Tangled Like Us (Like Us 4)

“Tell my fake brother-in-law I said hi ,” Eliot smiles like he’s both clever and wicked.

God. Don’t look at Thatcher .

“Jane, I don’t hear you,” Eliot says quickly, teasing me. “Why aren’t you relaying my message?”

“Because he can hear you, Eliot,” I say. “He’s in the room.”

Thatcher crosses his arms over his chest.

“Knew it,” Tom says and taps a pair of drumsticks on the edge of the coffee table.

“Beckett.” I catch my brother’s attention. He glances up from his cell. “I’m so sorry this happened. It’s terrible, awful luck.”

“It’s not luck. I fucked up,” Beckett says. “I shouldn’t have texted. I knew I shouldn’t have—”

“Dude, we’re in the twenty-first century, you can’t not text,” Tom says.

“Not about this shit,” Beckett refutes and runs a hand over his head.

Charlie sets down his phone and glances at him in concern before looking to me. “Jane, we called to ask you a favor.”

“Anything.” I pull back my shoulders. And I suddenly hear footsteps and creaking stairs in the townhouse, coming from the attic. Thatcher looks over his shoulder, up the stairs, and then back to me. He mouths, Farrow. He holds up three fingers, and I take that as three minutes . He leaves the bathroom, and their voices are soft and muffled in the second-floor landing.

“Jane,” Charlie calls my name.

I focus on him. “Yes. Anything,” I repeat.

He holds up his phone. “We’re all going on a Cobalt social media blackout,” he says. “In solidarity.”

A social media blackout.

He quickly explains that means deactivating our Twitter accounts. Deleting all Instagram photos. They hurt one of us. We’re all going dark. Yes. This is a perfect plan.

“Done,” I say without even hesitating. “Anything else? Beckett, I can come up there.”

He shakes his head. “Really, I’m fine. And you doing this…it means more to me. But I don’t want it to fuck with your fake dating ploy.”

“It won’t,” I say. I actually have no clue how being off social media will affect it. Instagram is a big part of my life, and I’ve been using it to sell my fake relationship with Thatcher. But that doesn’t matter right now.

“Thank you,” Beckett says.

“Ensemble,” I tell him. Together .

All four of my brothers repeat the word.

And then Eliot grins, mischievous twinkle in his eye, and he says something I’ve heard him recite a thousand-and-one times. But tonight, it’s never felt truer.

“‘Let me play the lion too…I will roar .’”

29

THATCHER MORETTI

I speak into my mic. “Pull back the three guys at the door.”

The temp bodyguard covering the entrance of the frozen yogurt shop, Sprinkle Your Life, replies, “Which three?”

My eyes blaze into narrowed pinpoints, but I don’t move from the small café table. Jane watches me in interest and swirls her spoon in her strawberry frozen yogurt.

I click the mic at my collar. “They’re on your seven o’clock,” I say. “Noses pressed to the glass.” I watch through the full-length glass windows for a second.

The temp on-duty doesn’t move at first, and I’m seconds away from telling him to stop standing there with his foot on his dick. Which is usually something my brother says.

But he finally moves.

“Sorry,” I say to Jane and look back to her. We agreed that I’d stay on-duty, even if we’re officially on a date.

She said she’d feel safer. Which is good. Because my first instinct is to protect her and to be vigilant. And being “off-duty” while out in public with Jane would probably drive me nuts.

Me being on a date with a radio and a gun is fucking better for us both.

And this is our first fake public date. With Jane officially on a media blackout like the rest of her family, we’re going to do more of these.

Security is choosing all of them. And it took hours just to come up with this first one. It was a massive debate that ended with Alpha and Epsilon siding together and outvoting Omega.

A frozen yogurt date.

Jane and I wanted to go to a brewery, but here we are.

She shakes her head. “No need to apologize. I love watching you do your job,” she says. “It’s dreadfully interesting. Like seeing more of who you are.”

