I nod confidently and stay seated on the rocking chair. “Let’s hear it then, old chap.” I slide a furtive glance to Farrow, and we share a look of understanding. Protect and love Maximoff Hale.
Maximoff sets down his Batman mug. “By staying on your detail, Thatcher chose the harder path.”
“Right,” I say softly. My cheeks hurt as I try to subdue another smile.
I’m more than appreciative that Thatcher stayed. It shows how much he wanted to be here for me, and I haven’t had that devoted feeling from a bodyguard ever. My first, now-retired, bodyguard never really gave me any hints that he enjoyed my company.
Quinn Oliveira, my second bodyguard, was incredibly kind-hearted, but I was his first client, and so when he was transferred to Luna, he seemed more excited for the new possibilities. Ready to leave.
I love that Thatcher wanted to stay with me, despite all the risks and hardships. Plus, working through a new bodyguard relationship while dealing with the Cinderella ad would’ve been so stressful.
“Three.” Farrow lifts his middle finger. “Bodyguard transfers happen all the time. Guys may have their preferences on who they want to protect, but we all love your family enough to not really give a shit at the end of the day. We’re just happy to be on-duty. You don’t do what Moretti did without liking a client, and I’d know because I’d do whatever it took to stay on Maximoff’s detail.”
I hear what he’s telling me.
So they believe, through the oath, that Thatcher finally showed his cards, and now they know that he must like me on some personal level.
My pulse is on an ascent.
Beating and beating, and I’m not sure why I’m so nervous. “So he likes me on a personal level. I’m attracted to him. It’s not like anything can happen.”
Maximoff pops his knuckles, a bad habit.
Farrow lifts his brows. “Okay, here’s the thing.” He places his oatmeal bowl on the coffee table. “Whatever personal and professional shit that I have going on with Thatcher, that’s between me and him. We’re both twenty-eight, not eighteen. We’d put protecting you two above every fucking thing.”
It’s why Farrow has been okay with Thatcher staying on security, even after the dreaded punch , and why Maximoff was fine with Thatcher remaining on my detail during that time.
They see Thatcher as an experienced, expertly-skilled bodyguard, and they know he’ll keep me safe. Regardless of any bad blood.
So they still trust him, but they don’t like him.
Farrow splays his earpiece cord over his shoulder. “Putting all that shit aside, I’m going to be honest here: Thatcher won’t do what I did. He won’t break the rules for you like I broke them for Maximoff. I can’t even see him breaking a rule for his own twin brother.”
Maximoff brushes a hand through his thick hair. “If he’s unwilling to break those rules, then it’s just going to end badly. Whatever feelings you have for him, Janie, he’s going to crush them.”
I arch my shoulders, inhaling and not exhaling very well. “The only feeling I have is attraction. And I know you want to protect me from heartache, Moffy, but my heart isn’t involved.” I swig a bigger gulp of room temp coffee and lick my lips. “No hearts. No body parts. It’s solely faraway attraction. Love is a two-way street that neither of us are driving down.”
Maximoff stares faraway in thought.
“Famous ones.” Farrow looks between the two of us with slowly rising brows. “Your inexperience is showing.”
I lean forward. “How so?”
Maximoff is still staring off into space, cracking his knuckles.
Farrow has a hard time pulling his gaze off him, but he tells me, “Love can definitely be a one-way street, and trust me, you don’t want to be the one who drives down it.”
“Did you drive down it?” I wonder.
Maximoff tunes in. “Drive where?”
We laugh.
He blinks slowly into a glare. “I apparated to another dimension.”
“Still in Philly, wolf scout.” Farrow smiles wider and then stands up, just to take a seat on the armrest, but he’s much closer to his fiancé.
Maximoff is a wooden board, but his joints reanimate and he wraps a strong arm around Farrow’s shoulders.
Farrow holds Moffy’s waist, his hand dipped beneath his shirt.
They draw closer.
“What were you saying?” Maximoff asks me.
“One-way streets of love,” I explain. “Farrow said they exist, and I asked if he’s driven down one before.”
“Sure,” Farrow answers. “I thought I was in love at thirteen, and that was not reciprocated in the way I wanted.”
“And then Rowin,” Maximoff says, unearthing a name that causes Farrow to roll his eyes into all seven circles of hell.
Farrow’s ex is hated among all of my family and all of security. I was almost tempted to take a page out of my mom’s retaliation handbook, but it’d be like digging up a buried corpse.
Revenge is pointless, my dad would say.
“That fucker was driving down that road all on his own,” Farrow tells Maximoff. “I was nowhere near it.” His palm encases Maximoff’s sharp jaw, and Moffy runs his hand up to the base of Farrow’s skull.
I can tell they’re about to kiss.
Maximoff mutters something under his breath, and Farrow murmurs back, their lips drawing closer—and like he’s injected with a shot of Best Friend Guilt, Maximoff abruptly tears out of the embrace. Stepping to the side, he winces at himself, his nose flaring.
And he plants his apologetic eyes on me.
I wince at Maximoff’s wince. “Moffy—”
“I’m totally focused on you,” he reminds me.
Farrow is nowhere near annoyed. He’s staring more protectively at Maximoff like he just wants to shield him from all his hang-ups and worries.
“Of course you are,” I say with all my heart. “And I don’t mind if you take a minute or even an hour to kiss the man you love.”
His neck reddens. “But what about you?”
“What about me?”
Farrow picks up his bowl, trying to stay out of our exchange.
Maximoff’s concern is like a hot blanket. Draping over the whole room. “One-way streets of love—you know those are wrong turns. It’s the do-not-enter street.”
I inhale sharply and try to nod.
He’s afraid I’ll be hurt in this process, and from his vantage, this has to be painful. Here he was able to fall in love with a bodyguard who could reciprocate his feelings tenfold.
And in his mind, here I am—his other half—about to head down a one-way road.
Ten minutes later, a new pot of coffee is brewing and our plan has officially taken beautiful flight. Like a grasshopper springing off the lawn. “He looks promising.” I pass Maximoff a photograph of a twenty-something athlete with auburn hair, butterscotch eyes, and a hooked nose. “He’s a professional football player.”
I printed out his picture from Instagram. He sent me a direct message last night, along with 4,593 other people.
Not all are suitors.
Reyroo3245 told me to shut up and die.
So unnecessary.
I haven’t checked my DMs since 1 a.m., and I’m sure my inbox is severely bloated. But I’m more timid to sink back into that cesspool.
Maximoff examines the photo. “Yeah, what kind of twenty-something plays football instead of owning his own sports team. Can we say, underachiever?”
His impression of Grandmother Calloway is spot-on. Those would be her thoughts.
“And he’s not even the star quarterback.”
Maximoff grabs a pushpin. “She’d probably pale at the word football .”
“Far too much tackling,” I note.
He pins the photo onto a corkboard, which we hung on the brick wall. Next to the adjoining door.
I wonder what Thatcher is up to while he’s over there and I’m here. Is he thinking about our run-in from earlier at all?
“Famous ones.”
We look over at the kitchen.
Farrow rests a shoulder casually on the archway, a red apple between his fingers. “While this entire pseudo Criminal Minds episode is entertaining as fuck, what’s the endgame here?”