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Thatcher is staring at my back.
I hang my head, my heart in my throat with a looming sadness that I push aside. I’m not sad. I’m not sad. I can live without him.
“Where are you pulling your data from?” my dad asks, voice calm.
“Places,” I say, being as cagey as him. I’m the first of his children in a serious relationship. Guessing his motives concerning my boyfriend will be as accurate as shaking a Magic 8 Ball. I have no idea what my dad is truly thinking. “Are you inviting Thatcher to lunch out of kindness or to interrogate him?”
“That depends if we agree on the definition of interrogate,” he says smoothly like he, himself, is the arbiter of definitions. I once believed he wrote the dictionary under the pseudonym Merriam-Webster. I was five. And clearly deluded.
“Dad,” I say in warning.
“It’ll be a civil conversation, I promise.” I can feel his billion-dollar grin.
“I think you should wait for me to be there. I’ll be back in three days. Please.”
“If that’s what you want.” He pauses. “But sooner or later, I’m going to get to know him on my own. You’re not just seriously dating him, Jane. You’re bringing him into our world, and there’s only so much a background check covers.”
All bodyguards go through background checks, but my dad makes it seem like he pried right after Thatcher and I became a couple.
I’m frozen, but somehow I thaw, just to glance over my shoulder. At him.
Thatcher looks anything but surprised.
He knew that my family would take a bulldozer to his history and excavate any dead, decaying skeletons he buried away.
Of course he did. He’s a bodyguard. He’s probably helped do the digging in the past.
I raise my phone again, my eyes locked on Thatcher. “I understand,” I tell my dad.
My world—it’s barricaded and protected by a thousand force fields. Us, Cobalts—we have traditions that my cousins don’t even share. Letting an outsider into our well-guarded fortress is frightening and new, and I wouldn’t want or trust anyone to enter except for Thatcher.
I emphasize, “Just, please wait until I come home.”
“Pour toi n’importe quoi.” For you, anything.
After a quick goodbye, we hang up, but relief doesn’t exactly strike. Not after the awkward “marriage” moment and me mentioning statistics and our low probability of lasting.
Maybe it’s not even on Thatcher’s mind.
Maybe he’s forgotten my word vomit already.
He scans our surroundings, then me. “I’m not trying to kill your dreams, Jane, but your probabilities seem off.”
“How so?” I hug my arms around my body.
“You said it’s statistically low that someone marries their first boyfriend or girlfriend. How does that work between you and me?”
I’m confused until he adds, “You’re not my first girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I flush.
He nears. “I’m not as good at math as you, but in my head, it doesn’t make sense that our odds are different when we’d be marrying each other.” He blinks back something raw. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically.” I nod in agreement. Emotion bubbles to the surface, and I’ve never experienced this strong swell surging and surging and breathing life and sentiments so unwieldy inside of me. I tuck my hair behind my ear. “I’ll have…have to recalculate.” I sound breathless.
Our hands toy with touching again, and then the sky cracks.
We look up. Dark clouds gather and rumble violently.
Maximoff and Farrow sprint over to us as rain suddenly descends in heavy sheets. Thatcher draws me to his chest to keep me semi-dry, and I spin to face him.
Rain soaks our hair and shoulders, and he fits my binder beneath his jacket. Protecting the pages and ink.
I love him.
Moffy shouts over the storm, “We need to leave before the weather gets worse!”
It’s already freezing, and we have a slippery, dangerous descent.
“Hold onto me,” Thatcher says with severity.
I ache and desire and want to say, always. But the word is stuck. And all I manage to get out is, “Okay.”
23
THATCHER MORETTI
It all happens in a fucking blink. As we descend the hill, Jane slips on the slick grass.
Her hand slips out of mine, and she slides and slides. Too rapidly to catch, and Maximoff loses his footing. He falls next.
Farrow and I rush after them, but both land in the knee-deep, bone-chilling rocky stream. I’ve never moved this fast. I’ve never picked Jane up this quickly, and I’ve never felt her arms wrap around me this tight.
How the fuck did this happen?
