Lovers Like Us (Like Us #2)(109)

I cover my face with my hands, and I fucking scream. Pent-up rage, gnarled emotion coming out of me.

Not for long. I straighten up again. Pinching my eyes again. And I almost turn to grip the vanity again, but Farrow seizes my wrist.

And he draws me into his chest.

My boyfriend hugs me so damn tight. Our bodies welded, his heartbeat pounding against mine.

I fist the back of his shirt with one hand, my chest heaving against his chest. Hot tears wet my lashes. That girl got to me.

I can fucking admit that.

Farrow strengthens his clutch and tells me, “There’s nothing more you could’ve done for her.”

I hold the back of his head, my fingers lost in his white hair. I growl out a frustrated, pained noise.

Another beat passes, and I lean back.

Farrow holds my wet face. I don’t even care to wipe the tears that run off my jaw. His reddened eyes melt against me, easing my taut muscles and hot-blooded pulse.

I breathe heavily, my gaze bloodshot, throat raw, and I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I lick my lips. “I’ll never fucking know if I made her life worse or better.” At hot tear rolls down my cheek. I glare at the ground. Christ, what am I doing? “I’m not trying to unload this much weight on you—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Farrow gives me a look like I’ve officially jumped off the planet. “I’m your boyfriend.”

I can’t even crack some sarcasm. I just swallow a rock.

Farrow lifts his brows. “You’re supposed to unload on me. I’ve been unloading shit on you with my father and the stalker for months. It’s a two-way street.”

My chest rises in a bigger breath.

I pinch my eyes to dam the waterworks. I’ll need to return to the FanCon and take pictures. Soon. Hopefully not with bloodshot eyes. “I must’ve missed unloading shit in the Boyfriend Manual.”

He almost laughs, and his thumb wipes my cheek. “If there were a Boyfriend Manual—which there isn’t one—right next to that would be giving ‘unconditional emotional support’. And while you offer it to literally every person, I’m very selective.”

I drop my hand off my eyes with another breath. “Who else do you give it to?”

His lips rise. “Just you.”

My mouth curves upward, my body lightening, and I shake my head, surprised at what he makes me feel. I shouldn’t be that shocked anymore, but I kind of like that I am. Everything always feels like the first damn time with him.

His hands fall to my shoulders. I’m shirtless, chest bare, and his touch heats me up. I stay still and hold his neck for a second.

My mind reels. I let out a rough noise in my throat. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“You can handle a lot, I’ll give you that to start,” Farrow says, nodding a few times. “But no one, not even me, can take on everything for everyone. Since you were, how young? Sixteen, fifteen? You’ve let thousands of people give you their emotional pain, and they want and plead for you to comfort them.” He pauses. “At what point is it going to click for you that you’re just one man. One man. That’s one to millions. You can’t. You can’t.”

“I can try.”

Farrow looks straight into my core. He pauses to consider my reply, and then he says, “But promise you’ll listen to your body if it says you can’t handle it anymore. You know, step back.” His lips almost rise as he uses some of my words from a while ago.

I’m actually, really smiling. Once the FanCon ends, I’ll have less close contact with so many fans at one time. It’ll be easier than now.

But he’s concerned.

For me.

“Step back,” I say, feigning confusion. “Can’t picture it, for either of us.”

He nods. “We’re both stubborn assholes.”

“Tell me something that isn’t new,” I say.

“I love you,” he says deeply. “And when you hurt, I hurt.”

I inhale. We pull closer, foreheads pressed together, and I kiss him—but he’ll tell you that he kisses me. Our mouths meet, and I urge his lips. In a sweet, yearning embrace that lights my lungs on fire.

And then a knock raps the door. Our mouths break, but his gaze says don’t detach; let them see, wolf scout.

I can’t. Going public as my boyfriend—maybe it wouldn’t affect his job anymore because SFO is already dealing with notoriety—but it’d put Farrow through a ringer.

All the public scrutiny, media harassment, and extreme loss of privacy.

The kind of fame he’s experiencing now is nothing compared to what he’d feel as “Maximoff Hale’s boyfriend”—and I can’t do that to him.

So I back up, our arms dropping off each other, and he nods, understanding. I think.





39





FARROW KEENE





“Wait, wait,” Maximoff breathes hard against my jaw. Every time I end up in the same tight bunk with him, it’s a master class in restraint.

A flip-down movie screen plays Everybody Wants Some!! which we’ve abandoned several times to turn into each other. Legs interlocked, chest against chest. Hands gripping and squeezing and pulling.

Damn, I want deeper.