Occasionally he’d let me and Banks tag along. One night, I heard him sneak out, and I knew he was probably headed there.
I asked my mom if I could go with Sky. She said yes. I followed on my bike.
I was slower up hills. I left probably fifteen minutes after him.
When I got there, I dropped my bike and ran straight in the water. Skylar had jumped off a common diving point. But it was dark. No moonlight. The water was too shallow, and he hit rock.
He ended up unconscious in the water around ten minutes before I showed up.
There wasn’t anything I could do. But I tried.
I was strong for twelve.
I learned I was stronger than Sky, and I wished I’d seen how badly he coped with our strict dad. I wished he didn’t go to that fucking quarry and horse around.
And I wished I could’ve taken the burden off him like I did Banks.
I dragged him out of the water, and my gold chain twisted on the gold chain around his neck. Our cornics stuck together.
Later, my grandma unknotted the chains and put both gold horns on one necklace. She said they were meant to be together.
“It’s over fifteen years ago,” I remind Jane. “It feels distant most days.” I blink, my eyes burning. “It was a footnote in the news. Which is why it hasn’t blown-up in the media yet.”
Some local boy hit his head and drowned. There are too many deaths at that quarry every year.
Jane listens as I tell her the last part.
I set the whiskey bottle on the ground. “Skylar used to say to our dad, I’m going to be a Marine one day. To piss him off.” My dad used to be die-hard Navy.
Until after my brother died, when I said, “I’m going to be a Marine.” For Sky.
And then he said, “Okay.”
Jane is closer to me. The empathy welled up in her blue eyes says everything. We drift even nearer on the weight bench. Our gazes trailing over one another in burning waves, and her fingers inch towards my thigh.
My hand hovers near her hip. God , I want to touch her.
Don’t.
I want her in my arms.
Don’t.
“Thatcher,” she breathes like she’s already in my embrace.
I dip my head down to hear her. Space shrinking between us. Everywhere.
“I want to tell you,” Jane murmurs, swallowing hard, “just how much I admire you before it’s too late.”
My chest rises and falls heavily. I breathe the scorching air through my nose. Don’t touch her.
Don’t.
Our lips brush.
Don’t .
I clasp her cheek—we crash into each other. Kissing strongly, all restraints wrapping us together. Like seatbelts I’m clicking in while she’s welded against me.
I swiftly pull her onto my lap. Against my chest, my hand running up her thigh. Jane straddles me, gripping the back of my head with starved fingers. I clutch her ass and push her against me. A high-pitched noise catches in her throat.
My large build cocoons her, and she hangs on tight.
“Don’t stop,” she begs.
Every kiss is a resounding stay.
And a touch me.
Touch me.
Please, touch me.
I harden, and I rip her blouse with two hands, and she cries, “Yes .”
My pulse is hammering. I press my forehead to hers, kneading her breast, hidden behind a cotton bra. We kiss in raw, explosive hunger. She tugs my hair, and a grunt knots in my chest.
Muscles flexed, I stand up with Jane around my waist. My hand on her ass, her back. I walk further back into the garage. Behind her Beetle.
She runs her hand along my jaw, down my neck—to my gold chain.
We deepen the kiss, and something heady overtakes me. I cup the back of her neck.
And then I solidify at a noise.
She freezes. “Is that…?” We listen.
“Footsteps,” I whisper, eagle-eyeing the door to security’s townhouse. I hear Akara and Quinn’s voice.
Quickly and carefully, I set her down.
I ripped her blouse. Without pause, I open her car door. She has a zebra-print sweater in the backseat, and I hand it to her.
“Thank you.” She slips her arms through. I go grab my radio and hide the whiskey further beneath the weight bench.
The door is about to open.
We’re both tense. We’re both pent-up.
In her urgency, she buttons the sweater unevenly.
“You need to go, Jane.” I nod to her townhouse. I hate saying that, but Akara and Quinn can’t see her like this.
