Damaged Like Us (Like Us Series Book 1) Read online

The last person I wanted to see today enters Superheroes & Scones. I refill my glass of orange juice and watch the familiar face open the door.

  Towering at six-foot-three, his black V-neck is tucked in black jeans, a leather belt buckled. The hilt of a handgun sticks from his waistband, and his dyed bleach-white hair contrasts his thick brown eyebrows.

  Most people find Farrow Redford Keene intimidating at first sight, but I’m immune to most kinds of intimidation.

  It’s called being a Hale.

  I can describe Farrow in three meaningful ways.

  1. Frustrating.

  2. Aggravating.

  3. Piss in my hot tea.

  Since he’s my mom’s bodyguard and she stops by the store frequently, I expect she’s not far behind his self-assured, unflustered demeanor.

  Farrow carries himself like he owns the world, but amusement constantly rests behind his brown eyes. I sometimes think he’s purposefully channeling James Franco circa Freaks & Geeks—minus the weed and multiply the Franco smile by a billion.

  It shouldn’t capture my attention.

  But it does.

  He does.

  Like right now, I try to ignore his overwhelming presence, and I slowly cap the juice jug again. My gaze stays on him. No matter how hard I say look at the juice.

  I’ve had this problem since I was sixteen. Unfortunately, I’ve known Farrow for a long, long time. I’m talking fledgling teenage years. Before the security team assigned him to my mom, he was just the son of our family’s concierge doctor, on-call 24/7 for house visits and medical emergencies.

  So when my little sister Kinney broke her ankle in five-inch-heeled boots, Dr. Keene appeared. With his son Farrow in tow.

  I tried to tug off Kinney’s boot, and Dr. Keene told me, “Move away, Maximoff.” Then he gestured Farrow forward. Teaching his son basic first aid. All so he could follow the footsteps of the many generations of Keenes before him. A prestigious family of physicians.

  Moments like those stoked my competitive nature. If Farrow was pushed to the front, I craved to find a way next to him. If Farrow went fast, I went harder. And he never let up. With anything, he was too headstrong to let me pass without a hard-won fight.

  Somewhere around my sixteenth birthday, I started crushing on him. Maybe it’s because he never just gives me the win. Maybe it’s that he’s five years older and a Yale graduate.

  Or that he does thirty pull-ups like it’s a damn breeze. Maybe it’s all the gray and black tattoos that cover his fair skin, even to his throat. Beautiful inked symmetric wings decorate his neck, crossed swords on his Adam’s apple.

  Maybe it’s his four visible piercings: a hoop on his nostril, bottom lip, and two barbells on his brow.

  Maybe it’s all of that combined together that heats my skin, pools blood south, and attracts me like an idiot. He’s made permanent camp in my cerebral cortex and cock, and I don’t know how to extract him.

  The crush was fine when I was teenager, where I was secretly fantasizing about the hot older guy’s lips around my dick. I always knew he was gay, and at eighteen, I told the world I was bisexual. Afterwards I thought there’d be a chance Farrow would look at me with interest.

  He didn’t.

  Then he became my mom’s bodyguard. Exactly three years ago.

  Whatever attraction I had towards him became more ethically wrong than it already was. I remind myself that he knows nothing. I’ve only told my best friend Jane about my crush and lapse in judgment. And she wouldn’t tell a soul.

  Farrow enters the store’s doorway and takes a big bite of a red apple.

  And then his brown eyes latch onto my forest-green. Instantly, he has a knowing look.

  I attribute it to him being a know-it-all. I must wear my slight irritation because his lips hike upward as he chews and swallows his fruit.

  I swig my orange juice before saying, “Look what the wind threw up.” I set down my glass.

  Farrow raises his apple to his mouth. “You mean blew in.”

  “No,” I say firmly, palms on the pearly counter. “I meant threw up.”

  He rolls his eyes into a humored smile that slowly stretches wider and wider. Then he kicks the door closed. And he locks it shut with his spare key.

  I go rigid. “Where’s my mom?”

  Akara finally pockets his cellphone. The one he’s been super-glued to since we arrived here. “Lily’s bodyguard transfer went through this morning.”

