SWNOVELS Damaged Like Us: Chapter 43
8:00 A.M. at the lake house, I cook bacon and constantly glance over at Maximoff. Bare-chested and dark brown hair disheveled, he cracks eggs into a bowl and tosses the shells in the nearby trashcan. His forest-greens flit back to me just as often.
There’s been no news about security yet, but it’s too early to care.
And I just enjoy this.
A lot.
A hell of a lot.
It’s the first time we’ve been able to cook breakfast together. It’s also the first morning where it won’t matter if security or family members catch us. They know the truth.
Unflinchingly and resolutely, his gaze rakes down my chest and abs, to the waistband of my black cotton pants.
My smile stretches. “You just got a piece of shell in the bowl.”
“Fuck.” His head whips to the bowl. “…I don’t see it, man.” He wipes his hands on a dishtowel.
I take the bacon off the burner, and then I near Maximoff. His hand slides around my waist. Drawing me hard to his chest. Damn.
I cup his ass and walk him back into the edge of the counter. His gaze devours mine before our mouths press in full-bodied hunger. Heating and welding together.
Fuck, I hold his sharp jaw to control the kiss. I catch his lip between my teeth, and a shallow breath jettisons his body.
I whisper in the pit of his ear, “My clothes look good on you.” He’s wearing my black track pants.
Maximoff slips two fingers in my waistband. “Perks of being the same size as my boyfriend.”
Hearing him say boyfriend out loud makes my smile widen even more.
I’d say my wardrobe doubled too, but I can’t wear his clothes in public. Tabloids and fans would notice, and even with the “HaleCocest” rumor, they’d spin another story. Not letting go of the Moffy/Jane love affair, but just adding me to the equation.
Maximoff drapes his arms over my shoulders. “What happens if I get a new bodyguard?”
I won’t be around you every day. “That’s sweet that you like to visit these hypothetical alternate realities,” I say, “but let’s stick to ours, where I’m currently still your bodyguard.”
Maximoff grasps the back of my head. His grip is strong as fuck, and his waist bows towards me—all of it, all of him, douses me in gasoline and lights me on fucking fire. He breathes, “Who sucks whose cock at 8:12 a.m. in our reality?”
I eye his beautiful, sharp cheekbones. “I can push you to your knees right now, but I’m thinking that you want to push me to mine.”
His dark brows furrow, feigning confusion. “How’d you know?”
“You love your dick in my mouth—”
“Farrow!” That’s Oscar. Security is here. I hear more than a few pairs of footsteps.
Maximoff straightens up, preparing for another fallout where I’m terminated from the security team. I ease casually against the counter beside him, and I wrap my arm around his lower back. My hand on his hip. While he, of course, crosses his arms, biceps flexing. Ready to put up a fight for me.
That last thought wells inside me: he’s ready to put up a fight for me.
Oscar slips into the kitchen first, and he rolls to a dead stop, studying the scene: midway cooking breakfast together, bare-chested, and my arm is still around Maximoff.
“Redford,” Oscar says, forehead wrinkling as his brows shoot up, “is he wearing your pants?”
I roll my eyes, but my smile is fucking killing me.
“We’ve been together for months,” Maximoff says.
“In my mind it’s been barely two days, and you’re already wearing his—”
Maximoff cuts him off, “That’s not fucking important right now.”
Oscar sets a hand on the island counter. “Moffy, you’re underestimating how shocked we all are. I haven’t been this whiplashed in a decade.” He looks to me. “You reckless motherfucker, if I hear Alpha call you a maverick one more time over coms, I’m cancelling your Netflix subscription.”
“You don’t have my passwords, Oliveira.” I gave him my passwords at Yale so he could use my HBO, but I changed those a long time ago.
Maximoff drops his arms, about to leave and find Akara, but I catch his wrist to keep him here. My hand slips down into his.
And then Akara enters the huge kitchen, Donnelly and Quinn in tow. Those two hang back at the island bar with Oscar, and the Omega lead nears me.
“Moffy,” Akara says, “you should step out—”
“No,” I tell Akara. “He should hear.”