She nods in agreement, and she quickly heads to the other door. To her townhouse. She glances back. “À la prochaine.” Until next time.
And she’s gone.
It’s like a fucking pumpkin is beginning to form and I can’t stop it.
38
THATCHER MORETTI
Akara came into the garage because I went off-duty. I shut off comms. And something else just happened outside the townhouse.
Something surrounding Jane.
We just finished taking care of the threat. My muscles can’t unbind. My shoulders are locked, and I yank open the fridge in security’s townhouse and grab a beer. Pop the cap, and I pass the bottle to Akara.
“Thanks, man.” Akara swigs, leaning on the stove. It’s been hectic tonight.
“You should have one, too,” Banks tells me, eyeing the beer. My brother sits on the counter and sticks a toothpick between his teeth. His brows knot and his gaze narrows on the stitched cut along my bicep.
I shake my head and pass him a beer.
I’ve already been drinking whiskey. And I need to be more alert. “I should stay sober until these fucking targets die down.”
“It could be months,” Akara warns me. “The police still don’t know who broke into the house, and now she has a habitual stalker jerking off outside her window.”
I cross my arms over my taut chest. My nose flares.
Banks tips his beer to Akara. “It’s good that you’re the one who caught Sneakers getting his rocks off in his car. Thatcher would’ve killed him.”
I stay unmoving but send a glare to my brother. The middle-aged man who dresses in baggy jeans, white sneakers , and carries around roses—he’s been on my radar since the Cinderella ad. And Akara spotted him masturbating in his parked car before our around-the-clock security outside did.
Cops arrested Sneakers and will charge him with public indecency. Lewdness. The best security can do is a restraining order.
Target destroyed.
But his insistence to keep coming around—after so many bodyguards told him off—makes me think he’ll be back. He’ll violate his restraining order. Go to jail.
The cycle will continue, and I shouldn’t be emotionally invested in this situation. I should be able to handle this without wanting blood. But I just keep thinking that this middle-aged fucker was in a car and rubbing his dick almost in sight of Jane.
Too close.
Too fucking close.
And this is the girl who I’m sleeping with. Who I’m protecting and have held while she’s cried against my chest—so I’m not feeling fucking even-tempered. Not as much as I should be. As any bodyguard should be.
“My civic duty,” Akara banters, “keep Thatcher from murdering targets.”
Banks smiles. “Amen.” They clink bottles and swig.
I uncross my arms, opening the fridge to grab a water.
“Did Jane text you?” Banks asks me.
I nod. “She heard the cop sirens and asked if everyone was safe.” I start putting some leftover containers next to Banks. “I texted back that a minor threat was being detained. She didn’t want more.”
“Sulli is like that,” Akara says, beer to his lips. “She doesn’t ever want extra details.”
“Who would?” Banks asks.
“Maximoff,” Akara and I say at the same time. Though, my brother knows this too. His qu
estion was really rhetorical, but we just didn’t give a shit.
I pop open the container of roasted goose and potatoes.
Banks sniffs the meat. “Smells like roadkill.”
“No it doesn’t.” I stick a fork in the cold meat.
He steals the container and holds it to Akara.
Akara is texting, but he sniffs it anyway. He smiles. “Smells like a Cobalt Empire Wednesday Night Dinner. Three days old, still edible.”
I grab the container from Banks.
Jane always brings her leftovers from every Wednesday family dinner. Usually for Maximoff. Sometimes she’ll put a container in security’s fridge.
Only Cobalts have ever attended. No Hales, no Meadows. Never bodyguards.
What goes on there is almost urban legend on the security team. No one really knows. Except that if you have a Cobalt client, they’ll usually fight to make it back to their childhood house every Wednesday, every week.