  Transfer.

  Which means…my brain fries, jaw sharpens and breath heavies as I watch Farrow near the vinyl stools, his stride masculine and unconcerned. A kind of confident gait that belongs to people who understand themselves from the core outwards.

  Closer, he rests his knee on the stool beside Akara. And he tells me, “I’m your new bodyguard.”

  I inhale, staying outwardly composed, but my pulse rages at an abnormal speed. Farrow Redford Keene is my new bodyguard.

  I have trouble adding him to my life that way. It’s why I’m eerily silent and mentally trying to block out how complicated this’ll make everything.

  Farrow stares me dead in the eye. “Excited?” he asks with a peeking smile, like he knows I wouldn’t be.

  Excited that my old crush is going to be a permanent companion to my whole life? And we’re ethically bound to remain platonic.

  I would choose the words: sexually frustrated and fucking complicated. But let’s go with excited. It’ll cause the least amount of friction right now.

  “That’s one word for it,” I say and finish off the rest of my drink in one gulp. “What’s the actual reasoning behind this?” I gesture at Farrow with my empty glass. The whole security team has good intentions, and I understand that a lot weighs into bodyguard switches.

  I can’t just demand someone new like an entitled bastard. All the bodyguards work together, and they’re people. Not plastic action figures. I respect them enough to trust their choices.

  And it’s not like they knew I used to picture Farrow on his knees.

  It’s not like they’ll ever know that.

  “The usual,” Akara says, “we take into account the location of where you live.” A townhouse in Philly. “Your lifestyle.” On-the-go. “Other security variables, and then we match you.”

  “So it’s Bodyguard Grindr without the sex,” I quip and try to ignore Farrow, but my eyes involuntarily flit to him.

  Farrow raises his brows at me in a self-satisfied wave.

  I want to groan and smile. My features, I’m sure, teeter between the two.

  “We’re not going to promote it like that, but sure…basically,” Akara says.

  “Basically,” Farrow interjects, “Lily wanted me to be your bodyguard.” Lily is my mom.

  Akara zeroes in on Farrow with an intense but padlocked look. I can only assume that Farrow wasn’t supposed to give me that much information.

  He even adds, “Word-for-word, she said, Farrow is the best.”

  “Bullshit,” I tell him. “My mom would cross her heart and hope to die before saying anyone was better than Garth.” Her first ever bodyguard. I’d never seen her so emotional over anyone’s departure than when he retired.

  Farrow rotates his apple for another spot to bite. “Then she broke a kindergarten oath for me.” His matter-of-fact voice is deep and rough, but audibly sensual. Like gravel tied in silk.

  My muscles heat from head-to-toe. “Wow,” I say, my tone too tight. My head is somewhere else entirely. On this situation.

  Our new reality.

  Him.

  Farrow lowers his apple, and my cheekbones must sharpen because his brown eyes brush my most distinct feature.

  I seize his gaze, and in our sudden quiet, a thick tension brews. Both of our lives are going to change from this transfer, and there’s an unknown factor.

  I can’t even conceptualize what Farrow as my bodyguard looks like. I sense Akara glancing between us. Gauging how well we’re getting along. But his answer is as good as min
e.

  And I have no answer.

  I have no idea what it’s like even cultivating a new relationship with a bodyguard. I’ve had the same one for practically twenty-two years.

  Farrow tosses his apple core in a nearby trashcan. Then he drops his knee off the stool, his shoulders noticeably loosened unlike my squared ones. “Let’s start with the basics, wolf scout.”

  “Out of all the things you can call me…” But it never stops Farrow from choosing this. My aunt created the Wolf Scouts as a wilderness & survival scouting organization that includes all genders. It gained national recognition, and yeah, I still help in the summer as a troop captain. “And what basics?”

  “The basics.” He edges up to the lip of the counter. His face only a few inches from my face. “Every time you leave your townhouse, I’ll be escorting you. I walk in front of you. I enter rooms before you. I go where you go until you return safely home.”

