Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

Farrow straightens off the doorframe. “You’re really planning to be celibate for the rest of your life?”

Jane lifts her blue eyes to him. “I can live fine without falling in love, so I can live just as easily without a penis.”

Farrow arches his brows.

“You love sex,” I tell my best friend.

“I love to masturbate.” Jane sips her coffee again.

“Same,” Luna nods.

I rub my face with my one hand. Not sure how I should feel. My neck is hot, and Farrow looks partially amused, partially ready to wrap this up. I didn’t get him off yet, and the mood has been pretty much slaughtered. But I’ll revive it.

Jane motions for Luna to descend the staircase. “Come to my bedroom, Luna. I’ll teach you everything the men can’t.” Janie glances back at me.

I mouth, merci.

She taps her cheek and mouths, feel better. She’s referring to my burn from the coffee.

I almost smile, and when I return to my bedroom with Farrow, my mind reels through the whole day. “Was everything okay with the hospital?” I ask while we draw together. He took the call while I did the Instagram Live, and I forgot to ask.

He unbuttons my jeans. “They wanted to make sure I could comply with HIPPA.”

“Isn’t that the thing that protects a patient’s privacy?”

Farrow starts to smile. “That thing is a law. And yeah, it’s there to ensure healthcare providers will keep medical records and other health information private.”

I think harder. “They called because you were doxxed,” I realize.

Farrow looks surprised that I figured it out, but also he looks like he loves me. Like really loves me, and I wrap my arm around his shoulder as he tells me, “They were afraid I wouldn’t be able to maintain privacy for a patient, but I talked them down.” He eyes my mouth as much as I eye his. “Everything is fine, wolf scout.”

But I sense an uneasiness. “Really?”

He nods, clutches my jaw, and whispers against my lips, “I hope so.”

20

MAXIMOFF HALE

“This is my thing, Moffy. You can’t have it.”

We’re at a 1920s speakeasy-themed bar. It’s nearly empty. I sit on a round leather stool, and my best friend rattles a silver cocktail shaker on the other side of the counter.

Jane’s mixology instructor is an actual bartender, dressed in a fedora, bowtie and suit vest. While he slices limes next to her, I catch him scrutinizing her, then me. Not pretending that this conversation doesn’t interest him.

I focus on Janie. “I’m not trying to take your thing,” I say seriously. “But maybe we can try to find a passion together seeing as I am passionless now—”

She snatches an ice cube from a bucket and tosses it at me.

I dodge with a smile.

“You have a passion,” she says. “It’s just been disrupted for the time being.”

I’m aware that charity exists beyond the company I built. I can still attend functions and donate money and time. But I’m not looking to head a corporation.

“I don’t want charity to be a job,” I tell Janie. “I’d rather not set an alarm to it.”

For the longest time, I’ve chased responsibility, and I won’t stop running towards my family—I won’t slow down for anything. But with Farrow, I’ve experienced what it’s like to just take it easy, to exist and breathe, and when it comes to work life, I want the simple enjoyment.

Not a CEO position. Not managing a hundred-some employees.

“It’s official then?” Jane asks, setting down the shaker. Frilly sleeves of a shirt stick out from her Cheetah-print tee. “You won’t return to H.M.C. Philanthropies?”

“It feels official,” I say with a nod.

A smile pulls her freckled cheeks. “In that case, you most certainly must join me in our quest to find a passion—”

“No, you were right,” I interject. “This is your thing.” I’m not sharing in Jane’s Quest for Passion because she’ll be so determined to find mine, she’ll forget her search. I see that in how excited she is for me—I can’t do that to her.

Jane looks like I punctured her grand, elaborate plans for eternal life friendship. “Moffy.”

I feign confusion. “I could’ve fucking sworn I’m supposed to be your super amazing, unbiased taste-tester for all the nonalcoholic drinks.” I gesture to the bar. “Is my drink invisible?”

She smiles softly. “Fine. I’ll be solo until you change your mind.”

Last month, Jane finished her online degree and graduated from Princeton. Her deadline for finding her passion ended with the diploma. She was supposed to give up her search and become the full-time CFO of H.M.C. Philanthropies. But when I was ousted, she quit her position.

