Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Third and most recent photo, posted 5 hours ago, shows Maximoff outside of the nightclub Tidal Wave. And he’s decapitated.
Fuck.
My chest constricts, and Maximoff shifts his jaw more in the crook of my neck and shoulder. He’s only vulnerable like this with me, and usually, it happens when we’re alone. Shit, I just want to protect the fuck out of him.
Staying motionless, I try my best not to wake Maximoff.
And I force myself to analyze the third photo. Searching for anything to help determine if it’s a real or fake threat.
Seems fake. But my heart rate elevates. Because I recognize it’s not 100% confirmed. With the slimmest chance, someone out there may truly want Maximoff Hale to die.
Enough to make it happen.
“Farrow?” Maximoff lifts his head groggily.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper and click his phone screen to black.
He squints and rubs his eyes roughly. “Your whole body is flexed…” His gaze lands on the black-screened phone, and he readies himself like a soldier for combat. Immediately sitting up, alert and awake.
“Maximoff—”
He steals the phone out of my hand. Basically, I let him have it. I’m not here to cultivate secrets and lies between us. Do I wish he wouldn’t have to see that account? Yeah.
Will I willfully keep him in the dark? Never.
Maximoff swipes out of the lock screen, and the @maximoffdeadhale Instagram account is already popped up. Almost instantly, his head swerves to me. “It’s a fucking troll account.” He tosses the phone on my lap. “It’s not a big deal.”
I cock my head, watching him smash the pillow again to lie back down. “You just saw visual depictions of your death, created by someone out in the world, and you feel fine?”
He yawns into his bicep and then clutches my gaze. “I get death threats every damn week. They’ve never been serious.”
“Someone took the time to photoshop your head off your body, and that doesn’t seem serious?” I honestly wonder if he hears himself. When I was his mom’s bodyguard, I saw plenty of fucked-up graphics.
Like pie charts poorly estimating Lily’s sex partners, her head photoshopped on rabbits, slut typed a hundred times on her face—but not her being murdered.
Not like this.
Maximoff brushes a hand through his disheveled hair. “Sounds like a normal Sunday through Saturday to me.”
I nod a couple times. “At least now we know you’re desensitized to your own death.”
Maximoff rubs his jaw. “Maybe I am, but you don’t need to worry about troll accounts and my plausible death with no sleep at whatever a.m.”
“It’s my job,” I remind him. I deal with this so he doesn’t have to. “I’m flagging this fucking account to be taken down.” And that’ll be the end of that. My gut instinct says differently, but I let it go for now.
Just as I report the account, an aggressive knock raps the door.
Maximoff slides off the bed at the exact same time as me. The knock practically electrocuted him into action. We exchange a look that says, I’m answering the door. Stay back.
He’s too stubborn to listen, and I love seeing him try to catch up to me too much to let him go ahead.
We bolt to the door and race to be the first. I’m already out in front. “I thought you planned to sleep,” I say, about to grab the doorknob.
His arm bangs into mine, but I clutch the knob first, smile widening.
Maximoff barely steps back, squeezing his build against my build. “I thought I told you that I open my own doors.”
“Number 52 on your list of rules. I remember.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I remember everything…but see, this is our door.”
His forest-greens drop to my mouth and my lip piercing. He also layers on a half-hearted glare. “Pretty sure for my things to become your things, we’d need a legal binding agreement.”
Shock ratchets up my brows. “Marriage?”
“No,” he says definitively, shutting that down.
I roll my eyes. I know he’s exaggerating his point, but he’s more defensive than usual. “Technically, you don’t own the lake house,” I tell him. “So it’s not even your door.”
Maximoff groans and sends a daggered glare to the ceiling.
“Was that glare meant for me or the light fixtures?”
“The lights,” he says. “This is for you.” He gives me a middle finger.
I laugh a short laugh, and just as he tries to reach for the knob, I turn it and swing the door open.
Oscar Oliveira stands on the other side, brown hair curly and damp like he just showered. He steadies a cream cheese bagel near his mouth.
Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, Maximoff looks ready for hell and back. His resolve is fucking sexy.
I tell Oscar, “I didn’t sign up for the Oscar Oliveira Wake Up Call.” I lean on the door frame.
Oscar’s eyes drift from me to Maximoff, who stands rigid only one-foot away in boxer-briefs. His muscles are front-page-worthy, his defined V-line disappearing beneath his waistband. His lips are a little reddened from earlier, and his usually combed hair is wild and unkempt.