Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

I’ve heard the same speech a hundred different times, a hundred different ways.

“Shaw,” I say, grabbing my backpack and shutting the locker door. “I’m good.”

He nods, but he blisters beneath my words. “Yeah, Keene. Of course.” And he coldshoulders me as he returns to his locker.

I pass him silently out the door.

Just go.

By the time I reach the parking garage, my pulse is racing. I drove the Audi to work, and I find the car where I left it. I don’t slide into the driver’s side. Immediately, I climb into the back, lock the car doors, and lie down on the stretch of the seat.

Resting my boot soles on the leather, I dial a number and put the phone to my ear. Staring up at the car’s interior roof.

The line rings once before I hear his voice.

“I was just thinking about you,” Maximoff says.

It pummels me, and my hand cements to my mouth, raw emotion surging. I can’t speak yet. My eyes burn, and I know this is where I would say: of course you were, wolf scout. You’re obsessed with me.

“Farrow?” Concern hardens his voice. “You okay?”

I shut my eyes and drop my hand to my chest. “It’s sucking the life out of me,” I breathe out. And I tell him everything about what’s been happening.

All of it.

I knew one day I would, but I thought it’d be at the end of three years. And then I’d confess, but now it’s come sooner. Because I’m done.

I’m done.

Maximoff responds with more strength of heart than anyone could ever believe. Ever know or see. “I fucking love you,” he tells me, “and you should step back. Don’t finish your residency. You don’t need it, Farrow.”

I’d been worried that he’d apologize, stuck on a turntable blaming himself for this, and thank fucking God he’s not. Thank God.

I shift my phone to my other hand. “Maximoff…” I knew I’d end this here, and I was about to ask his feelings on that. Hell, I didn’t even need to ask. He just told me. But this choice comes with a greater cost than he might realize.

See, I’m still able to be a concierge doctor. I passed my Step 3 exam, so I’m now licensed and can prescribe medication. But… “I won’t be board-certified,” I tell him. “It means that if any of your family has to be rushed to an ER, I can’t practice medicine inside Philadelphia General.” I can’t help.

That hospital requires doctors to be in a residency program or board-certified. I will be neither.

“It’ll annoy you,” Maximoff tells me, “especially when you have to hand that task off. But Farrow, my family having serious medical emergencies like that—it might happen only a few times in your lifetime. It’s not worth three years of being beaten down and feeling empty.”

I open my eyes. The parking garage is quiet, and the Audi windows are tinted. No cameramen have found me yet. “I never imagined not being board-certified,” I admit and comb a hand through my hair while I lie down. I keep my palm on my head. “It feels like halfway.”

I don’t usually go halfway.

I go all-in.

A bed squeaks on his end of the line. He must be sitting down. “Maybe if you only loved medicine, it’d be halfway,” Maximoff says, “but I think you’re going all the way and you don’t even fucking realize it, man.”

My eyes sear, staring unblinkingly at the interior roof. I start to smile at the thought. Medicine isn’t the only thing that fulfills me. Protecting him, loving him, just being there—it’s what I live for.

I look far away. “Are you implying that I love you, wolf scout?”

“Yeah,” he says confidently. “I am.”

I smile more. “You’re not wrong.”

Flashes start glaring through the car windows. The click, click, click too familiar, and paparazzi shout my name. But I stay on my back for another minute.

“There’s a downside,” I tell him. “People will have a lot of opinions about me practicing without being board-certified.” Even if this isn’t a measure of my worth or skill as a doctor, it definitely will be to the public.

“Fuck those people,” Maximoff says.

I instantly breathe stronger. And I sit up. Phone to my ear, camera lenses pressed to the windows, I’m ready to change course. And I’m spinning his world in a new direction, but at least this one puts us together again.

29

FARROW KEENE

You want to be cremated or buried, Redford? – Oscar

He thinks he’s being witty since I’m a good twenty minutes from a lunch “date” with my boyfriend’s dad and two uncles. And sure, Maximoff will be at the restaurant too. But wolf scout is not the one Oscar thinks will grill me and kill me.

