She’s quiet for a full minute. Trying to figure out what question to ask or what to say first, and I squat and check the bottom of her closet.
“I’ve noticed that you mostly wear black and your brother is often in white. Is that a stylistic choice or so other people can tell you apart?”
I open some of her old shoeboxes. “Stylistic.” I adjust my earpiece as someone on Alpha yells at another bodyguard. Nailing my eardrum. My jaw hardens, and I continue without much falter, “But when we were young, our mom dressed us in certain colors so she wouldn’t confuse us.”
I explain briefly how Banks was blue.
I was red.
Now it’s harder to wear blue without feeling like I look like my brother. Same with white, which he gravitates towards as an adult. It’s not like I never wear those colors. I have plenty of white button-downs, but most of my clothes are black and red.
“I see.” Jane has a smile to her voice. “It’s not for other people. It’s for you.”
My chest rises in a stronger breath, but I don’t falter as I search her shoeboxes. My face is still stoic. Eyes still narrowed in focus. I like how I never have to say much for her to understand, I recognize.
I nod in reply and stand up. Shutting the closet door, I turn to face her. “It’s clear.” I skim Jane, who rests against the headboard, elbow on her bent knee and chin perched on her fist. She’s gorgeous. It’d be a sin to think she’s anything short of that.
And I’ve captured most of her attention. More importantly, she’s not as uneasy. This is good.
I let go of my radio. “Want me to check anything else?”
Her curious eyes brush over my biceps, carved against my black button-down, and then trace the gold horns against my chest. “The window, possibly?”
Her bed is tucked up against the only window. I come closer, and I watch her take a shallow breath. I cradle her gaze, then rest a knee on the pink comforter and stretch over to the window. Pushing aside the cheetah-print drapes and resetting the alarm.
I’ve done this before.
I’ve also been deep inside Jane every night on this bed.
But it’s too early for that routine. This isn’t the usual hour that I sneak into her room and fuck her senseless. We have to be careful with Farrow and Maximoff awake in this townhouse, and until I take off my radio, I’m still on-duty.
Her safety comes first.
I never forget that.
Jane relaxes more. “What was your favorite class in high school?”
“P.E.”
“No hesitation,” she notes like she’s still constructing a PowerPoint about me. It’s one of the cutest things she does. “You’re scoring very high on the jock charts.” She already knows I played football all four years at a Catholic high school. The church gave Banks and me financial assistance so we could afford tuition, and in return we had to do community service hours.
I catch her staring at my ripped biceps again, and then I push up on the window. Testing the latch.
Secure.
She keeps talking. “I have a hard time picturing you as a beat-your-chest, beer-crushing jock.”
My mouth almost curves upward. “That’s because I was more like a stiff-stone-wall, beer-drinking jock.” I fix the drapes. Concealing the window, blinds already shut.
“So you were very similar to how you are now?”
“Probably close.” I briefly mention how there’d be a good chance of me becoming that chest-thumping, beer-crushing jackass if I weren’t an identical twin. Being that self-involved isn’t an option when I’m being mistaken as my brother or seen as a unit.
I lean back and drop my boot on the ground. Standing strictly next to the wooden bedpost, I ask Jane, “Were you friends with the jocks at your school?”
She untwists the towel from her hair, wavy brown strands cascading over her shoulders. “Not particularly…” Her voice tapers off, and I zone in on the way her eyes glaze in a rare faraway expression.
Which strains the air and my muscles.
My gaze strengthens on her, and my nose flares.
Something happened. In the past. When she was younger.
I don’t like getting into raw places with anyone, but I keep finding myself wanting to dig there with Jane.
How do I?
Pull the fucking trigger, Thatcher. “Did you have problems with guys on the football team?” I ask straight out.
“Hmm?” She seeks more solace in my hard gaze, her bedroom a million degrees in the silence. “Not football…I had some issues with the boy’s lacrosse team at Dalton Academy.” She pauses.
I make sure to never look away.
Her eyes glide over my strict features while she talks. “The boys were signing up for my after-school math tutoring sessions. But they had no real interest in learning derivatives.”
