Page 38 of Tangled Like Us

Yeah.

Every time Farrow has to take a med call, he needs a bodyguard to fill his spot protecting Maximoff, and Banks volunteered to be that bodyguard.

Which inadvertently made him a full-time floater on the team. Whenever a 24/7 guard has a family or health emergency, Banks takes over their spot. It’s not a demotion. It’s the hardest job in security. Every day he gets pulled in a dozen different directions.

He says he likes the spontaneity of the position.

But Banks took this role for me.

He said I was gasoline in a bottle. I made a massive mistake when I hit Farrow, and I couldn’t get out of my head. My brother wanted to be under the same roof as me again. Just so I wouldn’t light myself on fire with rage and fucking regret.

“You can still take off, Banks.” I dry water off my chest.

There’d be some reshuffling among the men, but we’d work it out.

Banks rests the back of his head on the shower door. “That means slamming the team with a headache which pretty much matches my headache. I’m not doin’ it.”

I give him a hard look and tie my towel around my waist. “How the fuck do you plan to go on-duty if you can’t even keep both eyes open?”

“Easy. I plan to have both eyes open and alert by then.” He tucks his hair behind his left ear, then right ear and motions to me. “I could use all you’ve got.”

He’s not asking for drugs.

Instinctively, I touch two horn pendants that lie against my sternum, and I feel along my deltoid and unclip the thin gold chain around my neck. Most of the time, I forget that I’m wearing a cornic’. Because I rarely take it off.

“Where are you needed?” I ask since he’s leaving in an hour and he didn’t say who he’s filling in for.

“I’m headed to New York. Tom needs a bodyguard until tonight because…” He lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know what’s up with Ian.”Tom Cobalt’s bodyguard.“I don’t ask. I just go.”

I near him.

He holds out his hand, and I drop the necklace in his palm. He used to have a cornic’. Until he lost it in the Middle East.

But there aretwopendants on my chain. “I can get you a new chain and give you the other horn—”

“No.” Banks shoots me a glare like I’m out of my fucking mind. “Hiscornic’ stays on your chain.”

We don’t mentionhima lot—but when he gets brought up, my chest tightens.

I just nod, and I watch my brother clasp the necklace around his neck.

He wants me to do themaliocch’too. It helped last time I did it. But I’ll need to get oil from the kitchen first.

Before I go, I grab my radio off the sink. “Whose detail did you cover yesterday?”

“Audrey, then Kinney, then back to Audrey.”

That’s a lot. “Three transitions in one day.”

He touches the horns at his sternum. “Semper Gumby, man.”

I almost smile. It meansalways flexible.Something from the Marines. It’s my brother to a fucking tee. Missions get fragged, and you’ve got to be ready for new orders. New direction.

Always flexible.

“Oorah,” I say lightly.

But I solidify. More rigid. Remembering something that I meant to tell my brother. But with the Cinderella ad at the fucking forefront—it just sat in the back of my head.