I was going to ask you the same thing since I keep shocking you to “death.” I send the text. At Joana’s confirmation—which I attended with Maximoff, no obligations in my way—Oscar admitted that he didn’t believe I’d drop out of my residency a second time. And not a lot ever surprises Oliveira.

“We’re all glad you didn’t go after the board certification,” Oscar told me. “You went full Sheryl Crow ‘If It Makes You Happy’ on us.”

I rolled my eyes and ended up smiling. It was an old inside joke about when the shit you love makes you sad. “Oliveira, reaching into archaic history.”

Oscar grinned. “I’m serving up some teenage Redford realness.” Silence fell hard after that. Both of us looking at each other and feeling the void of Donnelly at the Catholic church. Whenever Oscar says “realness” to anything, Donnelly cuts in with, because you’re the realest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.

Especially during the times when it doesn’t make any sense. But it fit too perfectly there.

Because you’re the realest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.

It brings me back to the present. To the Philly townhouse where the pipes groan as Maximoff takes a shower. But I’m not upstairs with him.

Eighteen minutes until a lunch “date” with my boyfriend’s family, and I’m lying on the mint-green rug where the coffee table usually would be. Black pants ride low on my waist.

And Donnelly is tattooing me.

His needle pierces the right side of my lower back. Right, right above my ass.

A sparrow—the only bird inked without color and the largest one on my body—spans most of my back with its feathered torso in the center. The tip of each wing touches my deltoids and reaches my traps. Further down, towards my ass, its talons clutch a dagger.

The sparrow and blade leave room for more ink on the lower left and right side, above my waistband.

“Don’t call Papa Hale sir when you see him,” Donnelly says, tattoo machine in hand. “I did that after he found out I inked Luna’s hip, and I’m telling you, he grew a third horn. Looked like he could’ve impaled me in the throat and ripped out my asshole.”

I chew Doublemint slowly and glance back at Donnelly with a pointed look. “Don’t talk about ripping assholes while you’re so close to mine with a needle.”

He smirks, not meeting my gaze as he works carefully on the design. He wears thin-framed reading glasses. “All I’m saying is that Maximoff’s dad is no joke. I thought he was the funny one. Sarcastic and shit. But I almost pissed myself.”

I thought Loren Hale would do worse if he found out Donnelly tattooed his eighteen-year-old daughter. “You still have your job?” I ask.

“Barely.” He pauses as a calico cat jumps off the Victorian loveseat onto the rug.

I throw a toy mouse and Carpenter chases it under the iron café table.

I’m not scared of Lo. But I’m wondering what conversations he plans to start. Since the crash, we’ve stuck to one main topic: Maximoff rehabbing his collarbone. Easy shit.

Something tells me this lunch isn’t going to be easy.

Donnelly resumes tattooing, the needle pricking skin. Not painful. The ink on my ribs hurts like hell, but this isn’t bad. He tells me, “Cobalt parents never batted an eyelash when I inked Beckett.”

Mention of Beckett reminds me about him doing cocaine to help his ballet performance. I told Donnelly that I knew about it, but we didn’t talk long.

“If it’s hard being on Beckett’s detail,” I say now, “you should see if Akara will let you transfer.”

I never asked if Donnelly supplied the drugs. Some bodyguards will, but Donnelly would let another person chop off his hand before he touched cocaine.

I stay on my forearms. Not looking over my shoulder at him.

Donnelly inks me quietly. Tattoo machine buzzing, and then he says, “I can’t leave him, man.” He lowers his voice. “I know I can’t get him to stop. I mean, fuck me, his twin brother couldn’t even convince him.”

I pop a bubble in my mouth. “Because Beckett thinks drugs make him a better dancer,” I whisper, “and now he’s started thinking that he dances like shit without them.”

“I hate that,” he mutters and then speaks under his breath. He tells me how he can’t talk to Beckett about his teenage years. Because then Beckett would try to protect him and ask the Tri-Force to transfer Donnelly off his detail.

Donnelly doesn’t explain his past to me. I already know it. When he was fourteen, his parents gave him meth for the first time, and as an adult, he prefers not to be around hard drugs. Not out of temptation. Mainly, they bring back bad memories.