Headstrong Like Us (Like Us 6)

I breathe measured breaths through my nose. Muscle around my collarbone sears. Someone wrenched my arm in an awkward direction. Usually my shoulder would pop. I dislocated it at the FanCon, but this feels different.

Maybe because this is the same surgically repaired collarbone.

I just hope nothing is broken, and I’m glad Janie is okay.

Shouting and screaming pitch the air and echo off the high mall ceilings. “MAXIMOFF HALE! MAXIMOFF! JAAAANE! WE LOVE YOU!”

I almost smile.

The passionate love feels better than the passionate hate.

I hear pounding at the doors of an Armani store. It was one of our pit stops. Maybe they saw us in there earlier and think we went back inside.

Janie has a few shopping bags hooked on her elbow. “We made a critical error somewhere along the way, I suppose.”

I force myself not to risk a peek above the kiosk. Even though I’m dying to see what’s happening. “Or maybe this is just one giant throwback adventure.”

“Rien que nous deux. Comme au bon vieux temps,” Jane says brightly in French. Just the two of us. Like old times.

“Si jeunes et innocents,” I quip. So young and innocent.

She smiles. “Visages frais et yeux écarquillés.” Fresh-faced and wide-eyed.

I want to smile too, but a sharp pang shoots in my arm. I swallow hard. “We aren’t that different, are we?” It doesn’t feel that long ago, when it was just me and Jane conquering the world.

But then again, the time without Farrow feels like decades long past.

Jane rests her head back, our eyes meeting with this quiet nostalgia, existing inside the fan-crazed madness. “I think all the changes about us are awfully good ones.” She lists out a lot, like our careers and friendships, and she ends with, “I’m engaged and in love, and you’re getting married in two months. And the ones who would’ve believed least in that possibility, would’ve been us.”

I think about that.

Janie is way smarter than me, in case you didn’t already know. Shouting pitches, closer than before. She angles her head a bit.

“WE LOOOOVE YOU!!! MAXIMOFF!! JAAAANE!”

“Merde,” she curses. “It’s loud.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if the amassing fans resemble people at festival concerts. Crowding the stages.

On a normal circumstance, we’d be signing autographs and snapping selfies. But neither of us feels comfortable taking that risk without security. We’d be paranoid and too alert the whole damn time. I’d probably look distracted in photos.

And I tweaked my arm.

I’m not prepared for anyone to pull on my shoulder, and I don’t want to be an asshole or make someone feel bad.

I check my watch, barely raising my arm. We have to get out of here. “The pretzel guy has been gone for ten minutes. He should be back by now.”

Jane contemplates this. “Maybe we should make a run for it. I’m not as fast as you, but I think I can keep up.” She scrutinizes my stiff posture and shoulder. “Or perhaps we shouldn’t try.”

I can’t reply as voices project louder only a couple feet from the kiosk. We wait for footsteps to drift. Caging breath, and my heart rate speeds.

Jane scoots closer, and I whisper, “We probably should’ve told them where we were going.”

They is just understood as Farrow and Thatcher.

“No.” Her blue eyes pinch like that’s not a regret we should accept or feel. “We wanted to surprise them, and though it’s hard to surprise bodyguards, we tried and that’s important too.”

We didn’t have an occasion to give them gifts.

It was just because.

Like all the romantic movies, you know. Like when I first got with Farrow, and I gifted him the Asshole Merit Badge.

Gone.

Lost in the fire with the leather jacket he attached it to. And I don’t know, I thought that maybe I could double-down on this surprise gift.

Do it over.

Do it better.

I told Janie, and she loved the idea. So we were planning to gift our men new designer suits. Armani. There are plenty of occasions in our family where they’d need one, whether off-duty or on-duty.

Today, the opportunity sprung up to go to the mall without them knowing, and we took it.

I strain my ears for the sound of the pretzel employee. Come on, man. I’m antsy, and I want to storm out of here. But I can’t.

We can’t.

I know that.

My phone buzzes, jolting me, and while I pull out my cell, I bite down as pain jackknives my shoulder. Fuck me.

“Cell service came back?” Jane whispers in surprise and checks her phone.

I press my cell to my ear, using my not-in-pain arm.

“Where are you?” Farrow’s tone is somehow calm, while also carrying a heavy level of concern and urgency. Or maybe, I just know he’s probably worried right now.

“Sunbathing off the coast of Florida,” I joke. “Scorching hot. Probably gonna get burned—”

“Maximoff, your sarcasm is adorable as always. But where the fuck are you?”