Damaged Like Us (Like Us #1)(39)

Maximoff tells me, “Declan would just drop it.”

“I’m not Declan,” I remind him for the forty-fourth time this week. I catch a server’s attention. “I need a bottled water, sealed.” I give her a fifty-dollar bill.

“Right away.” She darts behind the bar, scoots beside the bartender, and then tosses me a bottled water. When I turn around to Maximoff, he looks stunned.

He licks his lips, emotion raising his carriage.

“Take it.” I pass the water.

He holds the bottled water like he’s never seen Evian before.

“It’s just water.”

Maximoff is frozen still. “You didn’t have to do that.” He means get him the water.

“Okay, but I did.” It’s not the first time he’s been like this after I helped him. I step closer. “Don’t you see, Maximoff? There’s a cement wall in front of you, and you’ve just been told to be satisfied with staring at it.” He listens intently. “And so you just stand there, not able to see the other side.” The wall is paparazzi.

The wall is the people who spike his drink.

The wall is hecklers and his lack of privacy.

Screw it all.

“What’s the alternative?” he combats. “Me hating my life?”

“No!” I shout as chatter escalates around us. “It’s my job to help you over the wall! Declan may’ve told you to accept the shit in your life, but I’m going to give you what you’ve never been given!”

Like a bottled water, for one.

That’s a solution that Declan never thought of. Or maybe he just listened to Maximoff stubbornly say just let it go.

Maximoff opens his mouth to speak, but the brunette slips up beside him. Yanking his attention to the left, and he tells her, “Give me one more second! Your drink is on the bar!”

“Take your time! I’ll be waiting!” She bites her bottom lip and slides onto her stool.

My pulse is wedged in my esophagus.

Maximoff whispers in my ear, “The talk I wanted to have with you…” His voice is noticeably tight. “I can’t have her in my car unless she signs an NDA. So you’ll need to take her to the VIP section while I hang around the club’s security.”

This is really happening. I don’t blink.

Do your motherfucking job, Farrow.

Shit.

I have to stay professional. I have to give him what he wants, and if this is it…

I ask him, “You don’t want to be around for that conversation?”

He shakes his head. “My presence usually pressures them, and I want her to sign the NDA on her own terms.”

I have no real ability to nod or to even force a smile. My body refuses, but I’m able to lean back from him. A painfully cold acceptance mortars my features like brick on brick. This is about to be hell. A hell that I’m obligated to walk through, and really, it’s my fault.

For liking him in the first place.

In the briefest second, our eyes touch, but I’m the one who bails on the moment this time. My head swerves towards the bar. “Okay!” I yell back at Moffy.

On my way to the girl, I lower my volume on my radio, the soft chatter grating on me all of a sudden. Just when I look up at the brunette, a strong hand grabs my bicep from behind.

“Farrow, wait.” His voice is right against my ear.

Slowly, I turn to face him, and he breathes like he ran five miles to reach me.

I tilt my head, still hesitant about the direction this all may go. What do you want, Maximoff? Stopped in place, I bear hard on my teeth.

And then I freeze. I watch him subtly check out my features: my cheeks, my piercings, the freckle on my jaw, and he finally allows his gaze to drop to my lips.

“Maximoff—”

“I can’t do this.”

A pit wedges in my ribs. “Be more specific.”

“I’m going home.” He gestures to the exit with his water bottle. “I’m leaving right now after I tell her goodbye.” He takes a half a second to kindly say goodbye to the girl. Then his focus is on me.

Heaviness hoists off my chest, my lips beginning to upturn.

A night listening to him fuck someone else averted. And I didn’t even have to be a prick.

I move to lead him out. “I’m walking in front of you.” He’s already trying to push ahead of my stride, but he stops himself short.

And he says, “Walk beside me.”

I do. We move with equally strong, determined gaits, but we’re both sitting on the beginning of something unknown. And we carry our familiar tension like a third companion and a bomb.





14





MAXIMOFF HALE





Neither of us breaks the silence while I drive home. Compounding and compounding in each untouched second. Every moment weighs down. Sunken in eternal slow-mo.

Farrow reaches for the air vents. Languid, sensual—his tattooed fingers slide the vent open. Cold air gushes out. But it does absolutely jack shit to temper the heat brewing against my skin.

I lick my lips for the thousandth fucking time. My cock throbs, aching to harden. To be stroked. To be fucked and to fuck.

I force my gaze to the highway. Gripping the leather steering wheel in an iron-tight vice. His hot gaze shifts from the road where paparazzi trail after my Audi—to me. Over and over.