Maximoff crosses his arms again.
Akara gestures to my chest. “I’ve spent an accumulative thirty-five hours trying to convince two men that you’re worth keeping around.” Price and Thatcher.
I fixate on the part where he tried to convince them to keep me. “You wanted me to stay? You realize that I selfishly chose a guy over the team?”
Maximoff shoots me a look like I’m digging my grave, but I can’t stop staring at Akara.
“Yeah,” Akara says, “and the four of us on Omega have all had the misfortune of knowing you before you ever joined security.”
Donnelly blows me a middle-finger kiss. At eighteen, I met him at a tattoo shop. He was a seventeen-year-old tattoo apprentice who dropped out of high school, his parents in jail for meth. I let him do a few of mine. Until he became better, then he inked more, and he used to crash in my dorm at Yale and streak the hallway for shits and giggles.
Oscar, I met at Yale, and then I met his brother Quinn.
And Akara grew up two streets over from me. See, I didn’t take these relationships into account. Because I broke the unbreakable rule. Don’t fuck your client.
“I’m not about to stand here and praise you for an hour,” Akara says. “What you did was shit, but you’re far from incompetent. Alpha and Epsilon see you as a loose canon. The rest of us on Omega, we know you as a good friend.”
I rub my jaw and nod more than a few times. “Thank you.”
Donnelly holds out a hand to Oscar. “We got a thank you. Pay up.”
“Fuck you, Farrow,” Oscar says. “Now I owe Donnelly fifty bucks because of your gratitude.”
“Told you not to take that bet, bro,” Quinn says.
I almost smile, but I remember that Akara is only one vote out of three as far as transfers and firing goes. He had to convince either Thatcher or Price to let me stay on the security team and in Omega. He never said he was able to.
Maximoff stays on track. “So what’s his fate?” he asks the Omega lead. “Is he being transferred or fired?”
“Price was a firm fire you. I’m around him a lot. He’s been Daisy Calloway’s bodyguard since he was in his twenties, and he just sees what you did as a violation of the parents’ trust.”
I sink back against the counter. “Fuck,” I mutter.
Maximoff grabs his phone off the counter. “I’ll talk to Thatcher and Price.” He’s supposed to stay out of the decision. That was his dad’s stipulation. Let security decide my fate. No one in the family tries to sway or influence the team.
“You don’t need to,” Akara says with the start of a smile.
I shake my head in disbelief. “Thatcher would never vote to let me keep my job.”
“There’s one giant punishment and warning,” Akara says, “but Thatcher agreed with me that you should stay on Omega and remain Maximoff’s bodyguard.”
Remain Maximoff’s bodyguard.
The three words ring in my ears until we’re both turning towards each other, and Maximoff’s arms wrap around my shoulders, mine hook around his. All warmth and muscle, his pulse beats hard against my chest.
Remain Maximoff’s bodyguard.
We break apart about the same time Oscar says, “Yeah, still in shock.”
Donnelly hones in on Maximoff. “You wearing Farrow’s pants or what?”
“Jesus Christ,” he groans.
“You’re wearing Jesus Christ’s pants?”
Everyone laughs, but Akara is the first to speak as the humor fades. “Did you hear the part where I said there’s a punishment and a warning?”
“I heard,” I say. “And I’m still not sure why Thatcher would vote to keep me around either.”
Akara combs a hand through his black hair. “I reminded him that you just value the privacy of your client over sharing with the team, and that, in reality, you’re protecting your client in those situations. Moffy is an adult and if he told you to keep a secret, then you should’ve kept a secret. After a while, Thatcher acknowledged that—whereas Price wouldn’t.”
Damn.
“Am I going to need to send him a bottle of wine?” What does Thatcher even like?
“No,” Oscar says and nears just to steal a piece of bacon off the pan. “Listen to this next part.”
Maximoff passes his phone to his other hand. “What?” he asks Akara who now looks at him. “It’s about me?”
I straighten off the counter. “What’s happening?”
“Thatcher’s going to be double-assigned to Maximoff and Jane’s detail too.”
I rake both of my hands through my hair, blown back into the counter. Shit.
