking is. A for Anton, right at the top. With a few swipes of my thumb, I send him a thousand dollars. “Happy?”
He nods and stands shoulder to shoulder with me. Jake shifts over to stand by us.
“I’ll send it back if you look up from that phone for five minutes.”
“Keep it.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
He still knows where my buttons are, and he’s still pushing them. Asshole.
“Whatever. Listen. How about you go tell your 4Chan buddies what a stuck-up bitch I am, Mr. I-Work-For-The-Government, and leave me alone.”
He takes a deep, calming breath. I’m glad I’m getting to him. That’s what I was trying to do, but the win is naggingly unsatisfying.
“Just be more careful,” he says. “That’s all.”
“Are you all right?” Jake asks me, looking more boyish than ever. Jesus, I must look like some damsel in distress.
“Yes,” I say through a clenched jaw.
“Come. Let’s talk.” Anton pulls me farther away from Jake, who seems to be wondering if he should intervene.
I don’t need these two guys whipping out their piss-makers over me. I have to take control of this. I wave Jake off with my phone-hand, and once we’re a distance away, I jab Anton in the chest with the other.
“I’m not a puppy.”
“I know that, Lyric.”
“I don’t come when you say.” My cheeks fizzle like a drop of water on a hot pan, because I used to.
“Not anymore.” A twitch of his mouth tells me he’s thinking about shit I’ve spent years not thinking about.
“Fuck you.”
“Listen, in all seriousness.”
“From the bottom of my heart. Fuck you.”
“I’ve only been here three weeks.” He’s going to keep talking no matter how many times I say fuck you. “We’ll probably see each other again.”
“Los Angeles is huge. There are at least a million stoplights. Do the math.”
“Were you always this exhausting?”
I scoff, shaking my head and turning down to my phone for some little shot of dopamine, but I face him before the app has a chance to open. I’m getting more annoyed with him by the minute.
“Thanks for the advice, you walking, fucking turtleneck. And thanks for sitting at dinner like you owned the joint without once saying, ‘hey sorry about fucking off,’ or like, ‘I wrote you a note but forgot the explanation part.’ I really felt like I was going nuts, so good job on really committing to the gaslighting.”
“I wanted to talk to you before I left.”
“And?” I can’t let him finish telling me what he wanted, because I don’t care. “You didn’t.”
“There were reasons.”
“Cowardice?”
He lets out a short laugh.
“You gave up everything you said was important to you and ran back home like a child.”