  I slowly blink, my skin scorching. Imagining Farrow with me all day, every day this quickly is like digesting a gallon milkshake in one gulp. I have a fucking brain freeze. I rub my jaw that’s a razorblade.

  Farrow tilts his head. “Okay?”

  “I’m making a revision.”

  “To the basics?” He glances at Akara, and they share a look that I can’t decipher.

  I bypass their exchange and continue, “You walk into places beside me—”

  “No,” Farrow rejects immediately. He runs two hands through his bleach-white hair, combing the strands completely out of his face. Sometimes he does this to give himself more time to answer. Other times, I think it’s a sign that he’s getting serious.

  Akara rests his elbow on the counter. “Moffy, he has to assess the room before you enter. Just like Declan did.”

  Declan isn’t Farrow. My old bodyguard preferred privacy with me, to the point where I can’t say I know very much about him personally. I know Farrow in a way that I never knew Declan.

  It instantaneously changes the bodyguard-client relationship that I’m used to.

  “Then when we’re on the street,” I say to Farrow. “You walk beside me. You don’t need to walk in front of me every single time like you’re my labradoodle.”

  “A labradoodle,” he repeats, his features balancing on the peak of an eye roll and a laugh. “You couldn’t have picked a more docile animal, could you?” Before I can respond, he adds, “I’ll consider that, but I can’t promise I’ll follow through in every situation.”

  That seems fair.

  I nod a couple times. “When did you find out about the new assignment?” He looks unaffected, but if he were a superhero in a battle zone, the comic book panel would show Farrow relaxed on a destroyed bench, using his powers to easily survive and make do.

  In comparison, I externalize my readiness for shit storms: my back straight, shoulders stringent, and head hoisted.

  “I was told last night,” he says.

  I let this sink in. “So only eight hours more than me.”

  “Twelve, technically.” His lips begin to lift like he beat me at something.

  I holster my own smile. “Thank you for that technical adjustment.”

  “Anytime, wolf scout.” He eases forward and lowers his voice to the sexiest whisper, “It’s good to remember that I’m better than you at most everything.”

  It takes a lot of effort not to stare at his mouth. “Sounds like an alternate universe.”

  One corner of his lip quirks, and then he eases back.

  Boom.

  Our heads whip to the store windows. More people bang against the glass as they try to peer inside, others chatting loudly as they wait for Superheroes & Scones to officially open.

  “We need to go,” I say the obvious.

  It really dawns on me that the we in this scenario is me and Farrow. Not me and Akara. Not me and a guy I recently met.

  It’s just me and him.

  And not in a way I fantasized. Farrow is now obligated to protect me, maintain a professional relationship with me, and always keep me safe.

  Picturing a polar bear eating Fritos on the moon is easier than imagining Farrow as my bodyguard. I think it’s a sign.

  That this is about to get fucking strange.

  3

  MAXIMOFF HALE

  LEAVING SUPERHEROES & Scones in my red Audi, I merge onto the freeway. The air is noticeably strained between us since I gave him my eight-page list. While he silently reads in the passenger seat, I concentrate on the road and speed past paparazzi vehicles that attempt to hug me like we’re friends.

  Farrow glances up and scrutinizes the various SUVs and sedans racing after us. “I really should be the one driving in this relationship.”

  I stiffen at the word relationship. I mentally add in platonic, but my sixteen-year-old self with his sophomoric crush would be hard as a rock right now.

  Twenty-two-year-old me is still pissed that I put Farrow in my spank bank.

  “Number twelve.” I nod to the list.

  He eyes me for a long moment before focusing on the paper. “It says that you’re not used to letting other people behind the wheel.” It actually says I always drive.

  I glance at him once, then back to the road. “I didn’t realize that you can’t read.” I switch lanes.

  I can almost feel his smile stretch. “Always a precious smartass.” I hear him flip a page. “You have a typo on number thirty-two.”

  He called me precious. What the fuck does that even mean? Precious. I have to let it go, but the word scrolls across my gaze like a tickertape banner. “What typo?”

  “You forgot a comma.”

  I let out an irritated groan. “This isn’t a term paper. Don’t critique my grammar.”

