Page 2 of The Malibu Secret

Celeste's eyes meet mine for a second before she loses it, cackling so hard her mascara starts to run. I'm right there with her, snorting like an idiot. Jesus, we're ridiculous—usually debating the merits of dick pics while normal people worry about climate change or whatever. But fuck it. Some people march with cardboard signs; we judge tattoo designs and talk shit. Not exactly solving world hunger over here, but at least we're honest about it—unlike that customer today who wanted "Deep" tattooed on her wrist while talking about her spiritual awakening at Coachella.

Later on, I'm driving home stone-cold sober. Five years ago, a cop pulled me over after girls' night. I got lucky—he let me go with a warning that still makes my hands shake on the wheel sometimes. Now I nurse one drink all night, tops.

The streetlights flash across my face as I grip the wheel, thinking about Celeste. It's not the hot-as-hell husband who looks photoshopped in real life. It's not his bank account that could fund a small country. It's that look in her eyes now.

A few years back, we were the same—not happy, but not unhappy. Both of us just existing, her with her screenplay rejections and her mom's cancer battle, me with my own shit. Now? That bitch radiates. She's crossed over from that gray zone of not-happy-but-not-unhappy into just plain happy. Meanwhile, I'm still stuck in that same twilight of not-happy-but-not-unhappy, watching the clock tick.

But I've made my choices. Damn right I have. The whole white-picket-fence-and-hubby routine? Hard pass. Same goes for popping out kids. While other little girls were playing house, I was mixing watercolors until they bled through the paper. Liv was the one obsessed with her Easy Bake Oven—no surprise she's slinging gourmet appetizers now. Me? Give me a Lite Brite or that impossible silver-screen Etch-A-Sketch any day. God, that thing was a nightmare at first, but once I cracked the code? Magic. One of my favorite foster families nearly lost their minds when I twisted those little knobs into the perfect Beatles Revolver album cover at age eight. Their faces when they recognized those four floating heads and that wild lettering? Priceless.

Love is garbage. It’s not like my childhood prepared me for happily-ever-after. Mom chose prescription painkillers over stability, which meant I got the grand tour of the foster care system. Every few months, some government lackey in sensible shoes would interrupt my Etch-A-Sketch masterpiece to stuff my belongings into trash bags. And I never wanted to leave my mother. Never. I mean, sure, Mom was orbiting Saturn half the time, and I became a Hot Pocket connoisseur by third grade, but she was mine. Those substitute rando mothers with their fake smiles and forced hugs? Couldn't hold a candle.

And then—HOLY CHRIST—a deer materializes out of nowhere, eyes blazing like hellfire in my headlights. I wrench the wheel hard, tires screaming against asphalt as my Jeep launches sideways, the world spinning violently as metal crunches and glass explodes around me. Three, four rolls—each one hammering my body against the restraints until I'm hanging upside down, blood rushing to my skull. Those movie scenes where people walk away from wrecks? Complete horseshit. Every breath feels like knives between my ribs, and something warm trickles down my temple that I'm desperately hoping isn't brain matter.

It takes everything in me to dial 911, my trembling finger missing the buttons twice before finally connecting. The room spins like a carnival ride as I press the phone to my ear, darkness creeping in from the edges of my vision until I mercifully slip into unconsciousness.

Chapter Two

CAMERON

I'm working the ER when they wheel her in—dark hair with rainbow streaks spilling across the white gurney sheets, cheekbones that could cut glass even beneath the angry purple bruising spreading across her right side. My heart stutters when I realize it's Tally, Celeste's friend from both weddings. The fluorescent lights catch on the blood seeping through her torn blouse, revealing lacerations across her abdomen. Her eyelids flutter, consciousness slipping in and out like a tide, and her normally full lips are pale and cracked. My fingers tremble slightly against the cold metal rail as I guide the gurney toward Bay 3, remembering how she'd laughed at Max's reception, champagne glass dangling between slender fingers, completely unaware of my staring at her from across the room. Now those same fingers lie limp against sterile sheets, and I've still never spoken a single word to her.

The trauma team descends in a choreographed rush—one nurse cuts away her bloodied clothes while another starts an IV line, a third attaches cardiac monitors that immediately fill the room with urgent beeping. I call out orders as I check her pupils with my penlight: "Get a trauma panel, type and cross for four units, and push 1 of morphine." Her oxygen levels dip and I motion for intubation equipment. "Let's get her to CT stat—I need to rule out internal bleeding and head trauma before she crashes completely."

My fingers dig into her abdomen, probing for internal bleeding or swelling, the heat of her skin burning through my latex gloves. Her eyelids flutter—delicate as moth wings—revealing irises the precise blue of Mediterranean waters at noon. "Fucking perfect," she hisses through clenched teeth. “A Yalie doctor. Just my goddamn luck." Her gaze drops to my wrist, zeroing in on my watch gleaming under the merciless hospital lights - the antique Patek Philippe, given to me by my granddad on my 16th birthday. “Bet you've got a whole fucking vault of those at home, don't you, Scrooge McDuck?” A savage smile cuts across her bloodless face, that single dimple appearing like a battle scar before her eyes roll back, lashes slashing shadows across skin pale as death.

