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

by Krista Ritchie

Audrey still hasn’t overcome the mortification of sending apology cookies to Oscar.

  Jack, who returned to our booth, asks my cousin, “Audrey, do you still have a crush on Oscar?”

  We all just hear a mumbled noise from the pillows.

  Kinney keeps eyeing the bowling alley entrance. I can’t just sit here and hope for the best. There has to be something more I can do.

  And I tell my sister, “Let me call this girl.”

  She looks back at me, brows pinched. “What are you going to say?”

  “I’m going to ask if she needs a ride here, ask what’s holding her up and tell her that I can help. That’s it.”

  Kinney takes a giant breath, and she speaks into her phone. “I’ll talk to you later, Audrey. I need to text Moffy her number…” she trails off, and all of our heads swerve as the door opens.

  A blonde thirteen-year-old girl in a flower sundress nears the hostess podium.

  Dear World, I’m so damn grateful for this good luck. She needed it. Best Regards, a human who’s a big brother

  “Holy shit,” Kinney’s eyes bug. “She’s here.” She glances at her phone. “Audrey—”

  “Go fall madly in love and you must tell me everything!” Audrey hangs up first.

  And before Kinney darts away from the booth, she stretches over Farrow and flings her arms around me in a short hug. “I’m sorry. I was the turd this time,” she tells me. And then she looks to Farrow. “But not to you. You were late.” She skips off at that, and Jack follows my sister to film Holly and Kinney greeting each other.

  I’m about to apologize to Farrow, but he’s laughing hard. “God, your siblings.”

  I love him. I love that he loves my siblings, even when they’re emotional and wound up and taking jabs left and right.

  And as his laughter fades, our hands intertwine, and I tell him, “You made it in enough time so I can beat you at bowling.”

  He smiles softly, almost sadly. It fucking hurts, and I can easily fix my sister’s tiny crisis—I can try to fix anything—but I can’t even attempt to fix this. And I want to be patient.

  I need to be patient.

  If I ask what I can do, I know he’ll just say, be here. And I’m here. But it’s been over twenty hours since we last even saw each other. Those digits are becoming normal, and I can’t remember the last time his shift was under twelve hours.

  “Farrow…”

  I want to find the right words. To tell him it’s alright if he has to be late again. To not make promises to my little sister about next time. Because it’ll feel worse for him if he breaks it. But I’m not sure how to say anything.

  And more than that, I can practically feel his fatigue, the heaviness that mounts on his chest and tries to drag him under. I want to take that weight off Farrow. So damn badly. I open my mouth to speak, but aching, strained words come out of him first.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  28

  FARROW KEENE

  I made a mistake.

  It’s been hitting me all week. All month. Shit, possibly even the first day I stepped into the hospital. I thought I could weather it out. What’s one more day. One more week. One more year. But my boots clap along the sterile halls, and I feel my time draining away with my energy and will to keep course.

  Pushing open the break room door with my shoulder, charts fill my hands, and I see the sofa. Instantly, I collapse on it lengthwise and kick my feet on the cushion.

  Charts lie on my lap, but I don’t have any desire to finish them. I have—I glance at the wall clock—around fifteen minutes before I’ll need to check on my other patient. Unless someone codes.

  It’s been that kind of day.

  “Can’t believe he tried to shock an asystole rhythm,” Dr. Shaw says, entering the break room. The third-year Med-Peds resident heads straight for the coffee pot. “Nice catch on that intern, Keene.”

  I stopped a first-year resident from trying to shock a flatline. Asystolic patients are non-shockable and won’t respond to defibrillation. And if an attending had been present, he would’ve done the same thing as me.

  I can’t muster a response. I just click a pen.

  Do your motherfucking job, Farrow.

  Dr. Shaw pours coffee. “You look beat.” He sweeps me from head to toe. “Rough day?”

  I could explain to him how a simple diagnostic exam that’d normally take twenty minutes lasted an hour and a half.

