Page 73 of Alphas Like Us

I don’t stand next to him yet. “Farrow, just let me be the one to check thetabloids.”

He frowns. “You realize I’ve dealt with internet trolls callingyou, my boyfriend, a sack of shit, a dumb fuck, a spoiled bastard, and much,muchworse. I couldn’t do a fucking thing, and still, I’m standing. I haven’t broken down yet, so what the hell are you protecting me from,Maximoff?”

Farrow is used to internet trolls harassing me, but it’s a different feeling when the unwanted opinions are aboutus.

“Street hecklers are my kryptonite,” I admit, then I gesture to his chest. “Grating, unsolicited commentary about our relationship is going to beyours.”

Farrow is close to shaking his head, but he stops himself and looks up at the pantry ceiling. Cringing slightly. Eyes reddening. He rubs his mouth a couple times. We’ve been around each other every waking minute for almost a wholeyear.

I knowhim.

I fuckingknowFarrow like he knows me. He will tell you that he has no best friends. He has two that he treats like brothers. He will say that he’s an open book. But it’s a book he only allows his boyfriend to open. His casualness reads to some like indifference. Yet, he lives to savepeople.

He’s independent and self-reliant, but he seeks out companionship andlove.

If he says you’re “good people”—he’ll surround himself around you, and you’ll be glad. Because he’s the kind of man who puts his whole soul into what he loves, and if he loves you,goddamn.

So when his eyes fall back to mine, I say, “I know you. You can barely stand Beckett prying in our relationship. You think you can stomach the entireworld?”

Farrow touches his obsidian earring, contemplating for a millisecond. “You think you can stomach it?” he asks me. “It’s not like you’ve had a public relationship before me. I’m yourfirst—hopefully your last. You’ve never experienced this shiteither.”

Hopefully yourlast.

I hang onto those three words. Unblinking athim.

Farrow is trying to read my expression at analarmingrate. Is he nervous? Ithink…

I think he’snervous.

It makes me ten billion times morenervous.

My pulse accelerates, heart beating out of my chest, and Farrow’s breath quickens like he’s running the same marathon. He sets my phone on ashelf.

“Are you still high?” Iask.

“No.” Farrow keeps sweeping my face for my reaction. “Not atall.”

“Same.” I’m completely lucid, mentally shutting out any pain, because I can’t get over those threewords.

Hopefully yourlast.

He wants to be my last, and he’s not just saying this on the side of a road, thinking I’m about to die. He’s saying this when we’re about to face the roughest stormtogether.

Farrow combs both hands through his bleach-white hair, his chest elevating. “Maximoff…”

“Am I your forever guy?” I justask.

His eyes are bloodshot, so much emotion slamming into him, then me, and he says, “I don’t want to scare youoff—”

“You’re not scaring me,” I shake my head repeatedly, my pulse on a sky-scrapingascent.

He drums a shelf with his fingertips, prolonging whatever you want to call this moment. When he does speak, each word comes out like fifty tons of brick that he’s wrenching forward. “I’m afraid that if I say anything else, I’m going to fucking lose you…we can do this anotherday—”

“Why the fuck would you lose me?” I cut him off, browsfurrowed.

He leans his weight back. “We’re really doing this right now,” herealizes.

“Yeah, unless you’d like me to overthink for the nextmillennium.”