SWNOVELS Damaged Like Us: Chapter 15
MY DAD IS CALLING ME. Greaaaat.
I sit up off Farrow, and he sits up with me. Turned towards one another still, our arms are on the back of the same seat.
I steady my breath. Used to the worst timing for most things.
Farrow presses the green accept call button and hands me the phone. Basically saying, I’m okay with you talking to your dad, wolf scout. Do what you need to do.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, putting the call on speaker for Farrow.
Almost subconsciously. Throughout the years—but also while he’s been my bodyguard—he earned my trust, and now I can reciprocate. In my life, that’s monumental.
Farrow combs a casual hand through the just-tugged strands of his white hair. His lips quirk when he catches me staring longer.
I made out with my bodyguard.
Officially.
I’m in the no-takebacks fly zone. While I hover here, I just want to do so much fucking more. My brain is zeroed in on him.
And as far as I can tell, he’s just as honed in on me.
“Hey, Moffy.” My dad’s naturally sharp-edged voice fills the car, but he can’t see anything. Thank God. “I’m the bearer of shitty news tonight.”
My brows knot. “How shitty?”
“Hold on…” He must pull the phone away, his voice harder to hear. “What are you doing awake—no, never mind. Bed. Now.”
“Dad.” I know that voice and her serious tone like he’s unconscionably destroying her favorite pair of boots and gothic makeup. It’s my little sister Kinney. “You don’t understand. The witching hour is at 3 a.m.—I need to commune with my people.”
“Wait…are you dead? Did I forget to print an obituary of my own thirteen-year-old daughter? Let me think about this.” My dad’s dry voice definitively says I’m not thinking about this. His thick sarcasm makes Farrow’s lips upturn even more towards me. Knowing exactly where mine originates.
“Dad,” she huffs.
“Kinney Hale,” he refutes, “I banished ghosts from this house millenniums ago. They’re all afraid of me. You’re wasting your time. So bed. Now. You have school tomorrow.” He must put the phone to his ear. To me, he sighs, “Kids.” Just to piss her off.
“I’m not a kid, you troll.” I can actually hear her stomping away.
My dad laughs. “I love you, little Slytherin!” he shouts after her. And to me, he asks, “Sorry, where was I?”
“Shitty news,” I say, hesitant to pull off my jeans in case I need to go home for whatever reason. Farrow stays as motionless as me.
“Are you in your car?”
“Yeah. You’re on speaker by the way.”
“Farrow, is he speeding? If he is, you have my full permission to ground him. Take away his phone. He hates that.”
Farrow is smiling like a Cheshire cat. Loving this too much. I glare and flip him off. He clasps my hand. “He’s only five-over,” he says easily, still smiling. I bring our hands down, examining his tattooed fingers that spell k.n.o.t., the other hand reads: t.a.m.e. in black ink. Farrow watches me fixatedly but adds to my dad, “Let’s blame traffic.”
It’s more than a good lie. It’s one that’s meant to help me first and foremost. Not my parents. Not the security team. Me.
He’s on my side.
“Steal his keys next time,” my dad says.
I glance at the phone. “How about you not order my bodyguard around? That’s my job.”
Farrow grins and mouths to me, you wish.
I almost groan. I just want to fuck him.
Before my dad talks about my mom worrying about me behind the wheel, I say, “I can’t talk long. What’s the shit news?”
“We’re gonna have to reschedule our lunch tomorrow. Your Uncle Connor and Uncle Ryke have parent-teacher meetings.”
I read the texts earlier this morning—and the pictures have been going viral since noon. My little cousins Winona Meadows and Ben Cobalt spray-painted Dalton Academy’s science lab with the words: frog killers!
Those two always send me memorandums on environmental objectives that H.M.C. Philanthropies should complete. They’re thirteen and fifteen. And they get in trouble together monthly.
“Let me know the new day for lunch; I’ll be there,” I tell him. I look forward to lunches with my dad and my uncles, but if one of us can’t make it, we just reschedule to a day later in the week. It’s shitty, but it’s not the worst.
“Drive safe, Moffy,” my dad says, his tone serious.
“I will. Night.”
“Love you, bud.” He hangs up.
I pocket my phone and stare off. Thinking. My dad’s voice lingers in my ears. Being with my bodyguard—there are consequences packed on top of consequences. If I can, I want to avoid all of them.
I train my gaze on Farrow.
He rests his knuckles to his lips, brows raised at me. “Listening to Socrates and Plato again?”
I force an irritated smile. “No.” I lift my jeans to my waist, but I don’t button or zip yet.
Farrow eyes my movements. “What’s wrong?”
I stay near him. Not adding distance or space. “What happens between us—it has to stay secret. All of it. If you want to do anything with me, you can’t treat this rule like it’s flexible or meant to be broken.”
Farrow smiles. “I agree.”
“We agree?” I say, disbelieving. What alternate universe am I in?