“That sounds unnecessary,” Maximoff says, “and my brother needs Thatcher. That’s his bodyguard.”
“Xander still has Banks as his 24/7 security, and after the rumor, Jane is going to need two bodyguards.”
Maximoff nods in agreement.
“Hey, I want be clear here,” Akara says, “this is your punishment. Thatcher thinks you’ll both be less careful about hiding your relationship publicly now that you can be together privately in front of family and security. He only agreed to Farrow being Maximoff’s bodyguard if he could join and make sure you’re not fucking up.”
I roll my eyes. “He wants to be my chaperone?”
“Basically, but for good reason.”
My brows spike. “You agree?”
“This is your warning. If the media and public finds out that Maximoff is dating a bodyguard, it doesn’t just hurt you two.”
Maximoff frowns. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think your fans will do if they see that a bodyguard can date one of your cousins or siblings?”
Shit.
Realization washes over Maximoff too. “They’ll speculate which bodyguards will be next.”
“They’ll pair us off,” Akara nods. It’s not a far stretch when there are Tumblr sites dedicated to their love lives, making predictions about future relationships and marriages. “And they’ll be looking at which bodyguards are single and ‘of age’ and Omega is the youngest team.”
“You left out attractive,” I say.
“Farrow—”
“I know.” It’s serious. “None of us can become famous.” Or else we can’t protect our clients. It’s an age-old rule that has no loophole like the one I broke.
Maximoff puts a hand on the back of his neck. “So if anyone finds out publicly that I’m dating my bodyguard, it could put the whole team at risk. You’d all lose your jobs and be replaced by older, married security.”
Yeah.
We have to be extremely careful in public.
Quinn nears the fridge. “Hey, I know I haven’t been in security long, but I just want to say that I fucking like this job.”
“We all do,” Akara says to us.
They’re all letting Maximoff and me be together, and if we fuck up, it could potentially cost their careers. Fuck, I owe all of them, and I also say, “We’ll be careful.”
Maximoff looks to each guy. “Thank you,” he says so powerfully that the kitchen goes quiet. Many of the guys nod to him.
Then the floorboards squeak in the silence, and we all turn our heads.
Sulli waves, and Maximoff starts to smile at his cousin’s presence. “Security meeting over?” she asks. “We thought we’d help you all with breakfast.”
“We?” Maximoff asks.
Beckett Cobalt slips into view. Darker and curlier hair than his fraternal twin brother Charlie, and his right arm tattoos are visible in a black muscle shirt. People call him the bad boy of ballet.
Before Maximoff speaks, Jane swoops into the kitchen wearing kitten-print pajamas.
“Sis.” Beckett hugs his sister, and then to the right of their embrace, Charlie Cobalt saunters forward, yellow-green eyes only on Maximoff. I stand on guard, but Maximoff steps forward, his face solidified to marble.
“What are you doing here?” he asks Charlie.
Charlie never breaks eye contact. “Being a cousin who didn’t doubt you.”
Jane tears up behind him, and Beckett kisses the top of her head.
Maximoff nods repeatedly, and he extends a hand to Charlie. His cousin clasps his hand and they go in for a hug.
People start moving around, exchanging hugs and hellos—the five Omega bodyguards and their five clients haven’t all been alone together like this in a long time. Definitely not since I’ve been on SFO.
Then everyone meanders around the kitchen, catching up and helping cook. I stand next to Maximoff and untwist a loaf of bread.
“More bacon,” Oscar tells me as he eats all the bacon I just cooked. Donnelly already opens the freezer to grab meat and a bag of frozen biscuits. He hands them to Beckett.
Quinn has another carton of eggs and starts to help Maximoff crack them into his bowl. Sulli and Akara pull out dishes from the cabinets while Charlie and Jane chatter in French, making coffee together.
We could’ve detonated the security team and his family, and like a strike of perfect lightning, we’ve brought all ten of us closer together.
And I have the guy.
I have the guy. I extend my arm around his muscular waist, and he leans some of his weight against my side. Relaxing. I begin to smile wider and wider.