Page 169 of Lovers Like Us

I stare intensely at the photo. No gore. No body. It’s a headstone on a freshly dug grave. My jaw tics and eyes burn as I fixate unblinkingly on the etchedwords.

In Memory of Maximoff Hale, a bad person, a horrificfriend.

Born July 13thI skim over the year of birth because the next part crashes into me.Died April4th.

Tomorrow is April4th.

Tomorrow is my twenty-eighthbirthday.

Maximoff reads over my shoulder. He notices the dates. “It could be acoincidence.”

I sit up some. “Or the stalker knows we’retogether.”

“Your father isnotstalking me,” he says strongly. “He wouldn’t write that part about me being a horrificfriend.”

Jason might, but there’s a less than 1% chance that he knows Maximoff is in a relationship. Let alone with me. I comb a hand through my hair. Could be a kill date. A warning, a threat. That Maximoff Hale will dietomorrow.

“It’s not real,” he tries to assure me. But I have to act like it’s real on the slim chance that itis.

“I’m going to call tech—” Our bunk curtain whipsopen.

Jane suddenly thrusts a phone at us, blue eyes pinging to me. “I’m sorry.” Then she looks to Maximoff. “You need to get up. You have to call work, rightnow.”

Before Maximoff tries to crawl over me, I climb out of the bunk. My feet hit the ground, thenhis.

“What’s going on?” Maximoffasks.

She shakes her head frantically and places the phone in his hand. “They called me so you’d call themback.”

His frowndarkens.

I ask, “Who’sthey?”

Maximoff looks down at the call history. “Theboard.”

40

MAXIMOFF HALE

“That’s impossible,”I say, white-knuckling my phone, set to speaker. Jane pats the couch next to her in the second lounge, but I can’t sit. I can’tmove.

Farrow closes the door, taking a seat on top of the couch. Feet on the cushion, elbows to his thighs, he’s less nonchalant than what meets the eye. He keeps combing a hand through his hair, and his narrowed gaze keeps narrowing.Murderously.

Stalker on hismind.

I can’t even think about the most recent post. Notnow.

“You have to understand, Maximoff,” Victoria Cordobi says in a stilted, manufactured voice like she’s reciting ingredients off a shampoo bottle. “You’ve been gone for three and a halfmonths.”

“For an event that’s helping the company,” I say, almost too forceful. My tone is bordering hostile, anger pumping through me like gasoline andfire.

Victoria has been on the board of directors since H.M.C. Philanthropies was formed. She’s the one who was tasked with delivering the news tome.

I’ve beenfired.

Fired.

I don’t understand how I go to bed as the CEO of a company I built from the ground up, and inonegoddamn phone call, I learn that I’ve been pushed out. What’s eating at me, it’s not just about a hurt ego because someone stole mybaby.