I shake my head. “Didn’t go to Yale. Johns Hopkins." I tap the face of my watch—the only Patek Philippe I own, unlike my brothers who collect them like trading cards. Something in Tally's eyes tells me she knows me and thinks that I’m a trust fund baby playing at being doctor. Had she been watching me at those weddings too? My family is incredibly wealthy and she assumes I’m the same, which I admittedly am, thanks to a half-billion trust fund set up by granddad for all of us Kensington boys. Still, she probably doesn’t know me as the black sheep of a dynasty, the one who chose a year in Kenya's dust with Doctors Without Borders over boardroom battles and trust funds. The one whose annual salary wouldn't cover what Roman makes in a day.

I can still see her at Max and Celeste's wedding—that burgundy halter dress that framed her shoulders like artwork, the slit that revealed legs strong enough to kick down doors. Her short dark hair shot through with defiant rainbow streaks. She stood there like someone who'd parked a Harley outside the church, and I couldn't look away if I'd wanted to.

Of course, being mesmerized by her meant I froze like a statue. My brothers would've strolled right up—Roman with that cocky grin, Silas with his smooth one-liners, Max already making her laugh. Ansel would've had her feeling like his oldest friend within minutes. Kalen would've channeled that rock star confidence, while Connor—despite those childhood years when he could barely order pizza without stammering—would've drawn on that Oscar-winner charisma. Even Asher, who treats romance like an abstract theorem, would've managed better than me. My palms went clammy just watching her from across the room. I've always been this way around beautiful women—admiring from a distance, tongue-tied and hesitant. The irony is I probably respect women more than any of my brothers, yet I'm the one who can never seem to approach them.

Which is why I'm still stunned—thunderstruck—that I convinced a woman like Alecia to marry me. My Alecia, with those freckles scattered like constellations across her nose, hair blazing like summer wheat under a merciless sun, and eyes that cut through me—green as absinthe and twice as intoxicating. Her laugh that first day slammed into my chest like a fist. How could a goddess like her even acknowledge my existence? But I knew—Christ, I KNEW—the instant I saw her that I would drown in her. And I did. And she did too. One weekend in her Arts District loft was all it took. I would have slit my own throat before letting her slip away.

Three years ago, her laugh was silenced forever when a drunk driver obliterated her car with my baby girl Stephanie inside. All because I couldn't handle a goddamn cold. We ran out of NyQuil, to my chagrin. I never run out of anything because I make sure to replace everything once it gets low. I never, ever just run out of toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, cold medicine, aspirin, anything that’s necessary. Yet we did run out of NyQuil, a fact that haunts me to this day. Why, why, why didn’t I get a bottle of NyQuil when I happened to be at the store instead of running out completely? But I didn’t, so, that early morning when I was so sick, we needed to get some in the house ASAP.

The coughing fits had been ripping my lungs apart for hours when Alecia kissed my burning forehead at 1 AM and whispered she'd be right back. She took Stephanie because I was too pathetic to move. Three blocks away, that bastard plowed through a green light at 80 mph without touching his brakes. I heard the sirens screaming through our neighborhood and knew—KNEW—before my phone rang. My soul recognized the sound of my world ending.

I'd resigned myself to a life of solitude. Then I spotted Tally across the crowded room at Max and Celeste's wedding. My heart stuttered. The champagne flute nearly slipped from my fingers. I kept stealing glances at her while pretending to listen to some cousin's medical woes. Three times I started toward Celeste to ask about her friend, and three times I retreated. What would someone with galaxy-blue hair streaks and sleeve tattoos peaking beneath her cocktail dress want with a guy who spent his days in scrubs and his nights hunched over medical journals?

Now, here she is, and I'm attending her after her accident. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh glow on her bruised skin.

Her voice comes out like sandpaper. "Hit me with it, doc." She narrows her eyes at my badge, then recoils. "Dr. Kensington? Christ. You're Max's brother." She clutches the paper-thin sheet to her chest, fingers digging into the fabric. "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Next dinner party at Max's, you'll have this little tableau burned into your memory, won't you? Me, splayed out like a science experiment." Her jaw tightens. "I'm guessing the hospital gown came after you got quite the anatomy lesson."

She didn't recognize me until she read my name tag. This realization hits like a sucker punch—while I'd been stealing glances at her all night at Max’s two receptions, memorizing the curve of her smile, the way she cocked her head, and the way she threw her head back when she laughed, she hadn't even noticed me in the crowd. When she called me Scrooge McDuck, it wasn't because she knew who I was. She just took one look and decided. And hell, maybe she's right. I've held dying children in refugee camps and stitched wounds by flashlight, but at the end of the day, I'm still a Kensington. Maybe wealth clings to me no matter how far I run from it—like some designer aftershave I can't wash off.

I clear my throat. "Your CT scan and MRI results aren't back yet, but I need to ask you a few questions."

"Shoot," she says, wincing as she shifts position.

"Can you tell me how the accident happened?"

"Damn deer." She sighs. "Not that I should blame her—poor thing was just being a deer. But she darted across the road and next thing I knew, my Jeep was rolling."

I run through the standard checklist. Seatbelt? Yes. Airbag deployment? None to deploy—her '97 Jeep predates mandatory airbags. Windshield impact? No. Alcohol consumption? The lab work confirms what she tells me—BAC of .02, nowhere near the legal limit.

I glance at my watch. "What day is it today?"

She arches an eyebrow. "Depends. Has the clock struck midnight yet? Because if it has, we've crossed into Friday territory. If not, we're still clinging to Thursday by our fingertips."