“You can handle a lot, I’ll give you that to start,” Farrow says, nodding a few times. “But no one, not even me, can take on everything for everyone. Since you were, how young? Sixteen, fifteen? You’ve let thousands of people give you their emotional pain, and they want and plead for you to comfort them.” He pauses. “At what point is it going to click for you that you’re just one man. One man. That’s one to millions. You can’t. You can’t.”
“I can try.”
Farrow looks straight into my core. He pauses to consider my reply, and then he says, “But promise you’ll listen to your body if it says you can’t handle it anymore. You know, step back.” His lips almost rise as he uses some of my words from a while ago.
I’m actually, really smiling. Once the FanCon ends, I’ll have less close contact with so many fans at one time. It’ll be easier than now.
But he’s concerned.
For me.
“Step back,” I say, feigning confusion. “Can’t picture it, for either of us.”
He nods. “We’re both stubborn assholes.”
“Tell me something that isn’t new,” I say.
“I love you,” he says deeply. “And when you hurt, I hurt.”
I inhale. We pull closer, foreheads pressed together, and I kiss him—but he’ll tell you that he kisses me. Our mouths meet, and I urge his lips. In a sweet, yearning embrace that lights my lungs on fire.
And then a knock raps the door. Our mouths break, but his gaze says don’t detach; let them see, wolf scout.
I can’t. Going public as my boyfriend—maybe it wouldn’t affect his job anymore because SFO is already dealing with notoriety—but it’d put Farrow through a ringer.
All the public scrutiny, media harassment, and extreme loss of privacy.
The kind of fame he’s experiencing now is nothing compared to what he’d feel as “Maximoff Hale’s boyfriend”—and I can’t do that to him.
So I back up, our arms dropping off each other, and he nods, understanding. I think.
39
FARROW KEENE
“Wait, wait,” Maximoff breathes hard against my jaw. Every time I end up in the same tight bunk with him, it’s a master class in restraint.
A flip-down movie screen plays Everybody Wants Some!! which we’ve abandoned several times to turn into each other. Legs interlocked, chest against chest. Hands gripping and squeezing and pulling.
Damn, I want deeper.
But our roaming hands pause at his wait, wait. I watch him catch his breath as he tries to suppress this carnal need.
A smile toys at my stinging lips. See, we’re not about to fuck inches away from his cousins and my friends.
Restraint. It’s harder than any class I took at Yale, but clearly I’m the one making better grades.
“Watch the movie, wolf scout.” I eye his reddened lips.
“You watch it,” he combats in a choked groan. “Fuck, just shut up for a second.”
My voice turns him on.
Hot arousal tries to fist my cock, both of us only in drawstring pants. Thin fabric separates us, and the outline of his dick rubs against mine.
My goal isn’t to sexually frustrate him or me. We’re on route to Boulder for the next tour stop, but Colorado is still hours away. I could blow him in the bathroom again, but the only time we did that, a fight erupted with Charlie.
I feel his muscles flex against my firm body. “I can leave if you’re struggl—”
“I’m not, thanks for asking.”
I roll my eyes but they land on his gaze that’s fucking me hard. Damn, Maximoff. I inhale a shallow breath.
Thing is, if I left this bunk, I’d just want to return.
There’s not much more I can do about the stalker. I’ve hit a wall. Now that I’ve searched all the NDAs, the tech team is tracking everyone I flagged. They’ll notify me if Jason Motlic, Vincent Webber, or the other top-listed suspects are in the same city as Maximoff.
What I can do: wait for the stalker to make a mistake.
My hand ascends to his deltoids, then neck, and my mouth skims his as I speak. “It’s understandable.”
Maximoff pulls closer. “What is?”
“You,” I whisper, “finding me irresistible.” I break into a wide smile as he growls out his aggravation.
He also bucks into my waist, grinding against my pelvis for friction—fucking hell. I clutch his ass, and our mouths collide. He tries to shift on top of me, fuckfuck. I use my strength and pin him to my chest. Keeping us on our sides.
Not here, wolf scout.
I bite his lip, and his muscles contract.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my neck.
My veins pulse, and I’m breathing just as heavily. Shit, this is more difficult than I thought.
“Movie,” he tells me.
I nod, but like our last six attempts, only our eyes move. On the flip-out TV, we watch college-aged guys play baseball, set in 1980. Not a lot of action, no superpowers or car chases.
“I’m surprised you like this movie,” I tell him. Apparently he’s seen it a “billion” times but he wanted to see it again with me.
Maximoff licks his lips a few times, like he still feels me on them. “One of the main actors was on Teen Wolf.” There we go. “And he’s fucking hot.”
“Which one?” I wait for Maximoff to point him out, but he just groans, frustrated, his hands gripping tighter on my waist and neck.
“Stop, fucking stop,” he almost growls. “You can’t do that thing with your fingers.”
My smile stretches. I’m gliding my hand in and out of his thick hair. Basically giving him a head massage. “What about now?” I clutch his jaw, his breath shallows. No. Then his neck, and he tries and almost shifts on top.
I hold his jaw again, my blood on fire. Muscles burning, my cock is dying to harden. “Maximoff,” I breathe. His aggression is fucking killing me. It takes all my energy not to arch into him for that mind-numbing friction.
His eyes devour me whole. “Why am I so fucking attracted to you?” His ankle strokes my calf.
We pull each other closer.
I skim his cheekbones. “If you want me to list the reasons, wolf scout, we’ll be he
re for hours—”
A jingle bell noise cuts me off and kills the mood. He doesn’t tell me don’t answer. Maximoff even finds my phone beneath the pillow and hands it to me.
The stalker is a good distraction for us right now. But I never look forward to dissecting these gory photos.
I click into the account.
Shit.
I stare intensely at the photo. No gore. No body. It’s a headstone on a freshly dug grave. My jaw tics and eyes burn as I fixate unblinkingly on the etched words.
In Memory of Maximoff Hale, a bad person, a horrific friend.
Born July 13th I skim over the year of birth because the next part crashes into me. Died April 4th.
Tomorrow is April 4th.
Tomorrow is my twenty-eighth birthday.
Maximoff reads over my shoulder. He notices the dates. “It could be a coincidence.”
I sit up some. “Or the stalker knows we’re together.”
“Your father is not stalking me,” he says strongly. “He wouldn’t write that part about me being a horrific friend.”
Jason might, but there’s a less than 1% chance that he knows Maximoff is in a relationship. Let alone with me. I comb a hand through my hair. Could be a kill date. A warning, a threat. That Maximoff Hale will die tomorrow.
“It’s not real,” he tries to assure me. But I have to act like it’s real on the slim chance that it is.
“I’m going to call tech—” Our bunk curtain whips open.
Jane suddenly thrusts a phone at us, blue eyes pinging to me. “I’m sorry.” Then she looks to Maximoff. “You need to get up. You have to call work, right now.”
Before Maximoff tries to crawl over me, I climb out of the bunk. My feet hit the ground, then his.
“What’s going on?” Maximoff asks.
She shakes her head frantically and places the phone in his hand. “They called me so you’d call them back.”
His frown darkens.
I ask, “Who’s they?”
Maximoff looks down at the call history. “The board.”
40
MAXIMOFF HALE
“That’s impossible,” I say, white-knuckling my phone, set to speaker. Jane pats the couch next to her in the second lounge, but I can’t sit. I can’t move.
Farrow closes the door, taking a seat on top of the couch. Feet on the cushion, elbows to his thighs, he’s less nonchalant than what meets the eye. He keeps combing a hand through his hair, and his narrowed gaze keeps narrowing. Murderously.