chapter 3

Sulli coined it herself. The most predictable thing about my younger cousin is the least predictable thing: sleep.

I'd think it's strange that Akara knows these details about Sulli, but he's her personal bodyguard. He's been assigned to Sullivan since she was sixteen. If anyone knows her life habits, it's him.

It hits me again. The thought I've been swatting away like a bee: someone is about to know my life habits that intimately too.

Great.

I lean on the counter, arms crossed over my green crew-neck shirt. And then my muscles bind as the lock starts to rotate on the tinted-glass door.

Someone is entering. Someone who was given a key.

My new bodyguard.

He's finally here.

****

Dear World, stop fucking with me. Sincerely, an agitated human.

The last person I wanted to see today enters Superheroes & Scones. I refill my glass of orange juice and watch the familiar face open the door.

Towering at six-foot-three, his black V-neck is tucked in black jeans, a leather belt buckled. The hilt of a handgun sticks from his waistband, and his dyed bleach-white hair contrasts his thick brown eyebrows.

Most people find Farell Redford Keene intimidating at first sight, but I'm immune to most kinds of intimidation.

It's called being a Hale.

I can describe Farell in three meaningful ways.

1. Frustrating.

2. Aggravating.

3. Piss in my hot tea.

Since he's my mom's bodyguard and she stops by the store frequently, I expect she's not far behind his self-assured, unflustered demeanor.

Farell carries himself like he owns the world, but amusement constantly rests behind his brown eyes. I sometimes think he's purposefully channeling James Franco circa Freaks & Geeks—minus the weed and multiply the Franco smile by a billion.

It shouldn't capture my attention.

But it does.

He does.

Like right now, I try to ignore his overwhelming presence, and I slowly cap the juice jug again. My gaze stays on him. No matter how hard I say look at the juice.

I've had this problem since I was sixteen. Unfortunately, I've known Farell for a long, long time. I'm talking fledgling teenage years. Before the security team assigned him to my mom, he was just the son of our family's concierge doctor, on-call 24/7 for house visits and medical emergencies.

So when my little sister Kinney broke her ankle in five-inch-heeled boots, Dr. Keene appeared. With his son Farell in tow.

I tried to tug off Kinney's boot, and Dr. Keene told me, "Move away, Maximoff." Then he gestured Farell forward. Teaching his son basic first aid. All so he could follow the footsteps of the many generations of Keenes before him. A prestigious family of physicians.

Moments like those stoked my competitive nature. If Farell was pushed to the front, I craved to find a way next to him. If Farell went fast, I went harder. And he never let up. With anything, he was too headstrong to let me pass without a hard-won fight.

Somewhere around my sixteenth birthday, I started crushing on him. Maybe it's because he never just gives me the win. Maybe it's that he's five years older and a Yale graduate.

Or that he does thirty pull-ups like it's a damn breeze. Maybe it's all the gray and black tattoos that cover his fair skin, even to his throat. Beautiful inked symmetric wings decorate his neck, crossed swords on his Adam's apple.

Maybe it's his four visible piercings: a hoop on his nostril, bottom lip, and two barbells on his brow.

Maybe it's all of that combined together that heats my skin, pools blood south, and attracts me like an idiot. He's made permanent camp in my cerebral cortex and cock, and I don't know how to extract him.

The crush was fine when I was teenager, where I was secretly fantasizing about the hot older guy's lips around my dick. I always knew he was gay, and at eighteen, I told the world I was bisexual. Afterwards I thought there'd be a chance Farell would look at me with interest.

He didn't.

Then he became my mom's bodyguard. Exactly three years ago.

Whatever attraction I had towards him became more ethically wrong than it already was. I remind myself that he knows nothing. I've only told my best friend Jane about my crush and lapse in judgment. And she wouldn't tell a soul.

Farell enters the store's doorway and takes a big bite of a red apple.

And then his brown eyes latch onto my forest-green. Instantly, he has a knowing look.

I attribute it to him being a know-it-all. I must wear my slight irritation because his lips hike upward as he chews and swallows his fruit.

I swig my orange juice before saying, "Look what the wind threw up." I set down my glass.

Farell raises his apple to his mouth. "You mean blew in."

"No," I say firmly, palms on the pearly counter. "I meant threw up."

He rolls his eyes into a humored smile that slowly stretches wider and wider. Then he kicks the door closed. And he locks it shut with his spare key.

I go rigid. "Where's my mom?"

Akara finally pockets his cellphone. The one he's been super-glued to since we arrived here. "Lily's bodyguard transfer went through this morning."

Transfer.

Which means…my brain fries, jaw sharpens and breath heavies as I watch Farell near the vinyl stools, his stride masculine and unconcerned. A kind of confident gait that belongs to people who understand themselves from the core outwards.

Closer, he rests his knee on the stool beside Akara. And he tells me, "I'm your new bodyguard."

I inhale, staying outwardly composed, but my pulse rages at an abnormal speed. Farell Redford Keene is my new bodyguard.

I have trouble adding him to my life that way. It's why I'm eerily silent and mentally trying to block out how complicated this'll make everything.

Farell stares me dead in the eye. "Excited?" he asks with a peeking smile, like he knows I wouldn't be.

Excited that my old crush is going to be a permanent companion to my whole life? And we're ethically bound to remain platonic.