Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 148434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Moffy is stewing. Smoke is coming out of his ears. The truth: Xander requested to stay home so he could go to therapy. He said it’s been helping lately, and he doesn’t want to miss a session.
Farrow has a calming hand on the back of Moffy’s neck.
“Hey.” Akara comes forward and motions for Tony to step aside. He ushers him towards the corner and sneers, “You can’t talk to a client like that.”
Donnelly digs into his cheesecake. “Been waiting for someone to put away Tony the Toolbox.”
“If only permanently,” I sigh.
“Murder with the Cobalt fam,” Donnelly says through a mouthful of cheesecake. “Those who slay together, stay together.”
I eye him. “I meant metaphorical murder.” I pause, curious. “Did you?”
He puts a hand to his chest, grinning and not saying one way or the other, and that’s when the door rips open again.
This time, camera flashes cast shadows on the walls and wind whips through the entryway and more than one body struts inside the sports bar.
First come the bodyguards.
I count five.
And then five famous faces bring up the rear.
Charlie, Beckett, Eliot, Tom, and Ben.
Every single one of my brothers. They’re all here, and they’re far too fixated on Thatcher like he’s tonight’s five-course meal.
8
JANE COBALT
I spring off the stool and clasp Thatcher’s muscular waist. Panic shoots through me, and he curves his arm around my shoulders. Bringing me to his chest before I can swerve in a million frantic directions.
“Jane—”
“I haven’t properly prepared you for the avalanche you’re about to endure,” I whisper rapidly. “It’s my duty to strap you with as much ammo as humanly possible.”
Though, every counterattack of ours will be aimed at my brothers, which is possibly why his eyes darken.
It feels wrong.
So incredibly wrong.
But if they’re coming for my boyfriend, then I’ll have no choice.
“Do not cower,” I coach quickly. “Do not avoid their eyes. Do not show fear. They’re little fiends that will chew you up like you’re nothing more than a three o’clock snack.”
A shadow of a smile plays at his mouth.
“You smile now but they can smell blood in the water, and the second you cut open a weakness, they will poke and prod until you’re bleeding out.” My mind whirls inside a new sort of apprehensive alarm. I’ve never been in this position with my siblings. I’ve never felt like we’re on a battleground and I stand opposite all of them. “They could make you jump naked over a fence for all I know.”
He cups my hot cheeks, his large hands cocooning my face, and it helps me breathe somehow. I curl my fingers over his strong wrists.
“Five teenage boys can’t hurt me, point-blank,” Thatcher proclaims. “I doubt a hundred could.”
I ease some. “Your cockiness is helpful.” Because the sky and Earth know that most of my brothers are tremendously arrogant. “But you do realize that Charlie and Beckett are twenty-one?”
He nods once. “I’m all good. I have this.” He drops his voice lower. “They can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do.”
I quirk my brows, lips parting. “You would jump naked over a fence for me?”
His complete unwavering, sexy self-assurance says hell yeah.
I rest my chin on his chest, looking up. Could I do the same? I’m not 100% sure, but I want to believe I can make this equal. I have it in me—I know I do.
Somewhere.
And so I say, “As I would for you.”
He gives me a stern look, his hand tracking down my back. “You’d be in tabloids. Naked.”
“A sacrifice,” I whisper, my heart flops on a treadmill set at the highest speed. “One I’m certain I can make.”
He shakes his head, his thumb stroking my cheek. “One you’d be uncomfortable to make. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong.” I lie, for some reason. I shouldn’t lie. It feels morbid and nauseating, and I’m not positive he can tell I’m being untruthful.
He just stares at me. “We’re not competing for jack shit, you and me.”
“We’re not,” I agree. “This is just something we do together.”
“Getting naked and jumping fences?”
“Oui.”
He blinks and breathes hot breath through his nose. He’s straight-forward and direct. I talk like I’m taking every roundabout, side-street, and detour on a map, and lately we haven’t always crossed paths. He’s trying not to be lost inside metaphors and subtext.
“Dude, it’s like a morgue in here.”
Tom.
We turn, just as Tom trots closer with buckles clinking on a black rocker jacket. Golden-brown hair artfully styled, mouth in a corkscrew smile, charm and mischief melded together.
He’s eighteen and I’ve seen him grip a microphone like a second heart. Singing with every ounce of power and feeling inside of him. Captivating a screaming, frenzied audience with such tremendous ease.
But in this moment, he’s not a lead singer of an emo-punk band.
He’s just my little brother.
One who put toothpaste and shaving cream on our dad’s pillow, thinking he wouldn’t notice. (He did.) One who was so afraid of Jurassic Park as a child, he crawled into my bed for the whole month of July.