It plays over and fucking over in my head when we reach the car, and I slam the door shut. Rain beats against the vehicle. Dry cover as Farrow and I move with severe urgency inside.
I’m in the backseat, and I slide Jane’s soaked and torn jeans down her thighs, down her ankles. Crimson bleeds into the mint-green fabric, and I throw aside the bloodied jeans. Her trembling fingers struggle to grip the zipper of her wet jacket.
I take over and skate the zipper down.
How the fuck did this happen? It rings in my ears. Slams at my chest. Jane being hurt is a thousand jackknives to the head and heart, and my feelings for her are bursting at me like blazing fireworks in my face. My greatest duty in this lifetime is to protect the woman I love.
She’s the only one, and this singular purpose pushes me to stay focused, gliding her jacket sleeves off her arms. Her brown hair sopping her shoulders as she shudders.
I tie her hair into a high messy bun, and in the front seats, Farrow is helping the man he loves remove his jacket and drenched shirt beneath. Maximoff tries to peel the crew-neck off his vibrating body, but Farrow does the job for him.
Shaking uncontrollably, Maximoff glances back at Jane. He looks how I feel. “Her lips…are blue,” he chatters.
Jane stares petrified at him. Because his lips are blue too.
Their panic just tanks the air, and I understand the bond she shares with Maximoff because I share the same one with my twin brother. But I’m also connected to her, and the love I wield for Jane and the love Farrow carries for Maximoff—it drives two more sets of pain.
Two more weights tanking us.
We’re three-ways in hell, and the only good thing is that all four of us are built to withstand the fire.
I draw her on my lap, careful with her leg, where a rock cut her from knee to shin. “He’s okay,” I assure Jane.
“She’ll be fine, Maximoff,” Farrow says with certainty.
My muscles are taut. Searing.
“I can’t…” Jane takes sharp breaths like her lungs are ice. Her wet blue-feathered blouse makes her look like a trembling bluebird caught in a rainstorm. I have to get her out of these clothes.
“I have you.” I cup her cheek—her skin is freezing. Blood is also dripping down her leg, and I have to prioritize one. I make the call and choose her leg. Farrow is already reaching back and handing me a first-aid kit and water bottle.
I pop the kit’s plastic lid.
“Is the cut deeper than a quarter of an inch?” Farrow asks while he helps Maximoff pull off his soaked jeans.
I examine the cut. “Almost.”
She squeezes her eyes closed, fighting for fuller breath.
Heat expels from the car’s A/C, and Maximoff ensures the vents are open and directs them towards Jane.
“Okay, you need to wash the cut and apply pressure.” Farrow stretches between the driver and passenger seat, closer to the backseat to get a better assessment. He’s calm but looks serious. “If it doesn’t stop bleeding after fifteen minutes, I’ll suture her.”
I nod.
Thank the Lord he’s a fucking doctor. It’s not the first time I’ve thought that. Wasting no time, I splash water on Jane’s shin, washing off some dirt, and I expect her to wince. B
ut she shakes.
Shivers.
Shudders forward, too cold to feel the pain—and alarm quickens my actions.
Swiftly, I bite open a packet of gauze and press down on the wound. I fist the hem of her blouse and tug the drenched fabric off her head. Her nipples prod against her soaked, see-through pink bra, and her cat-printed panties aren’t dry either.
She quakes. Her arms hug her belly—and I’m about to draw her onto my lap. I’m about to rub her skin for hot friction and cradle my girlfriend as close as I fucking can.
But I catch movement outside.
I narrow my eyes on the blurry windshield, rain slithering down the glass—and I see her bodyguard.
God-fucking-dammit.
My veins pulse with anger. Tony exits a car that’s parked in front of ours. His stride is arrogant, like he’s about to turn the rain into wine.
“Fuck that guy,” Maximoff says shakily. “I’m going—”
“No.” Farrow tugs him away from the door. “Let us worry about that dipshit. You and Jane need to get warm.”
I click my mic. “Banks to Tony, return to your vehicle. We have enough hands here.”
