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“Gio, sit down!” Banks yells.
“Thatcher,” I warn.
He swings his head, and immediately, he lowers me to my feet, his towering height shielding me.
Zeroing in on the target, Thatcher yells, “Che cozz’!”
He’s taught me enough Italian that I remember the translation: What the fuck are you doing?
“Just bought this for you, Moretti!” Gio digs his hand in the shopping bag. “So you can tie up your rich bitch!” He chucks an object at us, but Farrow intercepts first and catches what looks like restraint cuffs, meant to tie a submissive to a bed.
I boil. “I do not like BDSM!” I shout at the top of my lungs, as though the whole world will hear me.
“Prove it!” He points from me to Thatcher, as though we’ll fuck in front of everyone.
My face twists in disgust and ire. I loathe this redundancy more than anything, how I always find myself here, shouting the same phrase and meeting the same unwelcome result.
It is infuriating.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Maximoff almost charges at the guy.
Farrow puts Moffy in an arm-lock and whispers rapidly in his ear. Banks is pushing other men back from us.
And Thatcher—he could spark infernal damnation in a single glare. “She has nothing to prove to you.” He projects his voice without yelling.
I touch a slow-growing smile on my face. I can’t believe I’m smiling. I perch my hands on my wide hips, chin raised, and then—
Boom!
I flinch.
Thatcher clasps my hand and draws me behind his back. Every head whips to the noise behind the bar as an older gray-haired gentleman bangs a baseball bat to the counter.
“EVERYONE OUT!” he yells.
Complaints gather from whispers to shouts.
“I SAID OUT! I OWN THIS DAMN BAR. I SAY YOUSE GO, YOUSE GO!” He points the bat at the door. People begin to shift, and I snatch my wedding binder before another pair of hands do.
“You wanna lose business, Jerry?!”
“I’m losing nuthin’. I get ten grand just to get you shitheads outta here!” He suddenly aims his bat towards me and Maximoff. “Youse can stay. Everyone else, go!”
Ten thousand dollars?
I go cold. This makes little sense.
People shoot us nasty glares and huff on their way out. I hear rich bitch! yelled at me, as though this is my doing. Snowy gusts blow inside as bodies exit, the bar slowly clearing. Leaving behind a beer-spilt floor, crooked chairs, and littered tabletops.
Moffy and I exchange a tentative look, and I sense our bodyguards talking amongst themselves and hawk-eyeing all the passing, disgruntled people. I hug the binder and lean into my best friend. “Did you pay the owner to clear out the bar?”
“No.” His fingers weave through his thick, dark brown hair. “Did you?”
“No. I wouldn’t. It’d be easier to just leave.” We’re uneasy, and I say what we both know. “Our bodyguards wouldn’t spend ten grand to evacuate a room full of assholes. There are only a handful of people who would.”
His shoulders square, ready to protect and defend even though he’s not a bodyguard.
“Charlie,” I declare. “He would.”
Maximoff licks his lips. “As cool as it’d be for telepathy to be real, Charlie isn’t telepathic. Your brother couldn’t have known this mayhem broke out at this moment.”
“What if it’s online?” I theorize. “Someone could’ve recorded and posted everything.” I take a seat at the bar, setting my binder back down, and we take out our phones and do a quick social media search.
My frown deepens.
No peep. Nothing about the eldest Cobalt and eldest Hale in a South Philly bar fight.
Banks plops down on the stool beside mine. He just intercepted the path of a drunk middle-aged man, who probably would’ve sat next to me.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He just nods and reaches over the bar for a beer bottle. He motions to the owner, who gives the okay for him to take the beer.
“It can’t be Charlie,” Maximoff concludes. “Jesus, does he even know we’re here?”
“He does,” Thatcher says, coming closer to the bar with Farrow.
I rotate on the stool. “What do you mean?” I rush to obtain whatever knowledge they’ve acquired.
“Charlie texted me earlier.” Thatcher squats and collects my trampled fur coat off the floor. Dirtied. He splays the filthy thing on a vacant stool. “Your brother asked where I was. So I told him.”
I’m wary. “That was all he wanted?”
Thatcher nods.
