chapter 7

We're two alpha males, and it becomes extremely apparent during these pointless fights. Where we want to carry the heavier suitcase.

I'm just used to helping out, especially since I have a large extended family and I'm the oldest guy. And Farell—his whole job, his whole upbringing has been about duty and aid towards others. We're like lightning and thunder, inherently different but alike enough to share the same sky.

Farell doesn't argue for the larger suitcase.

So I shut my trunk. "You remember which is which?" I nod to the two entrances. He's been here before as my mom's bodyguard.

Farell keeps his gaze on mine. "Left door goes to Azkaban. Right to Mordor."

I stare at him like he just grew antlers. I'm the one who cracks the pop culture references. Farell doesn't even like fantasy.

He tolerates it like someone who hates mayo and eats it on a turkey sandwich.

"You've been hanging around my mom too long?" I question. I have comic-book-loving, pop-culture-obsessed parents. The coolest. I'm sure the two Meadows girls and the seven Cobalt children would protest and say their parents are cool, but there's no comparison.

Hands down, mine are the goddamn best.

Farell slowly licks his bottom lip into a smile. My muscles contract, and I try to focus on his eyes and not his mouth. Not his mouth.

"No," he says. "It's an inside joke with the whole security team."

I'm surprised he's sharing this with me. "Seriously?"

He nods, and we head to the right door. What he called Mordor. "I was told that this one started with your little brother. His bodyguard repeated the joke to another bodyguard, and it spread."

I could see Xander making a comment about Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Easily.

We head up the few stairs, and I wait on one below him and place the suitcase on its wheels.

Farell searches for his key in his pocket. "Declan didn't talk to you that often, did he?"

I go still, my apprehension filling the garage. In hindsight, I wonder if I was supposed to make a greater effort to know my bodyguard personally. Was I being rude? What if all that time, he wanted me to pry into his fucking life, and I thought I was just respecting his space.

Declan knew everything about me. The world knows most everything about me. And I only knew the names of his kids and wife.

Almost nothing else.

Farell peeks back at me and assesses my features. "It's okay if he didn't."

I remember the origin of his question. "He didn't spill any security team secrets, if that's what you're asking."

Farell finds his key, but he rotates fully to face me. "Let's deal with this, Moffy—"

"Max," I correct, my voice firm like solid marble. All of my family calls me Moffy, but when he uses the nickname, I flashback to childhood where he called me that. It makes our five-year age-gap more apparent, and when I imagine my young, teenage self in bed with him (which only happened in my fantasies), it's cringe-worthy.

So he's not allowed to call me Moffy.

Done and done.

"Max," he says like I'm being a stick-in-the-mud prick.

"What are we dealing with exactly?" I put the train back on the tracks before he catches my actual reasons.

"What I share with you—they're not secrets. At least half of us don't consider them secrets. The other half are so uptight they could be mistaken for the Queen's Guard outside Buckingham Palace."

"So you're pretty much like a rebel in the security team." I give him a blatant once-over, eyeing his tattoos, the black wardrobe, the piercings. "All this time, I had no idea."

Farell lets out a short laugh into an agitated, amused smile, nodding a few times. I think smartass sits on his tongue, and then his gaze falls to my lips—for the briefest second.

Before I even process what that means, he acts like nothing transpired. And he starts to unlock the door.

It could've just been in my head.

I'm prone to fantasizing. What's to say I didn't invent that out of the horny recesses of my sexually frustrated brain?

I need to go out and find a one-night stand tonight.

It's my first thought. My second jarring thought slaps me cold: Farell has to come with me.

I can't escape him. For pretty much all of eternity.

****FARELL KEENE

Luggage in hand, I lead the way up two flights of narrow wooden stairs. Much to Max's chagrin. I'm certain he'd love to be the one leading the nonexistent pack, but he has to be second-place to me this time.

And really, every time as far as I'm concerned.

It's not just me being pompous or arbitrarily arrogant. For his safety, he has to learn to let me lead.

Thick silence stretches while we both ascend the stairs. I'm not used to uncomfortable tension, and I doubt he is either.

See, I didn't ask to be his bodyguard. I didn't apply for the position or submit an application. I fell into the role at his mom's request.

I like change.

I welcome change. But when one of my favorite pastimes is pissing off Max Hale—I'm not so sure I'd have volunteered for this job.

Another tense beat passes between us before Moffy warns me, "Your room is small."

I end up smiling because I've been in these two townhouses multiple times. They're identical. Second floor has two bedrooms and the only bath. Third floor is an attic bedroom. Everything else is crammed on the first floor.

Max lives in the third-floor attic inside the other townhouse. A room barely big enough for a full-sized bed, a bookshelf, and a dresser.

I'm about to live in the identical version of that same attic room. "I can manage. It's the same size as yours." I glance back at him.

Only two stairs below me, one of the most beloved celebrities stands confident and agitated at my heels.

And he has my fifty-pound suitcase easily hoisted on his shoulders like a soldier carrying a rucksack. He's not flaunting his strength. With Moffy, he's just being efficient. Giving himself more room to walk up the narrowest staircase imaginable.

His carved biceps stretch the fabric of his green tee.