Page 80 of Tangled Like Us
It must’ve been an intense security meeting.
His gaze flits to Maximoff’s hand, and his smile suddenly stretches from cheek to cheek. “That’s also my toothbrush.”
Oh no.
Maximoff goes rigid. “No it’s not.” He checks.
Oh it is.
Farrow laughs and pushes into the bathroom. They have this moment where he cups Maximoff’s jaw and kisses his lips tenderly in greeting, and they murmur under their breath to one another. Their hands pulling each other closer. Chest to chest.
I never want to be jealous of their love. I want to be satisfied with what I have, but my stomach tumbles in strange patterns.
I’m not sure what I really feel right now.
I just know what I want to feel.
I train my focus elsewhere and start texting on my phone. “I’m asking Thatcher to come over.”
Maximoff detaches slightly from Farrow. “Are you going out?”
“I’m making an announcement, and you all need to hear it.”
Concern washes over his eyes. “What kind of an announcement?”
“You’ll see.”
15
THATCHER MORETTI
Banks slidesout from underneath the Volkswagen Beetle, oil staining his palms. Since we were teenagers, he was always fixing friends’ cars for an extra buck. He got a job at an old mechanic shop down the street when he was fifteen.
I hand my brother a torque wrench. “That briefing was fucking horseshit,” I tell him rigidly, both of us in the garage.
We just got back from Studio 9. The Alpha lead and the new Epsilon lead spent the majority of the team’s time rephrasing the same fucking point and hammering it to death.
Do not fuck Jane.
Do not have sex with a client.
Do not sleep or screw or push forward inside that girl in any goddamn way. Direct quote from my superior.
Men yelling in my face to make me take it is just a fucking side salad. Tastes like nothing, I chow down in silence, and I move on to the main course: my purpose, my reason for being.
My responsibility.
My client.
Jane.
But the fact that two leads opened a crass can of worms—talking about her and sex and me in graphic warning—it didn’t taste like nothing. I was chewing on a bag of rusted nails.
It hit a nerve.
She means something to me, something that I should release in the fucking wind, but I’m clutching tighter. Bringing her closer.
I’m walking the thinnest line with security, and even tempering my anger is becoming harder.