This isn’t public knowledge.
Or security knowledge.
We share a deeper look knowing she’s revealing something extremely personal and private.
“They’d spend the whole time asking rude questions,” she tells me. “Are you like your mom? Do you like to be held down and tied up? ”
I rake a tense hand across my jaw and mouth. My blood is boiling. They ragged on her like that because they knew her parents prefer BDSM and the public compares Jane to her mom every day.
And because they’re immature shit-fucks. Who probably feel entitled to girls. To women. To her. Like they’re toys to fuck with.
Jane continues. “Is your leather collar in your backpack? How many times have you watched your parent’s sex tape? Zero—by the way,” she says quickly. “Not even my morbid curiosity could tempt me.” Her cheeks are reddened, more angered at the memory. “The questions weren’t the worst, really.”
My gaze narrows. “Did they touch you?”
“No, no . I always told them I had a fleet of bodyguards and police on speed-dial and they’d arrive in a minute flat if anyone laid a hand on me. I think my confidence sold the lie well enough.”
Security protocol varies on school grounds. Depending on the client, a bodyguard might just be around for the drop-off and pick-up. I’m betting hers was in the school parking lot or nearby.
But not the whole team.
“Their snickering was always the worst,” Jane clarifies, arms loose around her legs. “Between each question…they’d laugh like I didn’t realize I was the butt of the joke. It was shrill and…ugly.”
I’m clenching my jaw. “Fucking shitheads.” I set my glare on the drapes because it’s caustic as all hell. And I don’t want to glare at Jane. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.” I push myself to add more and I try to soften my gaze.
I look back at her when I do. “I hope you know that you’re a strong person, Jane. I don’t think you hear it enough from people who aren’t your family.”
She has her knuckles to her lips, an overwhelmed smile forming. “I suppose I don’t because that felt…really nice.” She swallows hard, eyes reddening. “Can you stay a little longer?”
I check my watch. Nineteen hundred hours. Too early in the night. I should go back to security’s townhouse soon—fuck it.
“I can stay.” With a stringent stride, I head to the door and lock it. Just so Farrow and Maximoff can’t storm inside and catch me holding her.
Jane watches me yank off my boots. “When did you know you wanted to be in the military?”
I set my shoes near her nightstand. Closest to the bed in case I need to jam my feet into them and move out. “I was adamant that I’d enlist around twelve, thirteen. Banks, not so much.”
“How come?” she wonders.
I explain how my brother wasn’t sure he wanted to follow me. “We were going through a period where we felt like we had to have different interests in order for people to treat us like separate individuals.”
Banks is the one who plays basketball.
Thatcher is the one who plays football.
Really, Banks hate
d basketball. Couldn’t make a free throw if our grandma’s life depended on it. He was good at football like me, and then in high school when we both joined the team, it became who’s better at football?
I take off my holstered gun. “It just took him a while to accept that he wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps too, and that was okay.” It doesn’t make us the same person.
I place my weapon on the nightstand. I’m about to move closer, but Jane suddenly says something that I don’t hear often from people outside my family.
“You have immensely different personalities to me.”
I stare at her firmly. A breath stuck in my chest. Wanting to know more, and I don’t have to ask. She’s already telling me.
“You’re logical. You take charge of situations, and you’re very disciplined and regimented. I think that Banks has more of a creative-brain. He also seems more apt to go with the flow than shoulder what you carry. There’s more, of course. I think people are dreadfully complex creatures.”
I nod slowly, stunned. That was really accurate.
She tips her head in thought. “You remind me of Moffy—but that’s not why I’m attracted to you.” She speaks quickly, hands raised. “It’s just an observation. You both share some of the same qualities. Like how you shoulder responsibility and your stoicism—” Jane cuts herself off when I climb onto the bed and take her hands in mine, holding her burning cheek.
“I know what you meant, honey.” I think Maximoff Hale is a better man than I’ll ever be. He’s compassionate in ways that I struggle to outwardly show. But I love my country and I love my family and her family and her , and I’ve put my life on the line to protect all of them.