  The patient instantly recognized me and wanted pictures, wanted an autograph, wanted to Instagram Live—which I turned down. And then she called her friends, who showed up ten minutes into the exam. I had to run through the whole parade again.

  It’s not the same as patients gawking at my tattoos and piercings. I was used to that.

  Being famous. Not so much.

  I’m recognized every single day, sometimes minute-by-minute. I’m stopped walking down the hall. I’m stopped when I eat lunch in the cafeteria. When I’m minding my own fucking business during rounds.

  If it’s not the patients or their families, it’s the nurses, technicians, doctors and hospital staff. They want to gossip with me about the Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts like I’m their direct outlet to secret information they’ll never be allowed to have.

  Every day I have to brush them off. I’m perfectly fine with a bad reputation. I don’t give a flying shit if people call me cold or arrogant or an entitled bastard—but when it affects my job, when it affects my ability to be the best at what I do, then I fucking care.

  I hate knowing that I’m not contributing enough. That I’m taking the spot of someone who could potentially do better work than what I’m doing.

  I could tell Shaw about this morning.

  When I had a patient who refused to give me a medical history. He said he didn’t trust me. Not with that kind of personal information, and I tried to explain how there’s clear patient-confidentiality laws, but he didn’t want to hear it.

  In his eyes, I have too many ties to the media and public and the things that I say aren’t just a whisper in the night.

  Hell, that wasn’t the first time I had to hand over a patient to another intern. Or be reprimanded by the hospital board for not carrying as big of a load as the other residents in my year.

  And I can’t argue with them. It takes me three times as long to do a job that they can do in under ten minutes.

  I thought it’d be different coming back to finish my residency, but I didn’t imagine this kind of struggle. I’m not sure I could have.

  I’ve become a “celebrity” doctor, and that’s hindered my ability to help people inside Philly General. And I feel worthless here.

  Three years. It’s what I keep telling myself. That in three years I’ll be worth more again. I’ll be out of this hospital and working for the famous families.

  But that’s three years of running at a brick wall and not being able to breathe.

  I haven’t been able to talk about this with Maximoff. I want to protect him from feeling at fault, or from blaming himself. Broaching the topic means that I’m reaffirming his worst fears: I’ve lost an immeasurable source of happiness by being with him, by being famous. And that’s not how I see it.

  He’s my happiness, and I’m fighting for the day where I go back to him. And fuck, it’s right there. The day is right in front of me.

  Just go.

  I sit up, boots dropping to the ground. I glance back at Shaw. “Just a long shift,” I tell him, my mind racing.

  Just go.

  “Tell me about it.” He downs his coffee and then disappears into the locker room.

  When the door swings closed behind him, I stack the charts from my lap and place them onto the coffee table.

  Quickly, I push into the locker room. “Hey, Shaw!” I shout.

  “Yeah?” He sticks his head out, past a few cedar lockers. Bare-chested, he pulls on a Polo shirt.

  “Who’s on-call tonight?” I ask while I yank open my locker.

  “Morris,
Kim, and Bakshi.” He narrows his eyes at me while I take off my scrubs and change into black pants and a plain shirt. “I thought your shift ended at ten.”

  In an hour. “It does.” I tuck my black V-neck in my pants and buckle my belt. For me, that hour will be stretched to three depending on how many people will stop me and ask for pictures.

  It’s why I’m always late. To everything.

  Shaw hangs on his locker door. “Is it Maximoff Hale?” he asks. “I can keep a secret if you need to talk or something.”

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “You know I’m not like those other people,” Shaw continues. “I’ve watched Maximoff Hale on TV since I was about ten. He’s practically a real person to me, not just a celebrity.”

  I’ve heard the same speech a hundred different times, a hundred different ways.

  “Shaw,” I say, grabbing my backpack and shutting the locker door. “I’m good.”

  He nods, but he blisters beneath my words. “Yeah, Keene. Of course.” And he coldshoulders me as he returns to his locker.

  I pass him silently out the door.

  Just go.

