Alphas Like Us (Like Us Series: Billionaires & Bodyguards Book 3)

by Krista Ritchie

  I send it.

  He replies even faster.

  We’ve now established that you don’t know what an adjective is. – Farrow

  I’m smiling and glaring as I text back: or I just don’t like them.

  My dick is starting to throb, especially as I picture Farrow straddling my shoulders with me lying back. His inked abs right up against my face, along with his cock. I take him between my lips, and Farrow clutches the back of my head. Gripping protectively. Tightly. I bring his length to the back of my throat—thwack.

  What the fuck is that?

  I reassemble my flashlight in two seconds. I shine the bright beam onto the gusting curtains.

  If I stand up and go shift the curtains, it means I’ll need to peek out the window. And to peek out the window means there’s a good possibility paparazzi will snap a photo of me. Then I’ll draw hecklers to the area, and it’s been nice not hearing a bucket load of bullshit about me and Farrow tonight.

  I listen for the noise again, but it’s quiet. So I check a missed text.

  Shouldn’t you be asleep by now? What’s keeping you up? – Farrow

  His absence.

  Being alone with my own head.

  My collarbone that refuses to heal at the speed of lightning.

  All of the above.

  Just can’t sleep. I send that text. And then I think about the lube ad, and I wonder…

  I send him another message: I’m going to watch porn.

  If he thinks it’s a bad idea, he’ll tell me. Maybe porn will exhaust me, and I can’t deny that ever since I started dating Farrow and he admitted to watching it, my curiosity has piqued.

  Maybe I’ll see porn in a new way now that I’m in a committed relationship. I don’t know. My brows furrow in heavy contemplation.

  I text back: never mind.

  He’s calling me.

  I knock my head back on the headboard. Fuck. Either I worried him or he’s pent-up now, and both options, I’m just feeling fan-fucking-tastic about.

  I put the call on speakerphone. “I’m not trying to interrupt you at work—”

  “You didn’t. Relax, wolf scout. I’m just charting in the on-call room.” Papers shuffle on his end. “You watching porn or not?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I open an internet browser on my phone. “What’s a good site?”

  He pauses. “Maximoff.” Somehow, his husky voice contains his forever-widening smile. “I’d love to watch it with you since it’s not something you do often, and I’m not saying this because I believe you shouldn’t do it alone. You can do it alone if you want, but it’d be more fun with me.” He adds, “Everything usually is. Even sleep apparently.”

  I blink slowly. “Thank you for those unnecessary additions.”

  “You’re welcome.” His voice fades with the shuffle of papers.

  I think about experiencing this with him, and it’s more appealing. Maybe it’s what I really wanted all along. And I click into a “news headlines” tab on my browser.

  Thwack. I swing my head.

  “What was that?” Farrow asks.

  “A noise,” I say dryly. With the constant stream of hecklers, it’s been more difficult to secure the outside of the townhouse lately. Someone could be chucking something at my window from the street. But rocks and pebbles sound more like pinging against glass.

  Whatever hits the window is heavier, but not enough to shatter through.

  “Shit,” Farrow curses, and I hear papers scatter.

  “They make you chart on paper?” I ask. “I thought they would’ve moved onto some space-aged technology. Like astral projections.” Looking at my phone, my brows knot at an article series, not on Celebrity Crush but on its more reputable parent site and online magazine called Famous Now.

  I pause before clicking into the articles. Farrow lets out a vexed breath, his stress or maybe just frustration ekes over the line. He’s great at living inside hectic situations, but whenever he calls me at the hospital, I feel this wound-up tension inside Farrow that he normally never carries around.

  He won’t say much about his shifts there, but sometimes I think it’s worse when I press about it. So I haven’t really dug in yet.

  “If you need to get back, we can talk later—”

  “I have time,” Farrow interjects and finally answers me. “There’s an old attending in internal who refuses to move onto tablets, and since half the hospital thinks he’s Jesus, all Med-Peds first-years are required to chart on paper because this old fucker said so.”

