Damaged Like Us (Like Us #1)(54)

I wait a couple seconds. Half-hidden behind the door. I don’t retreat or shut it.

When she rotates fully, Jane steeples her fingers to her pink lips. Blue eyes widened like saucers on me.

She’s in shock.

“It’s crazy,” I agree.

“It’s Farrow?” she guesses accurately. Maybe because of the massage that one time. Obviously, she sensed something between me and Farrow then. But it reminds me that I need to be more careful with Farrow.

No one can find out. Not unless we purposefully tell them.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s Farrow.”

“What changed?” she asks. “Wait, no—how long has this been going on? When did it start?” She begins to smile.

She’s smiling?

My eyes start burning, overwhelmed for a hot second. “Why are you smiling?”

“You’re risking so much by being with a bodyguard, and for you to do that…you have to like him, truly. I just want you to be happy, Moffy. Isn’t that all we’ve ever wanted for each other?”

I nod a couple times. She’s happy for me. Despite the consequences and the colossal secret that she’ll have to keep—she’s happy for me.

While she cools her wrist beneath the faucet again, I tell her, “It hasn’t been long. We just officially fucked last night.”

Her smile dimples her cheeks. “Remember when we were sixteen and you said that if you ever got head from Farrow Redford Keene, you’d self-combust and need CPR and an ambulance?”

“Was that me?” I joke.

“Most surely.”

My lips hike up a fraction. “My sixteen-year-old virginal self would’ve needed a stretcher if Farrow gave me head back then—”

A light knock raps the doorframe. Yeah, the door is wide, wide open.

And Farrow stands there.

Gun holstered, earpiece in, radio hooked to his black belt, V-neck tucked. He’s ready for today and I’m naked in a shower with my cousin doing her hair three feet away. Plus, I just admitted aloud that I thought about him sexually at sixteen.

Great.

I add to the bathroom, “Hypothetically.”

Farrow leans a shoulder on the doorframe. “You were hypothetically a virgin at sixteen?”

Jane snaps her curling iron at Farrow. “No virgin-shaming.”

Farrow seems to just now fully register Jane’s presence. He looks between us, and his gaze trails down my partially concealed, naked build. His eyes ping back to Jane, then me. “Is this a usual thing here?” he asks us.

I’m glad he drops my “hypothetical” story and fixates on my relationship with Jane.

She returns the curling iron to the cupboard. “There’s only one bathroom, and it should be more peculiar for Moffy’s bodyguard to see him half-naked than for me to.”

Farrow tilts his head from side to side, considering the statement. “I don’t think so. See, you’re related—”

“Exactly.” Jane is in defense mode, ready to debate her side like she’s prepared with note cards, power point slides, and four-thousand word essays. “It means nothing to see each other naked because we’re cousins, and really, if we dig deep, nudity is a social construct—”

“Okay, Cobalt,” Farrow interjects. “I’ll take a pass on the sociology lecture.”

I hang onto the top of the shower door. I need them to get along. “How about we destroy the argument over which one of you is weirder for seeing me half-naked? I can think of a million other topics to debate. Like…” I toss up my hand and say the first fucking thing I can think of. “…why bananas are curved.”

Jane answers, “Bananas grow towards the sun, Moffy, so as they develop against gravity, they become curved in shape.” Cobalts consume trivia like water. Necessary to everyday life.

Farrow laughs. “I take it back, your relationship is cute.”

Jane eyes him curiously. “You know…I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm.”

“It’s genuine,” he assures.

Before I broke the whole bodyguard-client boundary, I’d call their relationship cordial, but to both be in my life now, they may have to form something closer to a friendship.

And if they can’t…I don’t know what happens.

An apocalypse?

Jane glances at Farrow and then pulls out acne medicated face wash. “Just so you realize, Moffy has told me about you two.”

“I sensed that.” He watches Jane. “Are you okay with keeping this secret?”

She nods. “You don’t have to worry, I’d never tell anyone.” Scrubbing her face, she creates suds. “If you break his heart, then you’ll have to worry about me.”

I smile at how blasé she says that.

Farrow tells her, “Threat noted.”

She rinses her face and pats her cheeks dry with a towel. “Which one of you made the first move anyway?”

“Me,” Farrow and I say in unison.

He laughs.

I scowl. “I’m one-hundred percent positive I kissed you first.”

Farrow leans even more casually, his relaxed posture so damn sexy. “I’m also one-hundred percent positive I was the one who told you how I felt first.”