“Yeah.” Akara smiles. “Way to go, Jack.”
“What were you thinkin’, Jack,” Donnelly pipes in.
“Dammit, Jack,” Quinn sighs.
“Yeah, fuck you, Highland,” Oscar cuts in playfully.
Jack is smiling a hundred-watt smile. “I’ll take those as compliments, and honestly, this is one of the best seasons we’ve ever produced. And the longest. The studio gave us twice as many episodes.”
I heard that from Jane. She said the season is airing later than expected because they needed more time to edit the footage, and they were given a new air date.
April.
“Have all our clients signed off on the footage already?” Quinn asks.
Affirmative.
He’s been in security for over a year, not fresh blood anymore, but he hasn’t been a bodyguard while the docuseries is airing. It’s good that he asks questions. I’ve led men who try to act cool, pretending they know shit when they know nothing.
Jack explains, “Everyone shown on-screen has okayed the footage in the trailer. For the actual episodes, we still have to go through the rough edit with some family members.”
Jane pinches her eyes closed. She’s dizzy.
I brush a strand of hair off her cheek. “Need the bathroom?”
“Mmmhhmm.” She shakes her head but slumps more against me.
I need to take her back to Mackintosh House.
Gradually, we all start exiting the pub into the frostbitten cold. I ditch Tony with a longer, stricter stride. I’m so far ahead of that shitbag, he’d have to run to catch me.
Breath smokes the frozen night, and I wrap my jacket over Jane’s shoulders while she burrows her body against my warm chest.
Bodyguards crack caked ice off the windshields, turn ignitions, and I slide the door open to a compact black van.
“Banks.” Tony bombards me, a furious beat from fisting the back of my shirt—and I can’t let him touch me while I’m holding her.
“Don’t,” I warn and face his blood-boiling anger. My veins sear just as blistering hot right now.
Jane stirs, probably sensing my tension, and she cranes her neck over her shoulder.
Drama is shooting off in multiple directions.
“Were we not just having a good time?” Oscar asks in genuine concern. He opposes his little brother on the stoop of the pub, a twinkling holiday wreath hung on the shut door.
Quinn glares. “Bro, just drop it. We’re on-duty.” He tries to walk off, but Oscar grabs his arm, and Quinn rotates and swings.
“Quinn!” Joana clutches his waist and drags him back, but his knuckles already met Oscar’s jaw.
That’s Fight 1 at my twelve o’clock.
I can’t watch long because of Fight 2 on my three.
“You forced me here,” Beckett sneers at his twin brother. “You want the truth? I expected this from Moffy and Jane, but not from you.”
“Are you done?” Charlie glares.
Beckett laughs with hurt, breath visible in the cold. “Get me out of here, Charlie.”
“No.”
Fight 3 is on my ten. Behind the gurgling exhaust pipes of a blue car, O’Malley confronts Donnelly.
“Hey, I heard your dad is being let of prison this week.”
I’ve seen this happen before. With Farrow not in earshot or view, O’Malley is less afraid to go for Donnelly’s jugular. Fight 3 is about to be a knockout bloodbath.
Alarm triggers my instincts, and I reach for my mic to alert Akara, but I realize that the cord is yanked from the radio.
Shit. I scan the gravel parking lot for the Omega lead.
“Banks,” Tony snaps. “You’re not riding home with my client.”
Fuck off. I spot Akara at the furthest car, popping the hood. “Akara!” I yell and point in the direction of Fight 3.
He might hate me right now, but we’re still teammates and willing to die for the same cause.
“Yeah, he’s getting let out,” Donnelly answers O’Malley.
Akara sees and sprints after them.
“Yeah? Looks like you’re missing your meth-head family reunio—” He grunts as Donnelly tackles him, and Akara wrenches him off O’Malley before either guy can throw a punch.
“Jane is drunk,” Tony snaps at me. “Incapacitated. She can’t consent to jack shit right now, which is why protocol dictates that her bodyguard take care of her—you aren’t her bodyguard, Moretti.”