  By the time I reach the parking garage, my pulse is racing. I drove the Audi to work, and I find the car where I left it. I don’t slide into the driver’s side. Immediately, I climb into the back, lock the car doors, and lie down on the stretch of the seat.

  Resting my boot soles on the leather, I dial a number and put the phone to my ear. Staring up at the car’s interior roof.

  The line rings once before I hear his voice.

  “I was just thinking about you,” Maximoff says.

  It pummels me, and my hand cements to my mouth, raw emotion surging. I can’t speak yet. My eyes burn, and I know this is where I would say: of course you were, wolf scout. You’re obsessed with me.

  “Farrow?” Concern hardens his voice. “You okay?”

  I shut my eyes and drop my hand to my chest. “It’s sucking the life out of me,” I breathe out. And I tell him everything about what’s been happening.

  All of it.

  I knew one day I would, but I thought it’d be at the end of three years. And then I’d confess, but now it’s come sooner. Because I’m done.

  I’m done.

  Maximoff responds with more strength of heart than anyone could ever believe. Ever know or see. “I fucking love you,” he tells me, “and you should step back. Don’t finish your residency. You don’t need it, Farrow.”

  I’d been worried that he’d apologize, stuck on a turntable blaming himself for this, and thank fucking God he’s not. Thank God.

  I shift my phone to my other hand. “Maximoff…” I knew I’d end this here, and I was about to ask his feelings on that. Hell, I didn’t even need to ask. He just told me. But this choice comes with a greater cost than he might realize.

  See, I’m still able to be a concierge doctor. I passed my Step 3 exam, so I’m now licensed and can prescribe medication. But… “I won’t be board-certified,” I tell him. “It means that if any of your family has to be rushed to an ER, I can’t practice medicine inside Philadelphia General.” I can’t help.

  That hospital requires doctors to be in a residency program or board-certified. I will be neither.

  “It’ll annoy you,” Maximoff tells me, “especially when you have to hand that task off. But Farrow, my family having serious medical emergencies like that—it might happen only a few times in your lifetime. It’s not worth three years of being beaten down and feeling empty.”

  I open my eyes. The parking garage is quiet, and the Audi windows are tinted. No cameramen have found me yet. “I never imagined not being board-certified,” I admit and comb a hand through my hair while I lie down. I keep my palm on my head. “It feels like halfway.”

  I don’t usually go halfway.

  I go all-in.

  A bed squeaks on his end of the line. He must be sitting down. “Maybe if you only loved medicine, it’d be halfway,” Maximoff says, “but I think you’re going all the way and you don’t even fucking realize it, man.”

  My eyes sear, staring unblinkingly at the interior roof. I start to smile at the thought. Medicine isn’t the only thing that fulfills me. Protecting him, loving him, just being there—it’s what I live for.

  I look far away. “Are you implying that I love you, wolf scout?”

  “Yeah,” he says confidently. “I am.”

  I smile more. “You’re not wrong.”

  Flashes start glaring through the car windows. The click, click, click too familiar, and paparazzi shout my name. But I stay on my back for another minute.

  “There’s a downside,” I tell him. “People will have a lot of opinions about me practicing without being board-certified.” Even if this isn’t a measure of my worth or skill as a doctor, it definitely will be to the public.

  “Fuck those people,” Maximoff says.

  I instantly breathe stronger. And I sit up. Phone to my ear, camera lenses pressed to the windows, I’m ready to change course. And I’m spinning his world in a new direction, but at least this one puts us together again.

  29

  FARROW KEENE

  You want to be cremated or buried, Redford? – Oscar

  He thinks he’s being witty since I’m a good twenty minutes from a lunch “date” with my boyfriend’s dad and two uncles. And sure, Maximoff will be at the restaurant too. But wolf scout is not the one Oscar thinks will grill me and kill me.

  I was going to ask you the same thing since I keep shocking you to “death.” I send the text. At Joana’s confirmation—which I attended with Maximoff, no obligations in my way—Oscar admitted that he didn’t believe I’d drop out of my residency a second time. And not a lot ever surprises Oliveira.

