I quickly cup my hand over my phone’s speakers.
Farrow speaks hushed in his mic. “Shut up, Donnelly.” Then he crouches in front of me.
“I think I’m dead.” I grimace.
“You’re breathing. You’re alive.” Farrow rests a hand on the curve between my shoulder and neck. “Come on.”
I have to let this car crash happen. I crack a knuckle, then I uncover the speakers. “Dr. Keene?”
“I didn’t know you and my son were together,” he says, his voice unreadable.
I rise at the same time as Farrow. My muscles are set to broil. “I thought my parents told you,” I say, my tone even-keeled despite my body frying alive from my fuck-up. I rarely make these kinds of mistakes. “And I assumed that’s why you were calling.” Stupidly. I glance at Farrow and my hard gaze carries a million-and-one apologies.
He mouths, it’s fine.
“I’m calling,” Dr. Keene says, “because you haven’t had an STD screening in months. That didn’t seem like you.” He clears a tight ball from his throat. “Now I know why.”
I’m fucking his son.
Dammit. I don’t know what to say. This is the first time I’ve dealt with a significant other’s parent. I’m not a normal human being either. I’m a celebrity from birth, American royalty, so I have no idea the correct protocol for any of this.
First thing that comes to my head, I tell Dr. Keene, “We’re safe.”
Farrow chokes on the brittle air, and he shakes his head vigorously at me and mouths, no. Like he doesn’t want his father in on his sex life. I get that now.
He’s twenty-seven. I’m sure he stopped talking to his father about that shit eons ago. That is, if he ever talked to him about it at all.
“Farrow is still your bodyguard?” Dr. Keene questions. “How?”
“Our relationship is staying secret from the public,” I tell him, and Farrow fixates on the phone in deep thought.
“Right. Be safe on the tour. Have a good rest of the day.”
After I say my goodbye, we hang up.
Farrow shakes his head a few times. “That’s not good.” He points at my phone. “That fucker has the strongest motive to leak our relationship to the public.”
I rub my sharpened jaw. “You really think he’d try to get you kicked off security?”
“To force me back onto a medical career path, yeah. I do.”
I start thinking about avenues we can take. “I’ll fix it.” I can make a call—
Farrow steals my phone.
“Farrow—”
“Wolf scout, you can’t patch bullet holes before the trigger is pulled. Take your own advice, and just drop it.”
I crack a crick in my neck. “The doing nothing thing—I’m not good at.”
“No shit.” He laughs when I glare.
I fight a smile. “Shut up.”
He leans towards me and lowers his voice to a sexy whisper, “See, every time you try to fix unfixable things, just imagine me pounding you so hard you cry when you come.”
Fuck me. My cock stirs, and I look at his mouth. Kiss me, man. “Sounds like fan fiction.”
Farrow watches me drinking him in, and his smile widens. “Trust me, it can easily be reality.” We somehow drift closer. Nearer. Hands on each other’s shoulders, slipping to the back of his neck, my neck—and my body thumps for more contact.
Mouths inches away, I breathe, “Bite me.”
He kisses me hard and then nips my lip, fuck yes—
“Separate!”
We do, and Farrow fits his earpiece in with the shake of his head. “If he does this the entire trip, I’m going to strangle him.”
9
FARROW KEENE
Five hours and twenty-three minutes into the drive—the tour bus rolling along the interstate towards the first convention stop—and someone is already bleeding.
Instantly, I stand and guide my boyfriend into the small bathroom, his hands cupped under his nose. The luxury tour bus is split into four sections, from the front to back:
Driver seat and passenger seat.
First lounge: two gray couches, chair and booth, television, granite counter with a coffee pot, sink and microwave; ice chest and fridge, and then a door leads to the bathroom/shower.
Sleeping bunks: on either side of a narrow hallway includes two rows of bunks, stacked three high. Twelve total.
Second lounge: a U-shaped couch, tabletop, and a television and game console.