  Farrow kicks up one of his shoes on the seat. Balancing his forearm on his knee. Then he bites the staple off and spits it out. I tense and try to watch him and the road simultaneously.

  He has a very particular way he moves his hands. They shift with meticulousness and care. A sort of accuracy that belongs to surgeons and someone equipped to disassemble and reassemble a gun blindfolded.

  I’ve imagined those hands on me too many times to count. Don’t fucking restart now. I’m trying not to, but having him this close, the NC-17 fantasies vie to breach the surface. Heat blankets my skin and tries to grip my cock.

  Thumbing through the papers, Farrow tells me, “You’re about to miss our exit.”

  “Shit.”

  He smiles a self-satisfied, entertained smile, but I skillfully veer over three lanes of traffic and dodge more paparazzi. Making the exit ramp safely.

  Farrow folds nearly all of the pages and only keeps two sheets.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He waves the folded stack. “How about you ditch eighty-five percent of your rules and be less of a wolf scout, wolf scout?”

  “No.” I shake my head a few times. Those rules reflect my current way of living. “This is my fucking life, Farrow.”

  “And you have to make room for me,” he says seriously. “We’ll find a groove together, but not when you put me in a headlock before the match even starts.”

  I honestly think he just hates being confined by strict rules that aren’t his own. “Declan followed them.”

  “To your detriment,” he says bluntly. “You have a speeding habit. I should be driving.”

  We’re on that again.

  “I drive,” I tell him. “Your options are endless. Watch me drive. Watch the other cars. Watch the horizon. Count road signs. Play with the music—”

  “Inaccurate.” He licks his thumb and flips quickly through the pages before landing on one. “Number ninety-two. I prefer no music in the car until noon.” He tilts his head at me. “Because…?”

  “I usually have to make business calls. For charity,” I emphasize. He knows that I work nonprofit. Every day will be Take Farrow To Work Day. It’s weird. What’s weirder is that he’s currently working right now. He’s not just in my car to chat. H
e’s on-the-job.

  “Are you planning to make a business call now?” he questions.

  “No.”

  “Then really this should say ‘I prefer no music in the car until noon when I have business calls.’” He pops open the middle console and finds a pen. He rewrites the rule. “You also have another typo—”

  “Shut up about the fucking typos,” I say and adjust the air conditioner, my body hot as his smile stretches wider and wider.

  To fill the quiet, I switch on the radio and play an EDM station. Heavy bass pumps through the speakers.

  “Music before noon,” Farrow says. “I’ve already started loosening his straight-laces.”

  One hand on the wheel, I use the other to flip him off. “I love how you give yourself credit for the stupid things in life. It’s so generous of you.”

  Farrow almost laughs, but we both suddenly grow quiet and serious. Two paparazzi SUVs flank my sides and abruptly cut me off from a right turn.

  “Get off Market Street,” Farrow suggests.

  “That was my plan.” I speed forty over the limit just to pass the SUVs. But they have a Honda friend ahead of me. The blue Honda slams on its brakes. Causing me to slam on mine.

  Fuck.

  I’m now boxed in. Like a rat in a trap.

  I reach into my cup holder for my sunglasses, but Farrow is already handing me my black Ray Bans. Reminding me that he’s trained for these situations. He slips on a pair of black aviators.

  Arms and cameras stick out of paparazzi’s rolled-down windows. I’m forced to drive at their speed, and flashes pierce me from nearly every direction. My sunglasses dim the brightness but not my frustration.

  Most days, I coexist with paparazzi fine. I’ll answer their harmless questions, sign their photographs that they then sell on eBay, and we respect one another enough.

  Then they pull stunts like this and I question the percentage of decent cameramen to the ones that’d run my family into a ditch for a grand.

  “Do you want me to help you?” Farrow asks. “Or would you rather just let them capture photos of you glaring?”

  I gesture to the windshield. “There’s nothing left to do.”

  “I’m not Declan.” Farrow unbuckles, and he leans over the middle console. Towards me. My breath cages in my lungs, and I watch his arm slide across the back of my seat. With his other hand, he slams the heel of his palm on the wheel’s horn.