Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(34)

You shouldn’t be taking anything from her.

I know better than to say this shit on-duty. I speak quietly. “Person or racoon, you gotta sign an NDA if you wanna date Luna.” I unpocket my phone and pop up an electronic NDA. “I won’t take you from the panel. So I’ll send this to you, and you can look this over on your own time. Once you sign it, you can meet up with her again. You have a preferred email?”

He isn’t offering his email. He’s sizing me up. “You jealous?”

Yeah. I am.

I’m jealous that this douchebag gets to be with the girl I wish I could be with. I’m jealous of their future time together, a future kiss that I’ll never have with her, a future at fucking all—when all I got is present, fleeting moments that slip through my fingers like dust from a Thanos snap.

I say none of that.

He sees me silently stewing now, which I hate. Once they know they’ve hit a nerve, they think they have you in a chokehold.

“Hey, wait,” Korey smiles, “you’re Paul Donnelly. Aren’t you the bodyguard who’s secretly dating Beckett Cobalt? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about him?”

Hearing Beckett’s name punches another nerve. “Beckett who?” I ask with the tilt of my head. Though that tightens my core with a good amount of discomfort. Beckett who?

I hate thinking he’s a stranger to me now. When we’d been friends. It hurts to miss him, and I try not to.

Korey rolls his eyes.

He must know a lot about these families if A.) he recognized Luna, and B.) he surfaced old internet rumors about how SFO is a pretend security force and we’re just secretly dating our clients. That theory first started when I was on Beckett’s detail. Fans think I got transferred to Xander Hale just to hide a romance with Beckett.

False.

I got shifted because Beckett was into drugs. I don’t like thinking about any of it. So I don’t.

“You have a preferred email?” I ask again. Needing that NDA signed even more now if he’s paying attention to SFO rumors.

He grimaces like he’s debating whether this is worth all the hassle.

Couldn’t she have picked someone else? Would it have stung any less?

Luna comes in, her Pixie wing brushing against my arm. “It’s just an email. It’s not so bad.”

Korey reconsiders with a fake sigh. Trying to eke some kinda pity out of her, so she’ll do something more for him. He’s a loser. I wish I could say that with my full chest out, and I would if I knew it wouldn’t start a fight right now.

“I don’t know…” he says.

“I’ll make it worth your time,” she whispers.

He rakes her body over like she’s suggesting a blow job, a long fuck. I picture Luna passing him over money and sex, and I feel violently sick all of a sudden.

Swallowing down the nausea, I somehow don’t black-out when Korey nods. When he says, “Okay.” But I’m in a daze when I type his email in the recipient line and send him the NDA.

Once Luna waves goodbye to him, they separate, and thankfully, she waits for the merch table to completely clear instead of heading to her seat. Everyone is engrossed in the panel, and Luna spends a few minutes sifting through LOTR stickers.

I eye the one that says, You shall not pass. “I know I can’t tell you what to do,” I whisper to Luna. “But if you’re even thinking about hooking up with him, don’t pay him. Don’t let him pay you, whatever the case.”

“It’s just a date,” she breathes, but there is something in Luna’s amber eyes that glimmers with uncertainty. She shrugs. “I don’t like to plan out my future that far, I guess.”

“Ditto.” I shrug back to her. “I’m not sitting here looking years ahead either, but I’m just sayin’, if you’re in that situation…” I see myself being slipped a hundred. It’s dark. “Some doors are better left unopened, you know?”

Luna lifts her head to look at me. Glitter flutters from her pink wig, and I sense those words hovering midair around us.

Some doors are better left unopened.

“Yeah,” she whispers, “I know.”

I can’t dig into how we’re an unopened door—me and her, together. We’ve pressed our luck and gotten away with more than I thought we would’ve.

But I remind her, “You need me, I’m here.”

She nods, placing the stickers down. “What if you’re on my detail for my date?” She shrugs again. “It’d be nice just to have you there. Especially if anything goes wrong.”

I want to be there.

Hope surges inside my lungs. I nod a lot. “I could do that. I’ll ask Frog…” I trail off as Luna’s phone beeps.

After checking a text, she stiffens.

“You alright?” I wonder, tipping my head.

She winces up at me. “When’s your triple date again?”

“Friday. Six days from now.” I’m frowning. “Why?”

“The universe is against us.” She seems more resigned. “Looks like my date is the same day. Eliot just texted. It was the only night Tom has free. I guess it’s a cosmic sign.”

Fuck me.

Fuck us?

I swallow a rock. “Yeah.” I can’t even casually shrug. My shoulders are too taut, and I push a hand across my head, scanning the ballroom and panel for threats, before eyeing Luna again. “How many universes are there?”