Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

I sink down on the bed. With my right arm imprisoned to my chest, I use my left to scoot back against the headboard. Gauze is taped to my right collarbone, and I haven’t peeled it back to check the stitches yet.

I’m about to ask about my cousins and my siblings, but I hear the old stairs creaking. People are coming up here.

Farrow nears the bed. “I’m going to get a fan and an ice pack. Need anything else, wolf scout?”

He’s the only one who really ever asks me that. But I can’t forget how he was in the crash too. How he had to talk to a porn star at the auction, how he apparently sold his motorcycle for me, how he’s given me so damn much—and he deserves every good thing.

“I’m alright,” I say. “You need anything?”

Farrow smiles at me like I stole his line, but he rubs his bottom lip with his thumb and tells me, “For right now, I’m good. No one’s crying, no one’s dying.”

Life moves on.

I nod, and he walks backwards and taps the doorframe like he’d rather stay longer. But he turns and leaves. From the stairwell, I hear Farrow say, “Walrus, you little bastard.”

Not long after, a calico cat darts into the attic and leaps onto my bed. Walrus nudges my foot with his furry head, but I can’t reach out to scratch him—I look up at a noise.

Charlie raps the doorframe with his crutch. Music still booms downstairs, so I’m assuming more family must be hanging out at my townhouse.

“Hey,” I say, surprised to see him. But the Charlie Cobalt Disappearing Act has been dying down since the FanCon. “How’s the leg?”

Charlie supports his weight on both crutches and comes closer. His entire right leg is bound in a white cast, and he rolled his sweats to his thigh.

I seriously can’t remember the last time I’ve seen Charlie in sweatpants.

“I don’t know,” Charlie answers and lowers on my bed. Sitting near me, he leans his crutches on my end table. “I’m too high to feel anything.” He scans my black and blue abs, sweat beaded up on my skin.

“I’m okay,” I tell him.

“Swallow a Vicodin, Moffy. There is a list of weak people in our families who’d drown in a craving, and you’re not one of them.”

I tense at that backhanded compliment. He just called my parents weak and whoever else he’s pinpointed as vulnerable to addiction. I shake my head on instinct.

Charlie arches a mocking brow. “The world will still see you as noble and gallant if you take a painkiller.”

I let out a laugh. “Christ, Charlie. This isn’t me being performative. I’m not trying to gain sympathy or kudos. You have no fucking clue how afraid I am…” I trail off and sit up a bit more, grimacing. Hating that my right hand is restricted.

Charlie said that I’m not on his list of weak people. But I don’t know if I am strong enough to beat a craving. And I don’t want to find out. My dad and my uncle have made the same decision as me with painkillers.

Alcoholism runs in the Hale and Meadows families. You know that.

Everyone knows that.

My dad has lectured me about addiction my entire goddamn life, and I’m terrified to awaken that monster inside of me. It’s been dormant for twenty-two years.

Charlie stares up at the ceiling rafters, tiny lights wound around the beams. “For almost anyone else, your choice would be a smart one. For you, it’s stupid.”

“Thank you,” I say sharply. I’m not sure he’ll ever understand me fully. I like to be in control, and that’s partly why I’m so afraid of an addiction. Of this monstrous thing controlling me.

Walrus hops on his lap, and Charlie strokes the cat. “You’re stupid and you’re strong.”

I give him a look. “Who are you?”

“I am a fractured leg,” he says. “And I’m drugged.” He plants a hand on the bed to keep from sliding off the edge. “I didn’t come here to chat about Vicodin.” Charlie lowers his voice. “I wanted to see how you were doing with the whole Xander situation.”

The Xander situation.

My lungs burn, and he doesn’t break eye contact from me. I don’t see empathy staring back, but I know he’s not asking out of some sort of sick curiosity or to stir up trouble. He wouldn’t do that. Not when it’s about my brother.

“Why do you care?” I just straight out ask.

He opens his mouth and then closes it, rethinking something. He shakes his head and says, “I don’t understand what it’s like to be so desperate for friendships that I’d give my pills away, just so people can like me.”

I want to curse him out, but I’m doing this new thing with Charlie, where I let him talk. Where I wait.

After a short pause, he continues, “But I do understand what it’s like to be a big brother, and your position isn’t enviable.” He angles his head. “If you want to talk it through…”

“Okay,” I say, not hesitating.

