Tangled Like Us (Like Us 4)

estion was really rhetorical, but we just didn’t give a shit.

I pop open the container of roasted goose and potatoes.

Banks sniffs the meat. “Smells like roadkill.”

“No it doesn’t.” I stick a fork in the cold meat.

He steals the container and holds it to Akara.

Akara is texting, but he sniffs it anyway. He smiles. “Smells like a Cobalt Empire Wednesday Night Dinner. Three days old, still edible.”

I grab the container from Banks.

Jane always brings her leftovers from every Wednesday family dinner. Usually for Maximoff. Sometimes she’ll put a container in security’s fridge.

Only Cobalts have ever attended. No Hales, no Meadows. Never bodyguards.

What goes on there is almost urban legend on the security team. No one really knows. Except that if you have a Cobalt client, they’ll usually fight to make it back to their childhood house every Wednesday, every week.

Akara glares at his cellphone, then he takes off his baseball hat and pushes his black hair back.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“You remember Will Rochester?” Akara throws his cell on the counter. “Apparently he’s planning on throwing Sulli a Hallow Friends Eve party the day before Halloween.” He shakes his head repeatedly. “I don’t like where this is fucking going. He seems…”

“Like he’s into her?” Banks finishes. “Because that’s one-hundred percent certain—”

“I know that,” Akara growls, heat flashing in his eyes. “That’s not it.”

He established a buddy-guard friendship with Sullivan Meadows, and he walks a blurry line like he was born on one. No sweat. Better than I could with my feet cemented to the thing.

But ever since last year, he’s picked up that Sulli is starting to show real interest in dating. And his overprotectiveness and his level of care for his client has shot through the fucking roof.

“You’re not jealous?” Banks wants confirmation.

Akara glares. “Shut the fuck up.”

I don’t make those comments about him and Sulli. He gets enough shit from the rest of SFO. But Banks eases up faster than the other guys would.

“Is it a sixth sense?” I ask Akara about Will. Wondering if his caution is based on gut or intel.

“Yeah, it’s just a feeling. He’s renting out a farm.” Akara fists the neck of his beer and puts a container of Ripped Fuel on the counter. “He’s taking an entire open field and putting together haunted houses from scratch .”

“Rich guys can do that,” Banks points out.

“I’m rich,” Akara says, “and I can’t do half of what he’s planning.” Akara had about the same wealth as Farrow growing up.

His dad was a big shot broker. But he died when Akara was seventeen. Akara used the life insurance money to open up Studio 9.

“The Rochesters are old money.” I unscrew my water, pushing back my chow for a second.

Banks nods. “They can afford mega yachts.”

Like Jane.

I sometimes forget she’s that wealthy. She lives modestly in comparison to her parents. I look to Akara. “How many people will be at the farm?” Wherever the Hallow Friends Eve party takes place, I know Jane will be there, and I need the details.

“I don’t know yet,” Akara says. “But Will promised that every single guest would sign an NDA or they wouldn’t be permitted on the grounds. It’s their ticket into the party. Sul said it was really sweet of him.” His hand slips on the Ripped Fuel container and pills spill out. “Shit.” He cleans it up.

Banks nods to Akara. “So this Will guy lives around here. How deep is he?”

Akara tosses pills back into the jug. “Banks, I love you, man, but we talked about that phrase. No one but you and your brother use it, and all I picture is someone’s cock deep between a set of thighs.”

“You’re welcome.” Banks smiles with his toothpick between his teeth.

“How far away is he?” I rephrase how deep is he?

Akara explains that he lives in a gated neighborhood twenty minutes away. He’s been background checked. “I have a feeling he’s just buying her trust so he can fuck her, and Sul said she’s not looking for a hookup, so what am I supposed to do?”

Let it happen.

Akara wouldn’t direct Sulli away from Will if he thought she liked him. He’s venting to us, and he knows there’s nothing he can do about the situation.

That’s going to be me , I realize.

Once this op ends soon, Jane could easily meet a rich prick. Could I help her fall in love with another man? Could I watch that fucking happen?

My stomach roils.

I’m stuck between a rock and another fucking rock.

39

JANE COBALT

Failure is a dear friend of mine. And it reared its ugly head again today. I’m trying my best not to visualize what happened, or else I’ll feel a repeat wave of mortification and disappointment.

But it’s hard not to think about.

Especially when it happened mere hours ago.