It’s an upside that I don’t forget. Because Janie as a CFO of any company sounds like a royal circle of hell for my best friend.

While Jane rattles the shaker again, I catch Thatcher risking a glance at her from the very end of the bar where he’s been standing guard on-duty.

I’ve been nice to Thatcher in the past. But Fuck Him with capital letters blares in my head on repeat. Fuck Him for punching my boyfriend. Fuck Him for thinking I’d cheat and hookup with my new bodyguard.

Fuck Him.

I drill a glare into his forehead, and he sees, rotating more towards the entrance. If he feels any sort of regret, I can’t tell. He just looks stern to me.

I rest my hand on my tight shoulder.

“Jane.” Jack Highland calls out to my cousin. The exec producer has a knee on the stool next to me. His frayed shorts and tank look more Long Beach style than Philly, and while he grips an expensive camera, he directs the lens at Jane. “Are you afraid that if your passion involves alcohol, the public might think it’s insensitive? Considering both of your uncles’ history of alcoholism?”

My head swerves to Jack. “Going with the hard-hitting questions there, Jack.” He’s filming us for We Are Calloway, and sometimes I forget he’s recording. Until the questions start rolling in.

Jack never shifts the camera off Jane. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he reminds her. “But this is naturally what people will think.”

Jane places a martini glass on the bar. “The public will always have an opinion,” she answers to Jack. We rarely speak into the camera unless it’s a sit-down interview. “So I can’t let them decide what my passion should be. Even when it’s easier pleasing other people, I need to try to be true to myself.”

“Plus,” I say to Jack and check my texts. “She loves beer.”

“Oui,” Jane smiles. “La brasserie est la semaine prochaine.” The brewery is next week.

No new texts.

I was hoping for an update from Farrow. And I’m strangely all caught up on family group messages. No unread emails. No notifications.

It’s almost like I have all this free time and no job.

Even my brain is making pitifully sad jokes. I’m an heir to multiple Fortune 500 companies. If I wanted to not work for the rest of my life, I could. My troubles are insignificant. You don’t need to tell me.

Jack translates French on his phone app and then asks, “If you’ve scheduled a brewery next week, do you already think mixology will fail?”

His questions will appear on TV with closed captions. The audience is led to believe a random producer is talking. No mention of “Jack Highland” will be on screen. You don’t know his name unless you search on IMDB.

The docuseries is cinéma vérité style. Where we acknowledge that we’re being filmed and talk directly to the producer.

Janie copies an earlier demonstration from the bartender and pours mint-green liquid into the martini glass. “I’m just following the numbers,” she says to Jack. “My success rate is zero percent. Chances are I need to have other options lined up.”

Jane plops a cherry and slides the glass to me. “Okay, give it to me, Moffy.”

She means m

y opinion, but the bartender interprets this differently. He makes a choked noise, then coughs to hide it.

I narrow my eyes while he wipes his hands on a dishrag.

Thatcher angles towards us again, arms crossed and out of camera shot. He glares at the bartender, who remains the only stranger in the speakeasy bar. He already signed an NDA.

All the buttoned booths and wooden tables are empty.

“That was not sexual,” Jane says to the bartender, beating me to the words. “You thinking it was—that says more about you than me.”

He fixes his fedora, cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry. I really don’t believe you two are…” He cringes, and he won’t even look at me.

My jaw is cut like sharp marble.

“I know it’s just a rumor,” he adds. That confirmation is a good indication that our FanCon tour helped.

Jane smiles more kindly than most would.

I exhale and motion to the guy. “We’ll move on if you do.” And I’d like to move on.

So would Jane. She wipes the wet counter around my nonalcoholic martini.

“Yeah, definitely,” he nods and apologizes again to my cousin before asking her what drink she’d like to make next.

“A dirty martini,” she says.

He reaches for a bottle of gin on the shelf and starts spouting off instructions.

My phone buzzes, and honest to God, my heart flutters like I’m in the fifth grade receiving a valentine from a crush.

It’s my boyfriend.

One week.