I’m about to ignite Fight 4.
My nose flares, rage a flaming ball in my lungs. “I’m not just a fucking bodyguard to Jane.”
I’m her boyfriend.
Tony laughs. “Right, you’re her boyfriend’s brother. Great.” He claps mockingly. “Just because there are two of you doesn’t mean you get double-dibs on the same girl. Unless you two are with her in some kind of weird twincest threesome thing. Which, really, isn’t that shocking considering you both stuck it in the same chick in high school.”
Fucking lies.
“Shut…up,” Jane says drunkenly and tries to swat him but she pats the air, and then whacks my cheek. I clasp her hand, almost smiling.
In a split-second, she somehow just smothered a raging fire in my body.
I don’t lay into him.
He hates that.
Tony rubs the corner of his lip. “Let me give you some advice, Moretti. You should never let girls speak for you and definitely not fight your battles for you. Man the fuck up.”
Anger. I’m burning alive in pure fury. “Women are better than men. Better fighters, better lovers—and the fact that you come from where I do and can say and believe shit that demeans women makes me sick.” I know his grandma.
I know his aunts.
I think of my mom, my mom’s wife, my aunts, my grandma, and I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for a twelve-year-old girl who left Italy with no one and came to America with nothing.
Brave. Bold. Strong women rule my world, and I love them.
Tony cringes, hurt flaring. “Don’t turn this into some sexist shit. You know that’s not what I meant.” His voice is softer.
“Hey.” Maximoff strides over with knotted brows. “Is there a problem?”
Tony repeats the same shit about needing to “take care” of his client, and I realize the best route for Jane is her best friend.
Family outranks bodyguards, and if Maximoff wants to carry her, protocol says, don’t get in his fucking way. After a short conversation, Tony follows protocol and lets her cousin help.
I hate passing my drunk girlfriend over to anyone, but she won’t be afraid in his arms.
Maximoff cradles Jane while he climbs into the van, and she hangs onto his shoulders and murmurs, “Thatcher?”
“It’s me, Janie,” he whispers.
Tony tries to shove in front of me to claim the last open seat, and I block him from entering, about to take that one.
“Banks.” O’Malley wipes dirt off his forearms. “One of the cars won’t start up. We need your help.”
Fuck.
My brother is a mechanic.
While he tinkered under cars, I was a thirteen-year-old busboy and line cook. I lied about my age to land a job, and making chicken parm isn’t a skill my brother will need in Philly.
I know basics for car repairs, and I can feel my way through this. But I hate that I have to ease out of the van and drop my boot to the ground.
Leaving Jane.
Two words I hate thinking. Two words I never want to hear.
21
THATCHER MORETTI
Jane clings to the toilet bowl, and I press a cold washcloth to her clammy forehead. She hasn’t puked yet, but she’s been toying with the idea for fifteen minutes. Quiet in a mental battle.
Everyone else must be asleep after the pub clusterfuck, chatter nonexistent, but I hear the loud wind skating across the Scottish Highlands and slapping against the stone house. Floorboards and walls creak around me, and my ears pick up the tiniest of noises in vigilance that I don’t need
tonight.
Zero threats.
Zero targets.
I’m just her boyfriend. She’s just my girlfriend. It makes me feel seventeen again. Before the Marine Corps, before I went to war—back when I’d hang out at the Quickie-Mart with Banks. Smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking slushies.
“I owe you one,” I tell my brother, my phone resting on the floral tile. Near a brass claw-foot tub. I was on a video call, but with bad reception, the screen went black.
“I’ve owed you way more and you never collected.” His voice crackles with static. “We’re always even, you know that.” He curses in Italian.
“What?” I stare hard at the phone, wishing the picture would return.
“I can’t find the fucking car keys.” I imagine him running around the townhouse. It’s late in Philly, and he should be leaving for the Hale’s mansion soon. He’s on night-duty for Xander.
“Check your pockets.” I gently comb Jane’s hair back, and she blows out a controlled breath.
