Jack is about to reply.
“Give it to him sloppy,” Donnelly smirks.
“Ignore Donnelly,” Oscar tells Jack. “You’ll feel smarter.”
Donnelly scoops pudding with his finger. “Ignoring Oscar makes your dick feel bigger.”
Oscar ends up laughing, but he nods to Jack. “I’m still waiting, Highland.”
Jack opens his mouth, and now Farrow chimes in, “Really digging deep for a compliment, Oliveira.”
Oscar sets down his water bottle. “At least I know what they look like, Redford.” And then he throws a potato chip at Maximoff, which my best friend dodges easily.
Farrow points at his friend. “Fuck you.” It’s very lighthearted.
Oscar grins, and Jack has already left my side to go referee Akara and Sulli’s arm wrestling match. Jack has grown closest to Akara out of all the bodyguards.
Thatcher observes all of them without much of a reaction.
I truly adore being a fly on the wall among security. The FanCon tour was a pivotal turning point. I was able to peek further and further into the lives of our bodyguards in ways I never had before, and I could spot pre-established friendships of their own.
“Who bought a hundred banana cream pie pudding cups? Literally, a hundred .” Quinn scrunches his face and hoists a plastic bag at the table.
Oscar tosses a chip in his mouth. “Who do you think? There’s only one guy who’s eating that shit.”
Donnelly is crushing the cup, squeezing pudding in his mouth.
Quinn reads the nutrition label with furrowed brows. He’s a very clean eater, something I noticed during the FanCon tour. “Damn, how come no one bought avocados or bread, but we have a hundred pudding cups?”
Thatcher stares more sternly. “If you had your radio on, you could’ve asked for that.”
Donnelly nods. “You tell him, Thatch.”
“It’s Thatcher,” he corrects. Often, actually.
I’ve wondered if it frustrates him when people try to shorten his name, but I haven’t found the proper time to ask.
I’m not even sure now is. Especially since the stairs creak behind us. Our heads swerve as Luna descends with a long yawn.
Bodyguards glance at Luna, but they offer privacy and try not to plaster their gazes for more than a few seconds.
I smile at my cousin. “Good afternoon, sleepyhead.”
Light-brown hair splays messily on her shoulders, faded green marker streaks her cheeks, and her lanky arms and body are hidden beneath an oversized Thrashers hoodie.
“Howdie.” She yawns longer. “I heard something upstairs about a squirrel in a box.”
I shift from the staircase to let her pass. “You heard right.” I explain what Akara told us in depth.
Luna hardly flinches at the news. She was gifted poop in a bag by a bully in high school, so this isn’t shocking for her either.
“People suck,” Luna says under her breath while she skates past Thatcher and me, and then the adjoining door quietly opens.
Banks slips inside.
All of Security Force Omega is now here.
I thought Thatcher’s brother would be in New York all day. I look to Thatcher, and he leans closer to me. Just to speak privately. Do not elevate any dangerous hopes or wishes, Jane.
I inhale his strong woody scent as he says, “Tom’s bodyguard went on-duty earlier.”
“Right,” I breathe.
It means that Banks is now off-duty and floating to wherever anyone on the team must need him. Especially if Farrow has a med call.
It’s sometimes strange how security is more attuned to the happenings of my family as a whole unit, more than I can ever possibly be.
Sulli groans. “Cumbuckets.” She just lost the competitive arm-wrestle match.
“There’s always next time, Sul.” Akara pushes himself off the cushion to a stance and steals a Fruity Pebble off the donut she’d been eating. He makes his way over to Banks, who has screeched to a halt beside Oscar.
Banks stares at the photographs of suitors. “What’s this?”
Akara starts explaining the plan that’s already spread through the rest of Omega, and everyone quiets to listen.
I hold the banister with two hands. Apprehension rolling around my stomach. Just having Maximoff, Farrow, and Thatcher in my plans is much easier. Having the whole room is more intimidating, but I’m open to more ideas and input.
I do the math.
