Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 141165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
“Not about this shit,” Beckett refutes and runs a hand over his head.
Charlie sets down his phone and glances at him in concern before looking to me. “Jane, we called to ask you a favor.”
“Anything.” I pull back my shoulders. And I suddenly hear footsteps and creaking stairs in the townhouse, coming from the attic. Thatcher looks over his shoulder, up the stairs, and then back to me. He mouths, Farrow. He holds up three fingers, and I take that as three minutes . He leaves the bathroom, and their voices are soft and muffled in the second-floor landing.
“Jane,” Charlie calls my name.
I focus on him. “Yes. Anything,” I repeat.
He holds up his phone. “We’re all going on a Cobalt social media blackout,” he says. “In solidarity.”
A social media blackout.
He quickly explains that means deactivating our Twitter accounts. Deleting all Instagram photos. They hurt one of us. We’re all going dark. Yes. This is a perfect plan.
“Done,” I say without even hesitating. “Anything else? Beckett, I can come up there.”
He shakes his head. “Really, I’m fine. And you doing this…it means more to me. But I don’t want it to fuck with your fake dating ploy.”
“It won’t,” I say. I actually have no clue how being off social media will affect it. Instagram is a big part of my life, and I’ve been using it to sell my fake relationship with Thatcher. But that doesn’t matter right now.
“Thank you,” Beckett says.
“Ensemble,” I tell him. Together .
All four of my brothers repeat the word.
And then Eliot grins, mischievous twinkle in his eye, and he says something I’ve heard him recite a thousand-and-one times. But tonight, it’s never felt truer.
“‘Let me play the lion too…I will roar .’”
29
THATCHER MORETTI
I speak into my mic. “Pull back the three guys at the door.”
The temp bodyguard covering the entrance of the frozen yogurt shop, Sprinkle Your Life, replies, “Which three?”
My eyes blaze into narrowed pinpoints, but I don’t move from the small café table. Jane watches me in interest and swirls her spoon in her strawberry frozen yogurt.
I click the mic at my collar. “They’re on your seven o’clock,” I say. “Noses pressed to the glass.” I watch through the full-length glass windows for a second.
The temp on-duty doesn’t move at first, and I’m seconds away from telling him to stop standing there with his foot on his dick. Which is usually something my brother says.
But he finally moves.
“Sorry,” I say to Jane and look back to her. We agreed that I’d stay on-duty, even if we’re officially on a date.
She said she’d feel safer. Which is good. Because my first instinct is to protect her and to be vigilant. And being “off-duty” while out in public with Jane would probably drive me nuts.
Me being on a date with a radio and a gun is fucking better for us both.
And this is our first fake public date. With Jane officially on a media blackout like the rest of her family, we’re going to do more of these.
Security is choosing all of them. And it took hours just to come up with this first one. It was a massive debate that ended with Alpha and Epsilon siding together and outvoting Omega.
A frozen yogurt date.
Jane and I wanted to go to a brewery, but here we are.
She shakes her head. “No need to apologize. I love watching you do your job,” she says. “It’s dreadfully interesting. Like seeing more of who you are.”
I rub my lips. Something strains my chest. This is a fake date, I remind myself. For the op. But what we’ve been talking about, it’s been real. I don’t want any of our interactions to be anything less than that. “Where were we?” I ask her and pick up the small plastic spoon.
“Veni qua,” she says into a bright smile, saying the Italian words I’d just taught her almost perfectly. It means come here. “I like that one. I think I’m going to use it for Licorice when I can’t find him.” She picks a cookie dough piece out of her yogurt. “I tried putting a collar on him. One with bells. It was a pitiful sight. He’s just not a collar kind of cat. Not like Carpenter who loves his bejeweled ones.”
I love when she talks about her cats. She can do it for hours, and there’s love and light in her entire being.
Out of my peripheral, I check the windows again but keep my eyes on Jane. “So Carpenter loves attention. Licorice hates it. Walrus is the rebel. Ophelia is the princess. Toodles is a sloth, and Lady Macbeth a wise, old owl. That about right?”
Her lips part, and she looks like I just agreed to eat her out at this table.
“Jane,” I say.
Flush rises up her neck. “You know my cats very well,” she says, recovering. “It’s very attractive. But you already know that I’m attracted to you. So that’s redundant. But important. An important redundancy.”