I try to rewind my brain, but all I remember is hopefully your last.
A knowing smile edges across his face. “I said that you’ve never experienced this shit either. You can’t know how it’ll affect you when you read about us.” He makes a come closer gesture with two fingers and unlocks my phone with the passcode.
I near him, my red sling rubbing coarsely against my chest. “I’ve also had paparazzi and journalists ask about my love life since I was fourteen.” Our eyes meet. “I’ve dealt with speculations before. Maybe not about us, but I’m better equipped for this.”
Farrow waits to open a web page. “Okay, but I’m not sitting on the sidelines. I’d rather learn to deal with it than avoid it.”
I nod. “I can get behind that.”
He reaches for the Pop-Tart box. “That’s because you love getting behind me.” Farrow tears open the silver individual pastry wrapper with his teeth, his smile my fucking undoing.
My blood heats, but I also eagle-eye the phone in his other hand. “Let me prep you first.”
His brows shoot up. “Prep me?”
I rest my hand on my neck, the strain in my muscle uncomfortable. “It’s what I used to do when I was younger. You tell yourself what people are probably saying before you see or hear it—that way it doesn’t cut as badly.”
Farrow passes me the cinnamon Pop-Tart. “You would prepare. Pack your survival gear, remember your life raft—”
“Alright,” I interject. I get that he’s him and I’m me and we’ll handle every crisis a bit differently. But I had to offer anyway. “So you don’t want a raft then?” I take a large bite of the cold Pop-Tart.
I haven’t eaten in forever, and Farrow knew that. He must’ve also known that I wouldn’t be as nauseous. My uneasy stomach is instantly grateful for the food. Settling down.
“No raft,” he confirms, typing on my phone. “Let’s just dive in, wolf scout.”
I’m the better swimmer, so in this analogy or metaphor, I can save him if the current pulls him under. I wonder if he’s thinking about that.
I lean back, shelves digging in my spine, but my side is up against Farrow’s, our shoulders nearly at equal height. He wraps his arm around my muscular waist and searches the internet with his other hand.
Janie’s cat scratches and meows at the pantry door, slicing into the short silence.
“Try Celebrity Crush first,” I tell him.
He types the tabloid site into the search engine, and as soon as we’re on the homepage, we both read the biggest headline: Popular Male Porn Star Buys Night with Maximoff Hale at Charity Auction.
It’s pretty generic.
Something we both expected.
I swallow the last of the Pop-Tart while Farrow clicks into the article. He scrolls really goddamn fast. Skim-reading, and then he reaches the comments, slowing down…
It’s all a fucking hoax. Their relationship is #FAKE
Ugh. Why would he let a porn star buy him if he’s dating someone? Gross.
They have no chemistry anyway. This just confirms it.
He’s only dating Maximoff to get famous.
My eyes glaze over more of the same, and I do what my parents have always told me to do.
I take a breath.
Remember that they don’t know me, they don’t know us.
Repeat it.
They don’t know us.
Their opinions are just opinions, and they don’t get to live inside my body and make my choices. The world watches my failures, my mistakes, and you criticize me and my relationship, but in the end, you don’t have the full picture. Just whatever narrative you’ve created in your head.
I glance at my boyfriend. He keeps scrolling through the comments, his cool exterior not shaken, but his eyes seem to tighten. So something’s troubling him.
I extend my left arm across his back and hold his shoulder. “They don’t know us,” I tell Farrow. “They’ll never really know us.”
He pauses scrolling. “I don’t understand why they’d say that I’m in it for the fame. I’ve barely been on your social media so far.”
Since I’ve been dealing with the auction, I haven’t posted a lot in the past two weeks. The pictures on my Instagram of him are the lovers like us photo from my parent’s vow renewal and one where he’s cooking breakfast. I haven’t even recorded an Instagram story with Farrow yet.
“They’ll make up anything off nothing,” I say, but I notice how he’s fixated on another fame whore comment. “That’s what’s getting to you?”