  My face twists. This sounds like a rule that Farrow would break. He’d consider tablets more practical and efficient to do better work, and he’d disobey the paper-only requirement, even at the cost of angering the staff and damaging his reputation.

  It’s just who he is. Risking it all to do the best job he can.

  “Why not just say fuck this rule and use a tablet?” I ask.

  “I haven’t thought much about it,” Farrow says distantly.

  Thwack. Thwack.

  “Maximoff?” Concern deepens his voice.

  “It’s just the wind.” I shine my flashlight at the creaking ceiling rafters, then down at the window. My curtains dance more madly, and I’m tempted to stand up and peer through the closed blinds.

  “That’s not wind,” Farrow says. “Where are you?”

  “Bedroom.” I balance my flashlight on my thigh. Keeping the beam aimed at the curtains. And I focus back on the internet and these daily articles on Famous Now.

  Each one compiles all the public photos of Farrow and me. Some pictures are from my Instagram like a selfie at the grocery store. I mockingly flip off Farrow who’s smiling insanely wide behind me, also he’s biting into a nectarine. He was eating the fruit in the store, all before we checked out.

  Yeah, he still does that.

  Other pictures are from my family’s social media, and then there are paparazzi photos. Like one where we’re on a date at a baseball game. Waiting in the ticket line. Choosing to be normal and not bypass the crowds.

  Paparazzi were everywhere, but I didn’t care. Neither did he.

  In the photo, his hand is in my back pocket, and I’m laughing. I didn’t see his smile or his expression in that moment, but I look at it now.

  Farrow is staring at me with palpable, overwhelming love. Enrapt with my whole essence. Like I’m joy and his happiness.

  It knocks me backward.

  “Have you seen these articles of us on Famous Now?” I ask Farrow while I take a screenshot of that baseball photo. I like it.

  A lot.

  I screenshot more pics. I like this site since there’s no malicious intent attached. The intro summary at the top is brief to describe us, and it doesn’t bother me.

  Farrow shuffles more papers, and then says, “Alphas Like Us?”

  “Yeah.”

  That’s the title of the daily series.

  Alphas Like Us.

  Based off the summary:

  Admittedly territorial, admittedly protective, Maximoff Hale and his new boyfriend are the couple of the year. Whether you love them or hate them, they’re everywhere.

  “Donnelly sent me a link,” Farrow says. “You should scroll and see if you can find the photo where you look infatuated with me. That’s my favorite one.”

  He might be fucking with me, but I scroll anyway. Quickly, I realize that I look sickly in love in practically every damn one. Like I’m sixteen again with a major crush on Farrow Redford Keene, a crush that needs to be restrained.

  Immediately.

  But I start thinking…

  I got the guy.

  I’m with my crush.

  My crush wants marriage. And kids.

  With me.

  Eventually.

  I rub my face; my cheeks hurt as my grimace becomes a smile. “This must be an imaginary photo,” I tell Farrow because there’s no way in hell I’m admitting to the truth.

  “Not imaginary,” Farrow says. “It’s all of
them—”

  Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack. My back straightens, and I smack my flashlight that flickers.

  “Maximoff? Talk to me.”

  “Do you have access to the security cameras outside?” I climb off the bed and leave my phone on the mattress, still on speaker. Then I grab my switchblade in my right hand, flashlight staying in my left.

  “No. Not anymore.” Long strained silence passes through the line. I know Farrow hates that he’s not able to protect me, and he’s stuck across the city. “I’m texting Bruno to check the cameras,” he says. “Don’t open the window.”

  My floorboards squeak beneath my weight, and I near the blowing curtains. Thwack.

  Thwack. That can’t be a rock. It’s all I can think. Not a rock.

  Not a brick.

  Not a baseball.

  “Are you scared?” Farrow asks since I’m not speaking.

  “No…” My pulse pounds, but not out of fear. “I just want to know what the fuck it is.” I turn off my flashlight, and I draw open the curtain. Revealing the shut blinds.