“Nothing there.”
If I cemented shoes to his feet, Banks would still find a way to lose them. “I have a spare set in Jane’s nightstand.”
“Thanks, Cinderella.”
I almost roll my eyes. “You still have my cornic’?” I gave him my gold necklace before I left.
The line deadens.
“Banks?”
“Yeah. It’s around my neck.”
Jane sits up a bit in slight alarm. “Is your brother…?”
“He’s okay.” I take off the washcloth and study her glazed eyes.
“Hey, Jane,” Banks says. “You feelin’ any better?”
“I suppose…a little.” She presses her fingers to her lips. “I think I’m going to…?”
I guide Jane back to the toilet, running my hand up and down her back while she dry heaves.
Banks tells me, “I talked to ma on the phone. She called your number.” Static breaks apart my brother’s voice. “She could tell I wasn’t you within the first three seconds.”
My lip rises. “What’d she say?” I’m assuming he explained the twin switch.
“She said, you’re a buncha dumbasses, but I love you both the most.”
I laugh, and the sound pulls Jane’s attention onto me. She smiles through the queasy-drunk-feeling. And very definitively, she says, “I love your mom.” The words almost slur together.
“Yeah?”
“Mmhmm.” She nods.
I don’t say much else to Banks before we lose service completely, but I warned him it’d probably happen.
After a few minutes, Jane stops dry heaving and breathes easier, and while she leans into my chest, I unlace her heeled fuzzy boots.
She attempts to undress. “I’m…stuck,” she mumbles, her elbows jammed into the fabric of her blouse.
I tug the thing off her head, my mouth curved up in a permanent smile. “How’s that?”
“Mmmmhmm.” She smooths her lips, staring up at me like I’m a midnight snack. “You were twenty-two…when I met you.”
I hold her gaze and pull off her right boot. “I was.”
“I’m seventeen.”
My mouth hikes in a larger smile. Clearly, she means she was seventeen back then, but she’s too drunk to catch the slip. “You were,” I nod and remove her left boot, setting both aside.
“What did you think?” Jane whispers.
My brows draw together. “What do you mean?”
She shivers, the house chilly but I run hot. And she’s only in a blue bra and a skirt that she slowly tries to crawl out of. I help her pull the tutu down her hips and legs, and then I hoist my girlfriend up in my arms.
Cradling Jane, I walk back into the cold bedroom.
She hangs onto my neck and cuddles up against my body. “I mean,” she says slowly, “what was your first impression of me? Whatwereyouthinking?” The last part slurs together, but I pick apart her question: what were you thinking?
I stare at her in my arms with her freckled cheeks and curious eyes, and I can almost see her six years ago.
Just seventeen.
How she’d been at the Hale house on my first day meeting Xander, and she ran hurriedly into the living room, frizzed hair stuck to her lips, out of breath, and mind racing faster than her feet would move. Confidence boosted this girl a million feet high.
She was trying to wrangle her cat on a leash to leave. I was trying not to stare too intensely.
“I thought you were smarter than me,” I say deeply, carrying her to bed.
She blushes, trying to suppress a smile. “How so?”
“You knew words I didn’t.” I can’t remember the exact word. It’s been too long, and she mulls this over while I gently place her on a twin bed.
I sift through her suitcase and find her favorite flannel pajamas, and I amble over, my knee on the mattress. Easily, I slide her legs into the pants and then arms into the top. She does her best to help, but she whacks herself in the face.
“I have you,” I whisper.
She lets me dress her, and when she’s warm and clothed, she plops back down with a content smile.
Before I pull up the covers, she rolls over and clutches my leg. “Stay.” Her body shakes as a chill ripples through the room.
“Okay.” I crouch down, unlacing my boots, slipping them off, and then I stand and unbutton my slacks. Surprisingly, she’s able to keep eye contact, but I can tell she’s still under the influence of whiskey.
She shifts her legs more than usual and her arms hang lifelessly on her hips.
“Is that all you thought about me?” she asks softly.