His lips part, shocked.

I reach for my half empty water bottle next to my bedside clock. I accidentally knock over one of his crutches.

Charlie lets it clatter to the floor. “You really want my advice?” he reaffirms. “Or at the end of all of this, are you just going to tell me how I can’t relate because my baby brother is only four years younger than me, and yours is seven years younger than you?”

“Charlie, I wasn’t even thinking that,” I tell him. I’ve always valued his opinion, but sometimes it comes after running through barbed wire and dodging explosives. I’m not always equipped for that kind of obstacle course.

I try to unscrew the water bottle cap with one hand.

Charlie watches me struggle and asks, “Are you going to tell your parents?”

I’ve thought that through about a billion times. My mom and dad know that my siblings and I keep some shit just between us. In fact, they like that we all have a close bond, but this is big. And I’m unsure if it’d be worse for Xander, if I let them know. Plus, it’d kill my dad…my mom, and I know they’re strong, but maybe it’s better if I just talk to my brother and get him to stop without involving them.

“I haven’t decided,” I admit. Then I wonder, “If it were your brother, would you tell your parents?”

“No.” It’s a direct and flat no. It leaves more questions than answers.

“That’s it?” I ask. “It’s that easy?” Why am I struggling with this then? There’s a right and wrong path here, and I don’t want to take the one that leaves more wreckage.

He sighs heavily like I’m slow to catch on. “You tell your parents, and it’ll travel to my parents and then reach Aunt Daisy and Uncle Ryke’s ears. You have the six of them involved, and it’ll proliferate into a bigger mess for Xander.” His yellow-green eyes puncture me. “It’s just a conversation with him, right? He loves you. That’s why he calls you every day. Talk to him. He’ll listen to you. Everyone in this family does.”

I hear the bite on that last comment.

He makes everything seem so easy.

Maybe it is. Maybe I’m just overthinking.

“Not everyone listens to me, by the way,” I tell him.

He barely blinks. “I’d listen if you had better things to say.”

I shake my head and finally unscrew the bottle cap—my hand slips and I spill water all over my bare chest and sling. “Fuck,” I curse, picking up the bottle fast. I mop up my wet chest with the comforter. The cold water actually feels good on my hot skin.

Charlie watches for a short beat before eyeing the door. “Seeing you struggle isn’t as entertaining as I thought it’d be.”

“Thanks?” I chug what’s left of

my water. A teeny tiny sip.

Stairs creak.

Quickly, Charlie says, “I won’t be heartbroken if you don’t take my advice. It’s there for you to stupidly ignore if you wish.”

“Good talk,” I tell him dryly and pat his hard cast. This wasn’t a particular painful conversation. Progress?

But he also called me stupid today.

So, slow progress.

Walrus skips across Charlie’s lap as my old door squeaks. Being pushed wider open, Beckett emerges and carries two rolled air mattresses that need inflating. My twenty-year-old cousin makes lugging hefty objects look beyond graceful.

He practically glides into my room. Black cotton pants are tied low on his waist, and arm tattoos peek out of his Carraways band tee.

“You look bad,” Beckett instantly tells me.

“I feel great,” I say sarcastically. “How are you doing with the auction?” I learned from Jane that another of our grandmother’s socialite friends won Beckett, and even Charlie, who was bid on without being present.

Beckett drops the air mattresses. “I deal with Grandmother Calloway’s crotchety friends at the ballet almost every week. I can fake nice for a night.”

“I can’t,” Charlie admits.

Beckett passes his twin brother the fallen crutch, and Charlie hoists himself off my bed with both crutches. The mattress undulates without his weight, and a shrill pang stabs my shoulder and ribs. I shut my eyes tightly and clench my teeth. Breathing hard through my nose.

“He looks extraordinarily awful.”

“The fucking worst.”

Those aren’t the Cobalt brothers. I open one eye to see pajama-clad Jane and Sulli. Standing at the foot of my bed, they cradle pastel beanbags, pillows, and fuzzy blankets. Charlie and Beckett flank the girls. All four staring at me. Sympathetically. Charlie, more so pityingly.

I’ve had every teenager, every kid in the family, make me promise that I wouldn’t die on them. These four are the ones that see me less like Captain America and more like an imperfect human.

I need them in my world.

I can admit that.

“I’m alive,” I say with a sharp breath.