  Thwack.

  A hard object bangs the glass, and I hear something else from outside. Buzzing. But not like a phone vibration. More like whirling…

  “Shit, this is killing me,” Farrow says, close to pained. His unsaid words: I wish I were there.

  I glance back at the phone on the bed, my stomach coiling. If he were here, he’d be right next to me, and he wouldn’t stop me. We both would do exactly what I’m about to do. Only we’d do it together.

  “I’m not opening the window,” I assure him. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “Stay on the line with me.”

  “I will.” Wind howls, and I use the blade of my knife and lift up a blind. And then I peek out. Thwack. I don’t flinch. The heavy, whirling object…

  “It’s a drone,” I tell Farrow as this mechanical helicopter thing flies into the window again. Thwack. “It has a sign. It says…” In big bold letters, someone wrote on a piece of paper. “…I see you.” A chill pricks my neck.

  I see you.

  Farrow goes quiet.

  I back away uneasily, the blind shutting. “I think there’s a camera on the drone.” It could belong to anyone, and I don’t care which human decided it’d be fun to film me in my bedroom.

  It’s fucked up.

  Flying drones over private property is a gray legal area, but coming onto private property to shoot footage of me is pretty much illegal.

  Paparazzi always stay on the sidewalk for a reason. As long as journalists don’t use telephoto lenses to look into my bedroom and don’t harass or trespass, they can get away with a hell of a lot on public property.

  “You okay?” Farrow asks.

  “I’m going to check on Luna and Jane, and then I’ll call the Tri-Force to handle it.” Anything that veers into lawsuit territory, they deal with.

  “Okay, but that’s not what I asked,” he says in that matter-of-fact voice. I miss the face that goes with it.

  I stand in a darkened room with wailing wind, creaking wood, and a camera drone thwacking glass. And the only thing that frightens me is loneliness.

  I wish you were here.

  I can’t tell him that. I can’t make this harder for him than it already is. Because I know it’s already destroying him that he can’t be next to me. I’m not stabbing another blade into the wound.

  Three years.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’m fine.”

  “I’m going to try to come home early—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “You don’t need to do that, man.” I toss my flashlight on the mattress and pick up the phone.

  The line deadens for the longest second. “Can you spend the night in Jane’s room?”

  If it gives him peace of mind while he’s at work, then my answer is a no-brainer. “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “I’m being paged…I have to go,” he rushes.

  “See you—” I cut myself off before I say soon. I’m not sure when his shift will end.

  “I love you, wolf scout.” It’s the last thing he says. Five longing words that ache greater than silence.

  23

  MAXIMOFF HALE

  Charlie is the only one who agrees with my new plan.

  That should be a red flag.

  Jane and Farrow have excised themselves from the situation “on principle” while the cousin I’ve been feuding with for years has joined my party of one.

  I’m heading into the ER. It looks busy. Won’t be able to text. I’ll call when I can, but I’m going to remind you for the sixteenth time: it’s a bad idea. – Farrow

  I reply: Got it.

  We can talk about your unreasonable stubbornness later tonight. – Farrow

  We don’t see eye to eye on this issue, and it’s not the first time. It won’t be the last. But it does twist me up knowing the two people who should be in my corner have left it. My fingers hover over my cell, trying to think of something to say.

  I land on this: OK. Love u. I text back.

  Love you, too. – Farrow

  Soon after that text, another pops up.

  Still a bad idea, wolf scout. – Farrow

  It reminds me of his feelings about my sling. I took it off permanently one week earlier than all the doctors advised. Bad idea, wolf scout. We kind of had a fight about it.

  A short fight, but Farrow shook his head at me and said, “Give me a second.” He went into the bathroom, and I could tell he was upset. My stomach felt like it dropped out of my body, and I didn’t know how to course correct.

  I wanted him on my side, but I also recognized that we’re two different people. And we won’t always agree. As he came out, he checked my shoulder, and the quiet tension strung between us just grew and grew and grew.