Almost all of us were playing poker in the second lounge, and really, when you put that many people in a confined space, this shit is bound to happen. But out of eleven people, the one person I’d choose not to be bleeding is gushing blood right now.
“Pinch your nose,” I instruct and chew my gum.
“Fuck,” he curses, his palms crimson from the steady nosebleed. He starts to tilt his head backwards on instinct. Come on, wolf scout.
“Maximoff.” My hand rises from his shoulder to neck. “Stay bent forward. Turn to me.” I need to see if the bone is fractured.
Before he does either, a voice distracts him.
“What…in the ever-loving-fuck,” Sulli curses in the doorway, jaw unhinging. “I’m so fucking sorry. I just get so competitive and…fuck.” She won the last hand of poker, and she sprung up in excitement and accidentally elbowed Maximoff in the face.
He keeps his hand cupped beneath his nose. “I’m alright, Sul.”
She inches inside as Donnelly and Beckett fill the narrow hallway to watch. Only three bodies max are able to fit in this cramped bathroom. Jane would be here, but she’s sleeping in a bunk with earplugs.
Blissfully unaware.
But the more onlookers, the more Maximoff turns his back on them, just to decrease their concern.
Shit, I need him to bend forward, pinch his nose, and face me. He sort of corners himself by the faucet and pretends like he has everything under control.
In one motion, I hop up on the counter. Sitting, but I’m still a few inches taller. And I seize his waist and draw him towards me. “Pinch your nose or I’ll do it for you—”
I smile at his immediate reaction, his fingers automatically pinching his nose and forest-green eyes automatically narrowing.
The guy doesn’t like being coddled any more than I do.
I hold his jaw and guide his head forward and a little downward. I can feel him watching me as I examine the bridge of his nose.
By sight alone, the break isn’t clear. His nose isn’t sitting crooked on his face, but it swells. Skin in the corner of his eyes also reddens, the start of bruising.
His voice is stuffed as he tells me, “It’s not that bad.”
I pop my gum. “That’s cute that you think I can’t tell if it’s serious or not.” I glance at the three spectators. “Get me ice.”
Sulli darts out. “Kits, where’s the ice?”
Beckett slips further inside the bathroom, clutching the neck of a beer, and he scans the trickles of blood along the stone tile.
Maximoff pulls out of my hand. “I’ll clean it later. Watch out, Beckett.”
“I’ve seen worse.” Beckett puts his beer to his lips. “You’ve forgotten that I’ve lived on my own in New York for the past three years. I’ve grown up. Independent and free.” He outstretches his arms before looking at me from head-to-toe. Sizing me up for the fourth time, and that’s just counting today.
See, what I know of Beckett Cobalt is mostly based on bodyguard-talk, and Donnelly told me that Beckett is anti-relationships from trust issues being a celebrity.
He’s cautious of me. Either he believes I’m going to fuck and chuck Maximoff or toy with his emotions. Both of which, I’m not subscribing to.
But I’m not about to convince a twenty-year-old that I’m “here for the right reasons” and prefer long-term relationships.
I raise my brows at him. “Question?”
Beckett licks beer off his lips. “Not at the moment.” Then he shakes his head at M
aximoff. “She was one elbow away from me, and you were hit. You have the worst luck.”
“It’s the Hale Curse,” Donnelly says, propping his tattooed arm on the door frame and drinking a beer.
I roll my eyes and gesture Maximoff closer.
“The what?” Maximoff asks, his brows knotted, but he edges nearer and stands between my legs. I clutch his jaw again and inspect his nose.
“Don’t ask him,” I tell Maximoff. “Donnelly tattooed Cobalts Never Die on his knee. He’d create imaginary curses for any family but that one.”
Beckett grins into his swig of beer. “That’s true.”
Donnelly ignores his client and motions his bottle to Maximoff. “The Hale Curse. If there’s a Hale in the room: what could go wrong, will go wrong to the Hale. Statistically proven.”
The security team basically loses their shit whenever Beckett makes the face that he’s making now. It’s a scrunched-up, un-replicated you idiot, that’s utter bullshit face.