Farrow scrolls again. “It’s all eating at me differently, but people questioning my intentions with you is probably my least favorite thing.” He glares at another comment on a different article. “I’m protective of you, wolf scout, and the thought of people believing I’m fucking you over…” His jaw muscle tics.
It’s not sitting well with him.
Before I can reply, Farrow adds, “See, I understand how this works: I appear on your social media more, I only strengthen their ‘he’s in it for the fame’ bullshit, but fuck.” He lets out a deep, aggravated breath.
There is no permanent fix.
After being around my family, he knows this too. People will always believe what they want to believe—and it’ll hurt. With the rumors about my paternity, I felt like I needed to scream and scream for people to hear me.
I still have to talk about the truth. How my dad is Loren Hale. And I’ll occasionally wear red to honor him. Like now, I consciously chose a red sling. But using my voice is the best thing I can do. It’s why We Are Calloway exists.
My sore arm falls to his hip. “I was going to ask you to do an Instagram video with me, but if you’d feel better backing away from social media, I’d understand.”
I’d be okay with whatever he decides since this is new for him and since my world is the thing that’s drastically changing his life.
“I don’t have to post pictures of us—”
“No,” Farrow says, shutting off my phone. He rotates to face me, resting his forearm on the shelf, and he opens his mouth to speak, but I’m already talking.
“Joining me in videos, posting more pictures together, it won’t change public perception in the way you want,” I remind him.
“It’ll most likely make it worse,” Farrow agrees. “I’m ready for that, wolf scout.” He runs his thumb over his lip piercing.
“You sure?” I ask.
Farrow notices me watching his hand, and his lips begin to lift beneath his thumb. He moves that hand to the back of my neck.
His grip feels better than good.
And his gaze plunges into me. “When I love someone,” he says in a rough whisper, “I love them proudly, and you deserve the achingly normal, romantic shit more than anyone. Everything you’ve never had. All the pictures you post, all the videos you do on your own, I want to be in them—and it’d kill me not to give you that. Especially now that we’re public.”
The declaration overwhelms me. I swallow the ball in my throat. And I zero in on how fast that was for Farrow. “Just like that?” I ask, my brows cinching. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“Because I do what I feel is right, not just what I think is right.” His hand ascends into my hair, and mine is on a descent to his back pocket.
Farrow listened to his instincts, and I’ve been ignoring mine that have screamed at me for weeks on end.
A sudden clarity washes over me.
And I say, “I’m cancelling the night with a celebrity.” Content with this choice.
His hold on the back of my head is twice as protective, ten times as comforting. “When did you decide this?” he asks, skimming my features for signs of what I’m feeling.
“Right now.” I look at him. “I’ve been fighting against what I feel is right. Anytime the night with a celebrity is brought up, it’s like a parasite crawling down my body.” I cringe. “I can’t put you through that fucking night. I can’t put my sister or my cousins through that night. I don’t care if you’re all willing to go through with it—something inside of me is pleading with me to just stop.”
Concern narrows his eyes—Farrow looks like he wants to hug the fuck out of me. But with my broken bone, he can only draw closer. “Maximoff.” He whispers my name like he’s caressing each syllable. “Shit, if I’d known you were feeling like that…I thought you were just paranoid.”
I was that, too. “What would’ve you done if you’d known?” I ask, my eyes tracing the wings and crossed swords inked on his neck.
“I would’ve told you that if something is so parasitic that every instinct is screaming at you to stop, then stop. Because at that point, doing it isn’t benefiting what or who you love. It’s hurting something or someone you love.” He runs his hand through my thick hair. “And then I would’ve held you.”
I stare at his mouth for a second, my blood hot. “Or I would’ve held you.”
Farrow doesn’t play into the banter like usual, or even say we would’ve held each other. He’s focused on the crux of my choice. “You’re going to lose your job for real.”
If no one goes through with the night with a celebrity, Ernest Mangold won’t give me a second chance to be reinstated as CEO of H.M.C. Philanthropies.
It doesn’t knock me backwards. I inhale a stronger breath. “I think I’m okay with that.”