Akara glares at his cellphone, then he takes off his baseball hat and pushes his black hair back.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“You remember Will Rochester?” Akara throws his cell on the counter. “Apparently he’s planning on throwing Sulli a Hallow Friends Eve party the day before Halloween.” He shakes his head repeatedly. “I don’t like where this is fucking going. He seems…”
“Like he’s into her?” Banks finishes. “Because that’s one-hundred percent certain—”
“I know that,” Akara growls, heat flashing in his eyes. “That’s not it.”
He established a buddy-guard friendship with Sullivan Meadows, and he walks a blurry line like he was born on one. No sweat. Better than I could with my feet cemented to the thing.
But ever since last year, he’s picked up that Sulli is starting to show real interest in dating. And his overprotectiveness and his level of care for his client has shot through the fucking roof.
“You’re not jealous?” Banks wants confirmation.
Akara glares. “Shut the fuck up.”
I don’t make those comments about him and Sulli. He gets enough shit from the rest of SFO. But Banks eases up faster than the other guys would.
“Is it a sixth sense?” I ask Akara about Will. Wondering if his caution is based on gut or intel.
“Yeah, it’s just a feeling. He’s renting out a farm.” Akara fists the neck of his beer and puts a container of Ripped Fuel on the counter. “He’s taking an entire open field and putting together haunted houses from scratch .”
“Rich guys can do that,” Banks points out.
“I’m rich,” Akara says, “and I can’t do half of what he’s planning.” Akara had about the same wealth as Farrow growing up.
His dad was a big shot broker. But he died when Akara was seventeen. Akara used the life insurance money to open up Studio 9.
“The Rochesters are old money.” I unscrew my water, pushing back my chow for a second.
Banks nods. “They can afford mega yachts.”
Like Jane.
I sometimes forget she’s that wealthy. She lives modestly in comparison to her parents. I look to Akara. “How many people will be at the farm?” Wherever the Hallow Friends Eve party takes place, I know Jane will be there, and I need the details.
“I don’t know yet,” Akara says. “But Will promised that every single guest would sign an NDA or they wouldn’t be permitted on the grounds. It’s their ticket into the party. Sul said it was really sweet of him.” His hand slips on the Ripped Fuel container and pills spill out. “Shit.” He cleans it up.
Banks nods to Akara. “So this Will guy lives around here. How deep is he?”
Akara tosses pills back into the jug. “Banks, I love you, man, but we talked about that phrase. No one but you and your brother use it, and all I picture is someone’s cock deep between a set of thighs.”
“You’re welcome.” Banks smiles with his toothpick between his teeth.
“How far away is he?” I rephrase how deep is he?
Akara explains that he lives in a gated neighborhood twenty minutes away. He’s been background checked. “I have a feeling he’s just buying her trust so he can fuck her, and Sul said she’s not looking for a hookup, so what am I supposed to do?”
Let it happen.
Akara wouldn’t direct Sulli away from Will if he thought she liked him. He’s venting to us, and he knows there’s nothing he can do about the situation.
That’s going to be me , I realize.
Once this op ends soon, Jane could easily meet a rich prick. Could I help her fall in love with another man? Could I watch that fucking happen?
My stomach roils.
I’m stuck between a rock and another fucking rock.
39
JANE COBALT
Failure is a dear friend of mine. And it reared its ugly head again today. I’m trying my best not to visualize what happened, or else I’ll feel a repeat wave of mortification and disappointment.
But it’s hard not to think about.
Especially when it happened mere hours ago.
I showed up to the recording studio for my first session narrating Wildfire Heart . It lasted ten minutes before the producer paused and took a phone call. When he came back, he simply said, “I’m sorry Jane. I just got a call from the publisher. They want to go in a different direction.”
It was so formal and direct. Like a swing of an axe, I was cut just like that.
Different direction is so vague. It could have been my fault—they didn’t like my voice or didn’t want my name attached to the audiobook—and they’re just trying to be professional and diplomatic. Not wanting to burn bridges. Or it could have been something out of my control.
I don’t know.
