Page 204 of Tangled Like Us

No kissing.

Treat her more like she’s just a client.

In this situation, I’d carry my client, but also, fuck them for these fucking orders. It’s unnecessary. “Yeah, I’m allowed—”

“Janie!” Maximoff calls from the distance, jogging over like she’s in mortal danger. He’s dressed as Captain America. Farrow smiles over at his fiancé, more at ease but keeping pace. I notice a baggie of ice in his hand, trauma bag strapped across his chest.

Farrow could’ve been a lifeguard like the rest of the team. But he had a choice, and he made the right call.

He’s the Winter Soldier, but with his regular dyed, bleach-white hair. SFO has been talking about how Farrow and Maximoff broke the internet when they stepped outside together.

It’s taken a spotlight off the public hating that I didn’t dress up with Jane.

My brother is also in tow. He’s been attached to Maximoff tonight since Farrow has had to make med calls.

Banks stares deeply into me likeit’s going to be alright.He’s been giving me that look all day.

I asked him what I should do, and he said,“I’m not the one who makes the calls. You are.”I almost rolled my eyes, but he gave me advice.

He said,“I think she’s afraid, and you’re afraid.”

Yeah. I think he’s right, and this is going to be the hardest trigger I have to pull. In either direction. It’s still tearing me up.

Indecision is hell to me.

“I’m okay,” Jane says to her best friend. Maximoff takes a seat on the hay bale and hugs her shoulders.

I stand up, and Farrow replaces me to check her ankle. He presses around her foot, and I scan the perimeter and her.

Banks is beside me, and comms are active, constant chatter in my ear. I tune in.

“Sulli is going into Hell 2,” Akara says, using the code for one of the haunted houses. He’s required to go into those areas with his client. He’s just updating the team of their location change.

Banks clicks his mic. “With or without the Rooster?”Roosteris code for Will Rochester.

“With,” Akara says heatedly.

Jane was hanging out with Luna and Sulli earlier tonight. Before the ankle injury. So I saw Akara on-duty, and at first, he was trying to do what I would’ve done in his situation.

Do not watch her and him. He can survey Sulli’s surroundings. His eyes don’t have to be on her laughter while a shitbag is flirting with intent to fuck.

But he has a real friendship with Sulli, and they began teasing each other. He stole her witch hat, and she took his whistle. From the outside, it would’ve been hard to decipher who she was actually on a date with: Akara or Will.

It reminds me that if the Alpha and Epsilon lead find out I’ve slept with Jane, they’d start really worrying about other bodyguards on SFO fucking their clients. Especially Akara, who has one of the closest relationships to a client you can have without crossing that line.

“No fractures,” Farrow says, adjusting the ice on her ankle. “Just a sprain. You need to ice for twenty minutes—”

“Ben?!” Maximoff calls, voice firm, and all of our heads swing towards Jane’s youngest brother.

Ben Cobalt is ten meters away and turns to look at Maximoff. He wipes wet hair out of his face, hisclimate-change-is-realshirt drenched after he just bobbed for apples. Twenty-three of his high school friends surround him, most dressed as baseball players—he got them on the guest list.

He’s allowed to be here, but I already know why Maximoff is concerned.

Xander.

Banks and I share a hard look, and I lift my mic to my mouth. “Thatcher to Tony, what’s your client’s AO?”

Ben jogs over to the hay bale. “Hey, Moffy…Jane?” Concern floods his eyes when he sees his older sister icing her ankle.