  “We’re all glad you didn’t go after the board certification,” Oscar told me. “You went full Sheryl Crow ‘If It Makes You Happy’ on us.”

  I rolled my eyes and ended up smiling. It was an old inside joke about when the shit you love makes you sad. “Oliveira, reaching into archaic history.”

  Oscar grinned. “I’m serving up some teenage Redford realness.” Silence fell hard after that. Both of us looking at each other and feeling the void of Donnelly at the Catholic church. Whenever Oscar says “realness” to anything, Donnelly cuts in with, because you’re the realest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.

  Especially during the times when it doesn’t make any sense. But it fit too perfectly there.

  Because you’re the realest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.

  It brings me back to the present. To the Philly townhouse where the pipes groan as Maximoff takes a shower. But I’m not upstairs with him.

  Eighteen minutes until a lunch “date” with my boyfriend’s family, and I’m lying on the mint-green rug where the coffee table usually would be. Black pants ride low on my waist.

  And Donnelly is tattooing me.

  His needle pierces the right side of my lower back. Right, right above my ass.

  A sparrow—the only bird inked without color and the largest one on my body—spans most of my back with its feathered torso in the center. The tip of each wing touches my deltoids and reaches my traps. Further down, towards my ass, its talons clutch a dagger.

  The sparrow and blade leave room for more ink on the lower left and right side, above my waistband.

  “Don’t call Papa Hale sir when you see him,” Donnelly says, tattoo machine in hand. “I did that after he found out I inked Luna’s hip, and I’m telling you, he grew a third horn. Looked like he could’ve impaled me in the throat and ripped out my asshole.”

  I chew Doublemint slowly and glance back at Donnelly with a pointed look. “Don’t talk about ripping assholes while you’re so close to mine with a needle.”

  He smirks, not meeting my gaze as he works carefully on the design. He wears thin-framed reading glasses. “All I’m saying is that Maximoff’s dad is no joke. I thought he was the funny one. Sarcastic and shit. But I almost pissed myself.”


  I thought Loren Hale would do worse if he found out Donnelly tattooed his eighteen-year-old daughter. “You still have your job?” I ask.

  “Barely.” He pauses as a calico cat jumps off the Victorian loveseat onto the rug.

  I throw a toy mouse and Carpenter chases it under the iron café table.

  I’m not scared of Lo. But I’m wondering what conversations he plans to start. Since the crash, we’ve stuck to one main topic: Maximoff rehabbing his collarbone. Easy shit.

  Something tells me this lunch isn’t going to be easy.

  Donnelly resumes tattooing, the needle pricking skin. Not painful. The ink on my ribs hurts like hell, but this isn’t bad. He tells me, “Cobalt parents never batted an eyelash when I inked Beckett.”

  Mention of Beckett reminds me about him doing cocaine to help his ballet performance. I told Donnelly that I knew about it, but we didn’t talk long.

  “If it’s hard being on Beckett’s detail,” I say now, “you should see if Akara will let you transfer.”

  I never asked if Donnelly supplied the drugs. Some bodyguards will, but Donnelly would let another person chop off his hand before he touched cocaine.

  I stay on my forearms. Not looking over my shoulder at him.

  Donnelly inks me quietly. Tattoo machine buzzing, and then he says, “I can’t leave him, man.” He lowers his voice. “I know I can’t get him to stop. I mean, fuck me, his twin brother couldn’t even convince him.”

  I pop a bubble in my mouth. “Because Beckett thinks drugs make him a better dancer,” I whisper, “and now he’s started thinking that he dances like shit without them.”

  “I hate that,” he mutters and then speaks under his breath. He tells me how he can’t talk to Beckett about his teenage years. Because then Beckett would try to protect him and ask the Tri-Force to transfer Donnelly off his detail.

  Donnelly doesn’t explain his past to me. I already know it. When he was fourteen, his parents gave him meth for the first time, and as an adult, he prefers not to be around hard drugs. Not out of temptation. Mainly, they bring back bad memories.