7 Omega Bodyguards + 3 Cousins + 1 Exec Producer = 11 Brains.
Eleven brains on top of mine could easily make the situation more dysfunctional, but the professional hierarchy in SFO makes them a functional team. Most of them are good about checking their egos.
And when they don’t, it never bothers me. I was raised in a family with parents and siblings who love to be right. The ego of my dad alone could fill the entire Milky Way.
Donnelly rips a photo off the wall. “This one looks like a straight up prick.”
“Man, they’re not dating you,” Farrow says easily.
He grins. “They wish they could have this ass.”
Oscar turns his head to me. “It’s not a bad idea, Cobalt.” He stuffs his hand in the chip bag. “You openly dating a guy should calm down some of the aggressive men outside. They’ll leave knowing they lost their chance.”
I hadn’t even considered that benefit.
Subduing hecklers is usually an impossible feat. I always try to keep my chin up and live inside the chaos instead of fight against the forceful current. So my focus has been on ensuring my grandmother won’t try this tactic again on my siblings. Sending her a message that she failed.
“All those guys outside will leave?” Sulli asks hopefully. I’d love for my cousin to feel more comfortable here.
“Will they?” I ask Oscar too.
“Not the whole crowd.” Oscar speaks to us both. “But at least the creeps on the street looking to…” He gestures to me, trying to be polite. “You know.”
“Sleep with me,” I finish for him. I know.
“Bingo,” Oscar says.
The room tenses.
Thatcher and Banks are staring hard at one another. Practically talking through their eyes, and I think I’d have to live inside their twenty-eight years of existence to fully comprehend what it all means.
I replay Oscar’s words in my head, and I realize I’ve missed something. “You said openly dating,” I say to Oscar. “But I was just going to take the football player on one afternoon tea. I’m not dating him. I’m not dating anyone.”
The air could snap, tension stretched at a maximum. Concern bores into me from so many pairs of narrowed eyes.
Merde.
These men are all naturally protective. For Omega, it’s practically a job requirement, but I’m starting to feel my age. Just twenty-three. Not the oldest of anything since they’re all so much older than me.
Except for Moffy. I will always have one month on my best friend.
I pull back my shoulders, how my mom taught me. To combat brewing heat under my frilly blouse, I tie my hair into a low pony. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Luna bounces her head. “I see it. I feel it.” She air high-fives me from across the room while licking a pudding cup.
My lips rise. I adore Luna Hale.
“Until you’ve officially chosen someone,” Oscar says more seriously, “the men outside are likely to keep coming back around.”
Well then…there goes that.
Sullivan’s shoulders drop, more bummed. When she catches me staring, she says hurriedly, “No big deal, Jane. Don’t worry about it. It’s not even your fucking fault. Grandmother Calloway sucks.”
I take a breath. And I say to everyone, “I was never doing this to deter the men outside anyway.”
Maximoff is acting strange. He stiffens, staring off at the brick wall and cracking his knuckles.
“Moffy?” I ask.
His eyes pin to me with a mountain of concern, his cheekbones sharpened like blade
s ready for war, and he asks the room, “What’s the likelihood those guys outside become stalkers?”
“High,” many bodyguards say at the same time.
I know why it’s a high likelihood. It already takes a certain sort of person to not only believe the advertisement but to spend energy screeching my name outside my townhouse.
Maximoff and I have never feared stalkers before. Not until Nate. Once he breeched the safety of our townhouse, he punctured our trust bubble and made me, in particular, feel incredibly violated.
I don’t want that to happen again.
I leave Thatcher’s side and approach the photographs. I scrutinize the auburn-haired football player and below his picture, a firefighter. Maybe I could date one of them?
Just for a little while.
“The firefighter looks nice maybe…” I trail off. It feels like a step too far, doesn’t it? Especially after all that’s happened.
“You’re not dating him, Janie,” Maximoff says, shutting it down.
“Just date Moretti,” Oscar suggests so suddenly, and the room explodes in two exclamations:
“What?!”
“Oscar?!”
My big eyes have just popped out of my flushed face and rolled across the hardwood toward the source of my heat, shock, and all other tragically startled things.