I rub my lips. Something strains my chest. This is a fake date, I remind myself. For the op. But what we’ve been talking about, it’s been real. I don’t want any of our interactions to be anything less than that. “Where were we?” I ask her and pick up the small plastic spoon.

“Veni qua,” she says into a bright smile, saying the Italian words I’d just taught her almost perfectly. It means come here. “I like that one. I think I’m going to use it for Licorice when I can’t find him.” She picks a cookie dough piece out of her yogurt. “I tried putting a collar on him. One with bells. It was a pitiful sight. He’s just not a collar kind of cat. Not like Carpenter who loves his bejeweled ones.”

I love when she talks about her cats. She can do it for hours, and there’s love and light in her entire being.

Out of my peripheral, I check the windows again but keep my eyes on Jane. “So Carpenter loves attention. Licorice hates it. Walrus is the rebel. Ophelia is the princess. Toodles is a sloth, and Lady Macbeth a wise, old owl. That about right?”

Her lips part, and she looks like I just agreed to eat her out at this table.

“Jane,” I say.

Flush rises up her neck. “You know my cats very well,” she says, recovering. “It’s very attractive. But you already know that I’m attracted to you. So that’s redundant. But important. An important redundancy.”

My eyes sweep her for a second. “I don’t think our attraction to each other has ever been a question, honey.”

She smiles. “True.”

“Gomesegiam’,” I say in Italian. “That means How do you say? ”

“Gomesegiam’,” She repeats. “I like that one, too.” She’s liked every word I’ve said in Italian. I’m beginning to realize it’s not just the language. She likes me. There aren’t many people that get off on other people’s happiness. Other people’s interests. Jane is that rare kind of person.

“Ma che bell’,” I say another phrase. Our eyes latch for a hot second. “How beautiful. ”

Her lips part.

My muscles strain underneath my shirt, and she doesn’t look away. It’s an intense moment of silence, just drinking each other in.

Then she crumples her napkin and puts it in her empty cup. “So I’ve decided,” she says softly, her eyes still on me. “That’s my favorite.”

“It’s a good one,” I agree and then look down to her cup. “Done?’

“Only if you are.”

“We can push out,” I say. “But the crowds are bad, so you’re going to stay behind me. I’ll have the temp bring up the rear.”

She cranes her neck to the window. Fans and paparazzi line the sidewalk, snapping phot

os of us through the windows. She’s blocked them from her mind thus far. It’s easy for her to just forget they’re there. Like background noise.

I can imagine that comes with twenty-three years of practice living in the spotlight.

Jane meets my gaze and secures her purse over her shoulder. “Let’s do this.”

Minutes later we’re outside the frozen yogurt shop. Swarmed.

“Jane! Jane! Look here!”

“Thatcher! Thatcher!”

Jane is fisting my shirt, her fingers tightened on the fabric. I have one arm wrapped behind me, hand on her hip and pressing her chest up against my back. My other hand shoves a cameraman in front.

Create a path.

Clear the way.

Objective: her Beetle.

Distance: one block.

Targets: every shitbag in my vision.

A Canon is inches from smacking me in the eye. Pissed, I knock it back with my wrist. The cameraman looks like I assaulted his child.

I growl, “You take my eye out, I’m going to put you on the ground.”

“Dude, back up!” Another pap yells at him. They do that a lot. Dissociate from the shitbags like they’re not also here blocking our path.

“Jane! What flavor of fro-yo did you get?!” The question comes from my four. Can’t see who.

“Strawberry,” Jane answers like it’s second nature. She doesn’t sound rattled from the amount of people. Though this is twice the size of the crowds she normally gets.

“Thatcher! What about you?! What’s your favorite flavor?!”

My instinct is to not reply. Ignore. But then I remember my security meeting, where my superiors basically said, give the media what they want. Be compliant. Answer their questions as long as they’re respectful.

So to not be chewed out later, I say, “Vanilla.” My voice is stringent. No-nonsense. Still on-duty.

“Is that also your kink preference?!” someone shouts.

“Highly rude!” Jane yells back.