My neck elongates, tense and very cautious of what’s about to occur. “Charlie is coming here.”
Maximoff shakes his head, uncertain. “It doesn’t make any damn sense, Janie.”
“I know my brother,” I say. “He’s bought out this particular bar, and he’ll be here in dramatic glory.”
It has to be Charlie.
Maximoff turns to Farrow. “Ask Oscar if Charlie is coming here.” Oscar Oliveira is Charlie’s 24/7 bodyguard, and so he’d know more than just where Charlie is.
He should be with him.
Beside him.
Protecting him.
Farrow blows a bubblegum bubble and pops it in his mouth. “You’re five steps behind me, wolf scout.”
Maximoff growls in frustration. “Farrow—”
“I already tried. Oscar is off comms. Most likely because Charlie asked his bodyguard not to share with the whole class.”
Thatcher looks grim, from the door to us.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Earlier, I heard that Eliot and Tom left New York and have been heading to Philly.”
“It could be a coincidence,” I note.
Farrow rests a boot on a stool rung. “Or your brothers are up to some shit.”
“They’re not up to some shit,” I defend, more hotly than I mean to.
He raises his hands.
Thatcher’s concern bears down on me. “What’s wrong?”
I take a strained breath. “I’m afraid my siblings are being coy in order to give you a hard time.” Admitting this is difficult because I would love to just roll out a beautiful, luxurious red carpet for Thatcher.
But this is not the Cobalt way.
It’s very possible Thatcher’s introduction into my family will be grueling, taxing, and of the most theatrical, over-the-top caliber—and I need to save him from this, don’t I?
Possibly that’s what I can offer him, an open window into my family that he can easily crawl into. But how?
Life is chess. And I need to be ten moves ahead of Charlie.
“Jane.” Thatcher draws my gaze upward. “I can handle whatever they throw at me.”
Even if this were true, I have to help him. “Ensemble,” I say deeply, a word meant for my family, and I want that to include him.
Together.
His chest rises, and he nods.
I type on my phone, my sibling group chat relatively quiet t
onight.
I send: How many of you are coming here?
“What in the ever-loving fuck…? Where’s everyone going?”
I look up.
Sullivan Meadows, my twenty-year-old cousin, suddenly arrives. Her bodyguard Akara Kitsuwon safely leads her against the grain, and they enter the bar while masses barge outside.
Sulli unzips her puffy teal jacket. “Are we supposed to be here?”
“It seems that way,” I tell her. “Someone’s bought out the bar for us.” Much earlier, I invited Maximoff, Sulli, and Luna—my three cousins who live with me in the old townhouse—to join Thatcher and me at the bar. I haven’t heard back from Luna, so I suppose she’s busy tonight.
Akara fixes his mic on his red windbreaker. He speaks in short glimpses to the other bodyguards. Including Tony who hovers far too close. His proximity might as well light Thatcher’s eyes on fire.
My phone buzzes.
Have I missed something? Where is everyone going? – Audrey
If my little sister has no clue about what’s happening, then it’s likely that Moffy is right. Charlie isn’t coming here.
None of my siblings are.
“Oh hey, you don’t have to get up for me.” Sulli knots her long brunette hair in a messy top bun. “Really, I can just fucking stand or take another stool.”
Banks has already risen. “It’s not like you’ll block my view or anything.” He’s six-seven to her six-foot. “Go ahead.” He’s offering her the seat beside me.
“Thanks.” As Sulli sits, she watches Banks and Akara clasp hands and pat each other’s back in greeting. To me, she says, “I heard we’re going to Scotla—I mean, Hawaii. Fuck, I suck at code names.”
I smile and scoot closer. “Have you decided on whether you want to bring Will Rochester along?” Sulli and Will have been dating privately, and she’s admitted that they probably would’ve kissed at Hallow Friends Eve if the party hadn’t been cut short. Will hasn’t pressured her to move faster or made her feel badly for ending the party early—a party that he threw for her.
So far, he seems honorable and decent.
Yet, surfacing his name suddenly silences the bar. The door bangs shut, the last stranger leaving.
She catches a look that Banks and Akara give each other. “What? You don’t think I’ll invite Will? That I’m chicken shit scared?”