“I love my job.” He holds my gaze. “And if the security team or your family finds out that I crossed a line and broke their trust, I’m gone. Someone will replace me as your bodyguard. Which means that the new bodyguard will spend more time with you than I do, and that’s just…not happening.” His voice falls to a husky whisper. “You need to know that I only do exclusive. No fucking around. You want me, you only get me, and vice versa.”
Exclusive.
A relationship.
A secret relationship.
I’ve never had any of those. I wish I could be happy that he only wants me. I wish that I could accept the truth: that I only want him. But I’m concerned about the little annoying details that slip between these facts.
I look straight at him. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You can’t know.”
He never breaks eye contact. “Then tell me, Maximoff.”
I don’t falter. “I genuinely love sex,” I say the truth I’ve always hidden. “I have a really high fucking sex drive.” It sounds so simple. It’s not. “I’ve never spoken publicly about how much sex I have. Sharing those details—it’s a heavy responsibility that I carry very prudently. For one, my mom is a sex addict.” He knows.
I’m used to this fact too, but the depth that I still need to go pins my tongue down. I pause.
I turn slightly and crack my knuckles. People usually ask isn’t it so awkward that you know your mom’s sexual history? I can handle the awkward.
I can handle everything.
Even the cruelty towards her, but it’ll always boil my blood. If you’re going to attack someone, come at me.
Farrow shifts his arm that’s on the back of the seat. So his forearm lies on top of my forearm. Almost comfortingly.
I stare at the way his fingers clutch my elbow, and then I look up at him. “There’s not enough information or research to claim that sex addiction is hereditary. But if I publicly share how much sex I have, the media will start calling me an addict. Then they’ll say it’s hereditary. Then they’ll start harassing my siblings about sex more than they already do. So I stay quiet.”
The frequency someone has sex is not enough to determine a sex addiction—but it won’t matter to the media. They’ll cling like fucking koalas to the detail and never let go.
“And it’s not the only reason I stay quiet about my sex life,” I tell him. “I war with a stereotype that I know I fall into, something I feel an obligation to break.”
He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Maximoff. That’s not your cross to bear.”
I’m not surprised that he knows what I’m talking about. “It is, Farrow. When I came out as bisexual to the world, I knew people would look at me as a role model for something. I have a fucking duty not to reinforce harmful stereotypes: like bisexuals are over-sexual—that we all just fuck around and fuck a lot.” I rake my right hand through my hair. “You know the minute that I told the world I like guys and girls, a lot of people assumed that meant I like threesomes—that’s not fucking okay.” Quickly, I add, “To clarify, I’m not into threesomes.”
His lips tic upward. “I grasped that by your vitriol.” He tilts his head. “In short, you’re saying that you have a lot of sex, but no one can know. And I’m sure you were always safe since you’re you.”
“Thank you,” I say dryly, not mentioning that I’ve been checked out every week and that I’m clean. I also don’t add how I go to my concierge doctor for the screenings and tests.
And by doctor, I mean his dad.
Thank God for doctor-patient confidentiality.
Farrow’s know-it-all smile starts expanding inch by inch.
My eyes narrow. “What?”
“You jumped from exclusivity to announcing that you have a lot of sex.”
I don’t follow his logic. “Your smile is going to fall off your fucking face.”
He practically overflows with amusement. “You don’t think I can satisfy you?”
My brows jump. Huh.
By his sheer confidence, he clearly knows he can.
Our eyes trail over each other, and my cock throbs again. A groan scrapes my throat. “More like,” I whisper lowly, “I was warning you. In case you didn’t want sex every day, multiple times a night. I try not to assume what people are into.”
Farrow opens his mouth, but loud voices filter through his earpiece on the front seat. He stretches towards the middle console but glances back to say, “I’m into you. If I couldn’t keep up, I wouldn’t be your bodyguard.” He grabs the radio and connecting earpiece. Turning up the volume, Akara’s voice floods the car.
“…find Farrow. He needs to check in.”
His jaw muscle tics, and he hooks his radio to his waistband. Whoever was chosen to “find Farrow” can’t find me with him. Not bare-chested, hair askew, lips reddened, dicks stiff—no.
I toss his black shirt at his tattooed chest. I’m used to abrupt endings and constant rain checks, but this one is hard. Pun abso-fucking-lutely intended.
I pull my green shirt over my head and open the door. “Thanks for the blue balls.”
He fits his earpiece in. “You’ll thank me more when I take all of you in my mouth.”
My muscles clench, blood heating at the visual. I look back at Farrow.
His lips rise. “You’re easily hot and bothered.”
“And you’re not?” I combat.
“I conceal mine better. Comes with the territory.” He motions to his radio. “Don’t look so sad, wolf scout. You can’t be the best at everything.”
I wear zero sadness. I’m glaring. “Have fun with your hand. Dream of me.” I climb out and shut the door. In the garage. I leave with the last word but feel his amusement as I go.
Despite all the risks, the new territory, I find myself grinning.