Page 66 of Tangled Like Us

Subduing hecklers is usually an impossible feat. I always try to keep my chin up and live inside the chaos instead of fight against the forceful current. So my focus has been on ensuring my grandmother won’t try this tactic again on my siblings. Sending her a message that she failed.

“All those guys outside will leave?” Sulli asks hopefully. I’d love for my cousin to feel more comfortable here.

“Will they?” I ask Oscar too.

“Not the whole crowd.” Oscar speaks to us both. “But at least the creeps on the street looking to…” He gestures to me, trying to be polite. “You know.”

“Sleep with me,” I finish for him.I know.

“Bingo,” Oscar says.

The room tenses.

Thatcher and Banks are staring hard at one another. Practically talking through their eyes, and I think I’d have to live inside their twenty-eight years of existence to fully comprehend what it all means.

I replay Oscar’s words in my head, and I realize I’ve missed something. “You saidopenlydating,” I say to Oscar. “But I was just going to take the football player ononeafternoon tea. I’m not dating him. I’m not dating anyone.”

The air could snap, tension stretched at a maximum. Concern bores into me from so many pairs of narrowed eyes.

Merde.

These men are all naturally protective. For Omega, it’s practically a job requirement, but I’m starting to feel my age. Just twenty-three. Not the oldest of anything since they’re all so much older than me.

Except for Moffy. I will always have one month on my best friend.

I pull back my shoulders, how my mom taught me. To combat brewing heat under my frilly blouse, I tie my hair into a low pony. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Luna bounces her head. “I see it. I feel it.” She air high-fives me from across the room while licking a pudding cup.

My lips rise. I adore Luna Hale.

“Until you’ve officially chosen someone,” Oscar says more seriously, “the men outside are likely to keep coming back around.”

Well then…there goes that.

Sullivan’s shoulders drop, more bummed. When she catches me staring, she says hurriedly, “No big deal, Jane. Don’t worry about it. It’s not even your fucking fault. Grandmother Calloway sucks.”

I take a breath. And I say to everyone, “I was never doing this to deter the men outside anyway.”

Maximoff is acting strange. He stiffens, staring off at the brick wall and cracking his knuckles.

“Moffy?” I ask.

His eyes pin to me with a mountain of concern, his cheekbones sharpened like blades ready for war, and he asks the room, “What’s the likelihood those guys outside become stalkers?”

“High,” many bodyguards say at the same time.

I know why it’s a high likelihood. It already takes a certain sort of person to not only believe the advertisement but to spend energy screeching my name outside my townhouse.

Maximoff and I have never feared stalkers before. Not until Nate. Once he breeched the safety of our townhouse, he punctured our trust bubble and made me, in particular, feel incredibly violated.

I don’t want that to happen again.

I leave Thatcher’s side and approach the photographs. I scrutinize the auburn-haired football player and below his picture, a firefighter. Maybe I could date one of them?

Just for a little while.

“The firefighter looks nice maybe…” I trail off. It feels like a step too far, doesn’t it? Especially after all that’s happened.