I showed up to the recording studio for my first session narrating Wildfire Heart . It lasted ten minutes before the producer paused and took a phone call. When he came back, he simply said, “I’m sorry Jane. I just got a call from the publisher. They want to go in a different direction.”

It was so formal and direct. Like a swing of an axe, I was cut just like that.

Different direction is so vague. It could have been my fault—they didn’t like my voice or didn’t want my name attached to the audiobook—and they’re just trying to be professional and diplomatic. Not wanting to burn bridges. Or it could have been something out of my control.

I don’t know.

I suppose I never will. And that’s the hardest part in all of this. When you don’t know why you’ve truly failed, but you have. Eliot told me it’s like that all the time in casting, and you just have to believe you’re talented enough. It’s just outside factors. And the truth—it doesn’t matter in the end.

But I truly don’t know if I’m talented enough at anything that could deem me worthy of my Cobalt name. Except math.

Tom says it’s a curse. To have talent for something you don’t love.

Lately it’s felt that way.

Girls Night has never been more necessary. I’m in Luna and Sulli’s room, and I need to forget about Wildfire Heart .

And I especially need to forget about the call I made to my little sister, breaking the news that I’d no longer be narrating one of her favorite books. Or any books.

She just stared at me through FaceTime, red hair framing her face. “Oh Jane,” she said in her whimsical, velvety voice like she stepped out of the pages of a Jane Austen novel. “Please don’t weep. Those publishers truly don’t know what they lost. They should be the ones in tears.”

Disappointing her is what hurts the most.

“Jane.” Sulli tosses one of her squishy basketballs at my face. It bounces off my forehead. Sulli turns to Luna. “We’ve fucking lost her.”

“To the aliens,” Luna nods.

“I’m here,” I say into a sigh and pick up the ball. I try and aim for the small hoop on the back of the door. Sulli and Luna’s room is a combination of them both. Alien beanbags on a fuzzy rug, hand weights tucked under the bottom bunk, and posters taped over every inch of the wall.

I lob the ball. It doesn’t even reach the net.

“That air ball must be a metaphor for my life,” I muse aloud.

Sulli tosses me a bottle of avocado facemask. “You can’t think everything is a sign. It’ll drive you fucking crazy.”

She’s not wrong. I uncap the bottle.

Luna lounges on the bottom bunk. She squirts three bottles of the creamy green facemask in a large bowl. “I dunno,” she says. “I kind of like thinking everything is a sign. It’s a reminder that we’re not alone.” Luna also tells us that she’s been taking online classes at Penn on extraterrestrial life in the u

niverse.

Sulli adds, “All I’m saying is that we go with the hard-earned facts. And fact is everyone in this room is fucking awesome. Including you.” She looks straight at me.

I slide on a cloth headband above my hairline to avoid avocado hair. “Thank you,” I say. “I needed to hear that today.” I look between them.

They’re not much younger than me, but in a completely different place in their lives. They can figure things out. Take some time off. But I’ve already done that.

I’m heading into my mid-twenties and it feels like the clock has officially run down. That I should have my shit together by now. Thank God, I’m still on the Cobalt social media blackout. I can’t look online at the tweets or comments on Instagram. I’m sure the majority of them are reaffirming what they already believed.

That I am a complete disappointment. And how could I be the eldest child of Rose and Connor Cobalt?

“Luna, what’s your theory on body-snatching?” I ask.

Sulli gives me a look like no fucking way have you been body-snatched. Luna now squirts body glitter into her bowl. “Body-snatching is not impossible. I once thought I had this out-of-body experience one summer. But I think I was just huffing too much glue.”

Sulli and I look at her.

“Please tell me my brothers didn’t put you up to that,” I say.

“All I’ll say is that it was the summer of a lot of stupid shit, not all I would repeat, and Tom, Eliot, and I have officially dubbed it the Stoopid Summer. Stoopid with two O’s.”

They have a name for a summer. I shouldn’t be surprised.

“And speaking of summer,” Sulli says, a smile burgeoning on her face as she glances to Luna. Like they’re in on something. Can’t be surprised about that either. They do share a room together. They’re practically college dormmates.

I rub the avocado cream on my face and pass the bottle to Sulli.

Luna sheds her shirt and pants, only in a pair of underwear and a bra. She starts lathering her avocado cream-glitter mixture all over her belly. “You know how Moffy will offhandedly mention that Farrow says he smells like summer? Like all the time.”