It helps that he’s been a part of my world long before he was a bodyguard. It’s also the issue, but that’s another thing entirely.
As quiet descends, he types on my notes app and says, “Jane is asking for chocolate turtles, pretzels, tampons, and lemonade packets.” He adjusts the air vents and points the ice-cold at me.
I glance from him to the road. “You cold?” I can adjust the air for him.
He types on my notepad app. “You looked hot.”
How the fuck can he tell? “I’m not,” I refute and crank the air to a warmer temperature.
Farrow scrolls through his phone, too. “I still have time to call the store. I can get someone to fill a cart with all the items on your list.” It’s a safe route.
So shoppers won’t bombard me in aisles. Alpha is known to go one step further and shut down the grocery store. Giving my parents, aunts and uncles privacy and secure exits and entrances.
“No,” I say firmly. “I’d rather just get the groceries myself.” It takes me two hours, but I don’t like the idea of being waited on and taking up someone else’s time.
“Okay.” He sounds genuinely okay with that scenario.
I was expecting a two-minute argument. My strained muscles ease a fraction. “Fair warning,” I tell him, “paparazzi will bum-rush me when I leave the store. They’ll get up close to take shots of my bags.”
He listens carefully.
“I don’t care if they can see what I bought, so don’t worry about pushing them back. I just need to be able to get out in a reasonable amount of time.”
“I’ll get you out.” His staunch certainty heats my core. He raises my phone. “Anything else you need?”
“Ground beef, chips, taco seasoning, everything-bagels, oatmeal, protein bars and shakes—” I need condoms. And more lube. Fuck.
At my abrupt stop, I sense his confusion brewing, but he finishes typing those items.
I shouldn’t be censoring myself around him.
At some point, I’m going to have a one-night stand. He may hear me orgasm through the fucking door or wall. I’ve also tried not to make sex a taboo subject in my life. With people I trust, I try to speak about it as easily as the weather. My parents raised me to see sex in a positive light.
That’s continuing. Until I’m a dead, lifeless corpse.
“What else?” Farrow looks over at me.
I change my grip on the steering wheel. “At least three boxes of condoms and water-based lube,” I say, my edged voice more like a serrated knife right now. Ready to butcher him. Calm down. I’m high-strung.
I get that.
Farrow drops his foot to the car mat. Sitting straighter. He types on my phone, the silence thickening. I can’t read his reaction. Not while I concentrate on the evening traffic and a van that almost touches my bumper.
I’ve been trying to drive only fifteen over the limit. To show him it’s not a “speeding habit” but a choice that I can control. A choice I make.
But it’s hard not revving to thirty-over when paparazzi latch this close.
I speed.
Just to pass a Mustang and switch lanes. Putting distance between me and the paparazzi. As I decelerate, Farrow drops his arm to the middle console.
Done typing, he says, “Silicone-based lube feels better than water-based.”
I glance at him. Just once. “I’ve never tried it.”
He keeps his hand to his mouth. What does that mean?
I start glancing to the road. To him, the road, him, and I realize—he’s smiling. When I catch his expression, he lets his hand fall, his lips stretched so wide, and he shifts in his seat and hunches forward as he types out something on my phone.
“What are you doing?”
He turns his head to me, and bleach-white strands of hair slip to his lashes. “Writing down my favorite lube for you, wolf scout.”
I flex my abs to stop from hardening. Dear World, I hate you. Worst regards, a human being who’s trying not to bust a nut.
“Cool,” I say as he passes me my phone. Yeah, so cool. Let my childhood-crush-also-turned-bodyguard pick out my lube for me. That will make not fantasizing about him so much easier.
So smart of me.
Genius.
Maybe I shouldn’t have dropped out of Harvard.
6
MAXIMOFF HALE
SIX MONTHS AGO, Jane Cobalt rushed into my room at midnight. Face covered in an avocado mask. Brunette hair twisted in a pink towel.
“Moffy?” she whispered.
I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. At the spike of her breezy voice, I flipped on my lamp fast. And Janie saw the girl nestled beneath my covers. Buck-naked. Both of us.
Jane winced. “Désolée. ?a n’a pas d’importance.” So sorry. It doesn’t matter. She started to leave.
I whispered with urgency, “Attends.” Wait. I hurried out of bed and tugged on boxer-briefs. “Jane.” I sprinted to the door, and my one-night stand groggily said my name. I assured her, “I’ll be right back.”
I left my door ajar so she’d be less inclined to take pictures of my bedroom.
Jane waited for me in the middle of the staircase. At the top, Declan played a game on his cellphone—he’d been guarding my room that night. My bodyguard gave me a colossal amount of figurative space. Barely acknowledging me.
“Jane?” I stopped one stair above hers.
“Go back,” she emphasized. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just had a sudden…” With two hands, she motioned to her body and outward. Jane was rarely lost for words.
My brows knotted and I shook my head repeatedly. “You had a creature come loose through your small intestines?” Alright, I wasn’t used to Janie miming.
Her tiny smile pulled at her avocado mask. “And you still question why you’re never picked first for charades.”
Alright, that too.
She inhaled. “I had a sudden…épiphanie.” Epiphany.
“About what?” I stood like a stone statue. She’s moving out. My sudden guess stabbed my lungs.
We’d been together since birth. Inseparable as kids and teenagers. In Philly, there weren’t laundry lists of actors and celebrities to shirk attention from ourselves. We weren’t in LA or New York. Our families were the only shiny toys in the window. The only animals in the zoo.
Growing up in the public eye here, we related to very few people. So we naturally stuck together. As an adult, it always felt like we were supposed to move on somehow—but I never understood why that meant we had to move on from each other.
I wanted Janie in my world. And she was the one who said those three months we separated at college—I went to Harvard, she went to Princeton—were the “darkest, most miserable days” of her life.
After a quick glance at my cracked door, she murmured, “An epiphany about my future. Midnight life contemplations, you know those.”
I did. When we were sixteen, we used to sneak into the Meadows girls’ treehouse at night and talk for hours about our identities. Our role in the world.
Who we were. Inside. And out.
Our attention drifted as two calico kittens skulked up the stairs. She picked up Walrus and let his brother Carpenter scamper away. Jane owned five cats: Walrus, Carpenter, Toodles, Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth. I never minded them or even the strays she sometimes housed.
They made Janie happy.