“No.” I shake my head.
There is a great chance she’ll never remember what I say now, but the truth isn’t hard to share with Jane drunk or sober.
“I thought you were young.”
Too young for me.
Too rich for me.
Too much of a Cobalt for me.
I was starting a career that would include protecting her and the people she loved, and I didn’t want to fuck it. I wanted to respect the fact that she was underage and the only thing that mattered was her safety.
Jane actually smiles. “I’m not that much younger than you…yourealize.” She slurs again.
“Five years?” I climb onto the small bed, and she rolls onto her back, spreading open her thighs. Fuck. My hands press on either side of her head on the mattress, and I keep my body weight off Jane. “You were only seventeen.”
Our eyes latch tightly as she whispers, “You were only twenty-two.”
I nod a few times.
I was only twenty-two. I was younger than she is now, and I hadn’t been out of the military for long. “Now I’m twenty-eight,” I say strongly, “and I’m doing what I should’ve done on day one.”
“What’s that?” She blinks hard, fighting a heavy sleep.
I dip my head and whisper against her ear, “Let myself love you.”
Jane grips my hair, as though to say, stay. Her breath comes out in a sharp wave, swelling my chest, and I slip under the covers, my legs hanging off the bed. I tuck her trembling body against my chest.
She burrows into me for warmth and security.
Moments pass, her eyes closed, and right before she drifts off, she murmurs, “Thatcher?”
“Yeah?”
She seems to hold tighter.
I cup her cheek. “I have you. You’re safe, honey.” I repeat the sentiments, and her body loosens.
And into the silence, she breathes, “I love you.”
It jolts me, and I hang onto those words, my veins pulsing. She’s only ever said I’m falling in love with you. It could just be a drunken slip, but it’s like a drug.
And I fall to sleep with in an indescribable high.
22
JANE COBALT
My heart is racing. “About the other night…” I speak quietly to Thatcher, as though my voice will carry across the endless rolling mountains.
Chilly wind
whips my wavy hair as I try to catch my breath. We just completed a climb to the top of a beautiful plateau, the flat grassland stretching left and right while sheep roam leisurely around us.
“Yeah?” Thatcher takes a quick glance down the steep rock-littered grass: what we just trekked up, where we left Tony at the bottom, my bodyguard a speck in the distance as he waits with the cars.
I was surprised when Tony listened to my request to stay there.
Even more shocked that he didn’t argue about “Banks” accompanying me. Though he made comments.
He said, “Take the killjoy. See how much fun you’ll have without me.” He leaned on the car like he was the smoothest sex god worthy of my lust, and then he flashed a flirty smile that made my ovaries shrivel.
“I don’t love being around you,” I snapped. “And if you believe you’ll be my bodyguard for long, you’re mistaken.”
His smile fell. “Come on.” He sounded hurt. “Whatever Moretti has said about me, it’s not true.”
“I can make up my own mind,” I rebutted, just as Thatcher approached us.
He assessed the uneasiness and the tension that wound between me and my bodyguard. His gaze narrowed on Tony. “What’d you say to her?”
“Nothing that everyone doesn’t know already.” Tony tried to raise his chin to appear taller than Thatcher. “I was just telling Jane that I’m more fun than you.”
To which I snapped back, “And your unsolicited opinion on Banks or Thatcher or a combination of the two is deeply unwelcome.” I glared.
Hotly.
I caught Thatcher smiling down at me. Maybe just the corner of his lip slightly rose, but that means more coming from a man who’s stern exterior rarely crumbles. And I could practically see the light pooling inside him.
Now that we’ve left Tony behind and it’s just my boyfriend and me, nerves flap in my stomach. Butterfly-nerves—I have them tenfold around Thatcher and his commanding presence and his hard-to-read features that I canvass eagerly.
He has his arms crossed, radio mic attached to a blue outdoorsy jacket that reminds me of Banks. And his eyes have returned to me with such raw intensity.
I squish my binder tighter against my puffy jacket.
Sinful Like Us Page 21
