Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

I’m uneasy, and I want to interject. But I can’t figure out what to say fast enough. And I wonder if the right thing would’ve been having my parents talk to his parents. Let them help him. But what if his parents are assholes and it makes his life drastically worse?

“No problem,” Charlie says, and I pass my cousin his crutch. He braces his weight on them.

Easton steps back to his door. “I have to go.” And to me, he adds, “Xander really never mentioned me?” Not once.

I shake my head.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my head heavy on my shoulders for too many reasons.

He nods, a little hurt, and then he slips back inside his house.

Charlie and I leave the front porch, and as he slowly descends the few steps, Charlie tells me, “Well, that was not exactly how I saw that going.”

I watch him to make sure he doesn’t trip, and when we walk across the long driveway, I keep shaking my head. “You know a doctor who’s writing illegal prescriptions, and you just gave a sixteen-year-old their number,” I say out loud.

Dumbfounded.

“And I solved the issue,” Charlie tells me. “It’s done.”

“That doctor should be stripped of his license, and that kid could use that contact for something other than antidepressants,” I counter. “If he gets hooked on opioids—”

“Not my problem.” His crutches make a thunk thunk noise on the cement.

“Fucking Christ.” I rub my mouth, distressed. Everything is wrong about today.

Charlie halts at the curb. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Did I swindle you into thinking I’d choose the moral choice? People make stupid decisions, and I’m not you. I don’t bear responsibility for other people’s choices. How do you even live with that? How are you not dying from that?”

So many emotions slam at me.

So much has changed. So much is in flux. I don’t know what’s up and what’s down. Right from wrong anymore. It’s like I have paths and choices and I keep running down the darkest one.

I’m not even sure if what we did here today was right.

And I just want to shut down.

To go numb. Really, I want to call him. To talk to Farrow. Because when my universe feels like it’s spiraling and trying to drag me under, he has this ability to make me feel lighter than air.

And then I remember his text about being unavailable.

I can’t call him. I won’t fucking disturb him at work.

So I just walk forward, shoulders locked. And I carry this weight.

24

FARROW KEENE

Missing Jane’s 23rd birthday party is par for the course by now. My schedule at Philly General doesn’t allow for sick days or personal hours. Add in the overtime charting and other bullshit—and I’m sufficiently MIA more than I like.

It’s not my favorite thing.

Not even close.

Working inside a hospital wields a certain kind of discomfort for me—suffocating, aggravating, choked—and I didn’t forget its existence but it’s amplified this time around. For too many reasons.

Like missing the quietest, purest moments. My recent 22-hour shift means that I didn’t go to sleep with Maximoff. I didn’t see him wake up, and I couldn’t rake my fingers through his hair. Couldn’t see him struggle into his jeans and glare in my direction before he flips me off.

Hell, I wasn’t even there to laugh or smile or help. And there’ll be other moments to make up for those. Sure. But I sense what I’m losing because I’ve had those powerful minutes, those unbearably beautiful seconds before.

I’m trying my best not to keep tally of what could’ve been with Maximoff. Because then it starts feeling like regret. And I can honestly say that I don’t know how to deal with that emotion other than change course.

I can’t change this.

I just have to remind myself that the goal isn’t to work at a hospital. That’s not what I’m chasing.

I’m running after the concierge position. To be a doctor to these famous families so I’m not an outlier but involved. And needed.

Unfortunately, the path to that ideal job is this residency at Philly General.

Three years.

Just three fucking years, and then I’m out and working for the Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts again.

I climb stairs to the rooftop of Superheroes & Scones, motorcycle helmet tucked beneath my arm.

It’s still June 10th. I may’ve missed Jane’s birthday party at the Cobalt Estate, but I’m on time to make the tail end of her birthday tradition. Typically it’s just her and Maximoff (plus their bodyguards) but Jane extended an invite to me.

I swing open the metal door to the roof, and before I come face-to-face with the eccentric putt-putt course—made with milk bottles, garden gnomes, antique gas station signs—I hear a phrase that I really, really do not want to fucking hear.

“Is it Rowin?” Jane asks.

Rowin.

As in my ex-boyfriend. As in an official concierge doctor to the famous families.

If they called him, then someone must be injured.

Maximoff.

A pit is in my stomach, and with more urgency, I walk onto the makeshift putt-putt course, door thudding behind me.

Strung outdoor lights twinkle in the night, and Jane and Maximoff have their phones out like pistols. I assess each of them as I near.

Maximoff drapes his metal putter over his left shoulder like a baseball bat. He grips his cell in his right hand, and Jane leans her weight on a pink putter, blue eyes on me.

Both look okay.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” Maximoff says, hurt somehow hardening his face. “Christ, I’ve called you like seventeen times.”

Shit. I absolutely hate being inaccessible to the people I care about, and he’s my number one. “I had 1% battery before I left the hospital,” I say. “My phone must’ve died.” I hook my motorcycle helmet on the arm of a six-foot red-and-black Deadpool statue. The third putt-putt hole is an overturned bucket between the statue’s legs. “Why’d you call Rowin?”

His eyes dance over my features like he hasn’t seen me in years. I look at him just the same, sweeping his jawline, his chest that falls and rises in time with my chest, and his stiff neck, the fresh scar peeking out of his T-shirt collar.

Before I reach Maximoff, he starts redialing a number. “Since you weren’t picking up, he was the only choice. I’m trying to get ahold of him. To tell him not to come.”

“Out of loyalty, we would have waited longer,” Jane says to me. “But Thatcher started looking pale.”

And that’s when I notice six-foot-seven brooding-as-hell Thatcher Moretti. He’s uncharacteristically sitting down on a lawn chair, and a plaid flannel shirt is wrapp

ed around his hand.

Blood soaks the fabric.

His cheeks are a little pallid, and as soon as our gazes meet, he glowers. “I told them I could just go to the hospital.” He braces his forearms on his knees. “I don’t need to get involved in your petty drama.”

Petty drama.

Wow.

See, the concierge team extends to security. It saves time and resources from a famous one having to call in a temp bodyguard for the day. But Thatcher Moretti asking to go to a hospital is a motherfucking surprise. Because that means he’s choosing to break security rules just to avoid me and my “petty drama.”

My brows rise. “Interesting.” I dig in my pocket and cup a silver chain in my fist. “Considering you didn’t care about me and my petty drama when you socked me in the face.” I turn to Jane. “Happy Birthday.” I drop a necklace in her palm, a cursive pendant spells: merde.

She’s distracted a little since her bodyguard is bleeding, but her face brightens as she says, “A shit necklace.”

“Love it?” I ask.

“Oui.” She presses the necklace to her chest, and then she looks over at her bodyguard. Concerned and troubled.

This is all more complicated than I like.

“I thought I was defending a client,” Thatcher suddenly tells me.

I turn and roll a yellow golf ball beneath my boot. “A client, as in Maximoff. So you thought you were protecting my boyfriend from me?”

Does he realize how that sounds?

Thatcher lets out a heavier breath. He’s trying not to glare at me, even when I’m definitely glaring at him. “I was wrong,” he confesses. “I crossed a fucking line just to set you off towards the end. It was out of anger, and I’ve already apologized to Maximoff tonight.”

I glance at Maximoff, and he nods once to me, still dialing Rowin’s number. My ex is going to have about fifty missed calls from my boyfriend.

Thatcher tightens the knot on the flannel shirt. “You want to lay into me. Go ahead, but don’t fucking come at me for wanting to go to the hospital so your ex doesn’t have to share a rooftop with your current boyfriend.”