  And he said, “I wish I’d been here.”

  “You wouldn’t have stopped me.”

  Farrow looked at me, his eyes reddened. “That’s not why…” That’s not why he wanted to be with me. He just wanted to be with me. And I heard his voice in my head: it’s as simple as that.

  Pushing out that raw memory, I take a shallow breath and lean against my parent’s mailbox. Wind whistles inside the gated neighborhood, but the air is a little too hot for early June.

  Last night, Farrow was working at the hospital, so I joined in on a movie night with my family. Instead of going home to an empty bed, I ended up crashing in my old room. It was supposed to be my second chance to talk to Xander.

  The do-over.

  He finished his LARPing costume. A fantasy elf-inspired look: a fur-lined hood, long trousers, a distressed red tunic, leather armguards, makeshift bow and a leather quiver for his arrows. He dressed up, and even let me take some pictures like a mini photo-shoot. Just thinking about that night, my eyes sting.

  Because he was happy.

  And I didn’t say what I needed to.

  I couldn’t do it.

  Maybe that makes me a coward, but I’m protecting the good days he has. It’s all I can think about. I just want to ensure that he’s okay, and I feel like if I say something, I’m pushing him in the “not okay” territory.

  Farrow is right about one thing. I can’t do nothing.

  Which brings me to my new plan. A different plan. I don’t know if it’s better, but it’s something.

  In the distance, I spot Charlie ambling down the street, crutches underneath his armpits. He makes slow work of it, so I kick off from the mailbox and meet up with him.

  “I thought you were going to take the golf cart,” I say while I pull my Ray Bans to the top of my head, and he stops walking, out of breath.

  “I was.” He squints from the sun. “Until I learned Tom and Eliot took the golf cart on a joyride and crashed it into Aunt Daisy’s porch.” I knew that happened, but I thought the golf cart wasn’t too fucked-up to drive.

  I nod a couple times. “I heard about that.”

  He cringes. “Of course you did.”

  I try to s
tay calm. “Please don’t make this hard today. I’m already tense. You have no idea what it’s like going against Farrow and Jane’s advice.”

  Charlie stares at me blankly. “Not Farrow, but Jane, yes. My sister has offered plenty of bad advice that I’ve ignored.”

  I glare. “Alright, let’s start over.” Otherwise, I’m going to throw a fist, and just the thought of hitting my cousin is making me sick to my stomach. “Which house is Easton’s?”

  “According to my brother, the stucco mansion two streets over.” Charlie rotates and hobbles forward using his crutches.

  Keeping pace with him, it’s slow, but I don’t run and leave him behind. Even if I’d like nothing more than to rip this off like a Band-Aid. In my head, confronting Easton Mulligan is the second-best solution to the problem. He’s the neighborhood kid asking my brother for pills, and once he stops, this will all be over.

  It’ll be good for Easton who shouldn’t be taking other people’s meds and for Xander who needs them. On top of that, Xander won’t have some asshole teenager coming around who he feels the need to impress.

  Only problem is that Charlie’s entire right leg is wrapped up in a cast, and despite being out of a sling, my right arm looks weak and lifeless. I can’t lift or stretch that well.

  I tell my twenty-year-old cousin, “We don’t look threatening.”

  He stares straight ahead as we pass the Cobalt Estate. “We don’t need to threaten him.”

  I stop abruptly on the pavement. “That was the fucking plan, Charlie.”

  He faces me. “That was your plan—”

  “This is about my brother,” I snap. My fingertips squeeze onto control of this situation because I need it. And want it. Giving Charlie the reins wasn’t on my to-do list for the day. He’s here as backup. Support. I’m taking lead.

  My brother is in trouble. It’s all I think. My brother is in trouble. And I have to help him, and Charlie is unpredictable. As much as I love my cousin—and I know you may think I hate him, but I love him too damn much—I can’t see where his head is most of the time, and I have no goddamn idea what he’ll do in charge. I’m not playing a chess game. I’m dealing with people.