I suppose I never will. And that’s the hardest part in all of this. When you don’t know why you’ve truly failed, but you have. Eliot told me it’s like that all the time in casting, and you just have to believe you’re talented enough. It’s just outside factors. And the truth—it doesn’t matter in the end.
But I truly don’t know if I’m talented enough at anything that could deem me worthy of my Cobalt name. Except math.
Tom says it’s a curse. To have talent for something you don’t love.
Lately it’s felt that way.
Girls Night has never been more necessary. I’m in Luna and Sulli’s room, and I need to forget about Wildfire Heart .
And I especially need to forget about the call I made to my little sister, breaking the news that I’d no longer be narrating one of her favorite books. Or any books.
She just stared at me through FaceTime, red hair framing her face. “Oh Jane,” she said in her whimsical, velvety voice like she stepped out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel. “Please don’t weep. Those publishers truly don’t know what they lost. They should be the ones in tears.”
Disappointing her is what hurts the most.
“Jane.” Sulli tosses one of her squishy basketballs at my face. It bounces off my forehead. Sulli turns to Luna. “We’ve fucking lost her.”
“To the aliens,” Luna nods.
“I’m here,” I say into a sigh and pick up the ball. I try and aim for the small hoop on the back of the door. Sulli and Luna’s room is a combination of them both. Alien beanbags on a fuzzy rug, hand weights tucked under the bottom bunk, and posters taped over every inch of the wall.
I lob the ball. It doesn’t even reach the net.
“That air ball must be a metaphor for my life,” I muse aloud.
Sulli tosses me a bottle of avocado facemask. “You can’t think everything is a sign. It’ll drive you fucking crazy.”
She’s not wrong. I uncap the bottle.
Luna lounges on the bottom bunk. She squirts three bottles of the creamy green facemask in a large bowl. “I dunno,” she says. “I kind of like thinking everything is a sign. It’s a reminder that we’re not alone.” Luna also tells us that she’s been taking online classes at Penn on extraterrestrial life in the u
niverse.
Sulli adds, “All I’m saying is that we go with the hard-earned facts. And fact is everyone in this room is fucking awesome. Including you.” She looks straight at me.
I slide on a cloth headband above my hairline to avoid avocado hair. “Thank you,” I say. “I needed to hear that today.” I look between them.
They’re not much younger than me, but in a completely different place in their lives. They can figure things out. Take some time off. But I’ve already done that.
I’m heading into my mid-twenties and it feels like the clock has officially run down. That I should have my shit together by now. Thank God, I’m still on the Cobalt social media blackout. I can’t look online at the tweets or comments on Instagram. I’m sure the majority of them are reaffirming what they already believed.
That I am a complete disappointment. And how could I be the eldest child of Rose and Connor Cobalt?
“Luna, what’s your theory on body-snatching?” I ask.
Sulli gives me a look like no fucking way have you been body-snatched. Luna now squirts body glitter into her bowl. “Body-snatching is not impossible. I once thought I had this out-of-body experience one summer. But I think I was just huffing too much glue.”
Sulli and I look at her.
“Please tell me my brothers didn’t put you up to that,” I say.
“All I’ll say is that it was the summer of a lot of stupid shit, not all I would repeat, and Tom, Eliot, and I have officially dubbed it the Stoopid Summer. Stoopid with two O’s.”
They have a name for a summer. I shouldn’t be surprised.
“And speaking of summer,” Sulli says, a smile burgeoning on her face as she glances to Luna. Like they’re in on something. Can’t be surprised about that either. They do share a room together. They’re practically college dormmates.
I rub the avocado cream on my face and pass the bottle to Sulli.
Luna sheds her shirt and pants, only in a pair of underwear and a bra. She starts lathering her avocado cream-glitter mixture all over her belly. “You know how Moffy will offhandedly mention that Farrow says he smells like summer? Like all the time.”
Tangled Like Us Page 35
