Lovers Like Us (Like Us, #2)

by Krista Ritchie

I’m not scared of what people can do to me. I’ve always been afraid of what they can do to the people I love. And I fucking love him.

“My dad is amazing, loving, funny and protective,” I tell the audience, “and I got to love a dad who was sober because he has a brother who’s kind, compassionate, strong and unfaltering. I honestly can’t imagine not having either of them.”

We spend an insane amount of time together, but whenever I’m around Maximoff, I only want him to draw closer, and I think, another minute, another hour. And then those minutes turn to days and hours to weeks, and before I even blink, I’m consumed. Hook, line, and sinker. He has me.

Akara dubbed tonight “chill” and “fun”, but everyone forgot Thatcher has no concept of either.

That truth bothers the hell out of me. I can consume his past without even speaking to him or asking for permission, and that’s not what I ever want to do. I prefer a less invasive route.

Donnelly doesn’t give a shit. “You fire Farrow, I’ll walk out.” I cringe. “Man, be smarter than that.” “You die, I die—” “Oh my God,” I mutter and pinch my eyes.

Donnelly sticks his head out, a smirk cresting his mouth. “You should just rate us one-to-ten on who’s the most bangable.” He’s yanked back into the second lounge. “Paul,” Thatcher chides. “Damn,” Quinn says out of sight, “he got a Paul.” The door shuts.

Kittens and cats race around the townhouse. Darting beneath the Victorian loveseat and hopping on the rocking chair. The camera zooms in on a gray cat that prances around the fireplace. Eliot’s voice booms through the speaker. “Licorice, now do the cat walk. Do the cat walk!” He layered on techno music.

“By the time you receive this,” Eliot says in the video, “I’m at the lake house. It’s Christmas Eve, and you’ve all left me, which means I’m terrifyingly the oldest here. Moffy, if you’re watching, I don’t like this responsibility. Come back, save me,” he says dramatically. “I hate you all, but I love you all. Oh the tragedy.”

Akara puts a hand to his heart. He halts at the coffee pot counter, and Beckett tosses him a candy cane. “Akara,” Jane says, “what do you want most this Christmas?” Candy cane to his mouth, he says, “World peace.”

“Donnelly, what word best describes you?” “Thirsty.”

“Oscar,” Jane says, “if you were a candy bar, what candy bar would you be?” “Snickers. You’re not yourself without me.”

Thatcher walks like a six-foot-seven brick wall in a red jockstrap. The fabric cups his dick. Nothing left to the imagination. “Um,” Jane loses thought, “Thatcher…Moretti is a twenty-seven-year-old…and he’s quite tall.”

he’s short-circuited Jane Cobalt 💀

“Did you bring pot cookies on the bus?” Donnelly relaxes. “Yeah, some girl was selling them at that last rest stop. They’re good, right?” Mystery solved. I’m high. Fucking A.

Am I going to be paranoid? Will I just fall asleep? My stomach keeps tossing. Maybe I’ll puke and be done with this—or I won’t feel anything. I’m immune to pot. The pot killer. That didn’t sound right.

“but if your mom and I drag Luna home, she could just leave again. Next time, it could be somewhere worse…and at least she ran to you.”

“Parenting never gets easier,” he said to me. “Not when you love them, and you need to be hard on them, but you’re afraid to break them. And you think you’re doing everything right as a parent because you know what’s wrong, but still, it’s inevitable. We’ll fail. We always do, but if I learned anything in my fucked-up life, it’s that picking ourselves up is what matters. And Lily and I—her and me—we can survive anything. And if we can, they can.” He nodded, then looked to me. “Words of wisdom from an unwise man. Take it or leave it.”

A ten-foot Christmas tree decorated in garland and gold bows twinkle, and a towering cardboard cutout of a twenty-something Connor Cobalt stands behind him, a Santa hat on and scarf around its neck. In December, that cutout is shifted through the lake house every morning. A tradition for their families. People have Elf on the Shelf. Maximoff has a six-foot-four replica of his uncle.

“What happened?” He’s talking about Maximoff’s busted lip. His eyes widen. Paranoid. My mouth stretches. Maximoff. I squeeze his knee. Speak, man. He blinks rapidly a few times. “I’m high.” Shit. “What?” Lo laughs. “You’re kidding.”

LMAO cracked like an egg 💀

“I could secretly be a sad alien,” she tells us with a goofy smile. “My weapon is my tear ducts.” Hales. I start smiling. Donnelly returns to his sketch. “Sad Alien would be a cool band name.” “Uh-huh, think of the Sad Alien merch. Plushies, toothbrushes, condoms, dildos—slogan: I want a sad alien in me.” I laugh. “Girl, take my money,” Donnelly says, accent thick.

“She’s writing me a fic,” Donnelly says and climbs over Luna to go grab his tattoo kit. “She said she could do an original. A shifter story.” He returns and sifts through his ink. “With hints of extraterrestrial-ness,” Luna adds.

Never in my life did I think I could experience this. A man to call a boyfriend. A man to dance with in a crowd. To wake up to. To go to bed with. To love. And be loved. But here he is.

Our erections stand at attention against our hard chests,

sir how long are your 🍆

Our pre-cum wets his chest, my chest.

okay I thought it was a typo but here we are again with the dicks on chests

Orgasmic wails pitch the air, loud as fuck. Most likely a girl. “Ahhhh!” she shrieks. Sounds like bad straight porn. Not my thing.

LMAO 💀

“She said I was moral to a fault and you can be impulsive, headstrong. We’re fucking different but we’re still two superheroes who’d die for each other. In any era, any alternate universe. Like Captain America and the Winter Soldier.”

Jane looks horrified. Like she committed manslaughter against her bodyguard. “Thatcher, I’m terribly, terribly sorry.” “It’s fine.” Thatcher lowers the volume using the TV button. “None of it bothers me.”

“Jane.” Thatcher catches her gaze, and very seriously, he says, “I’m relieved it wasn’t you on the television. That’s all.”

He nods, and I don’t just see an I love you written in his softening gaze. I feel it growing like a light inside of me.

The next bodyguards in line for hire may not care as much. May not love our families as much. May not want to be here for reasons greater than money and fame. And I don’t just feel lucky that these six guys exist in our lives. Here today. I feel like they’re necessary. Integral pieces of our world that not many others can really fill.

Oscar ties a bandana around his forehead. “Goodbye to Donnelly’s drunken SnapChat dick pics.” Donnelly leans against the headboard. “Those were sober, man.”

Correction, Akara Kitsuwon beat us to it. Sulli looks overwhelmed. “Thanks, Kits.” He shrugs again, his lips inching up. Then he glances at Jack. “Her mom has a theory that cake fixes everything.”

I’m not the problem. I’m on his side. I’ll be there when all the rafts sink and no life jackets are found. His personal hate towards me is just fucking with his best judgment.

Maximoff is laughing hard, and he lifts his mic. “Cute,” he tells the boy. The boy looks infatuated. “Thanks…I love you.”

💀💀💀

Beckett stretches out his legs and nods to me. “Virgins die first, right?” He doesn’t watch horror movies, but he knows I do with Kinney. I’m about to answer, but Donnelly muses, “Protect the virgins at all costs.” “Virgins raise their hands,” Oscar says. Only Sulli raises her hand and scrunches her nose. “What? Really? I’m the only fucking one?”

“You could always ask your new bodyguard to help you out.” I start smiling. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” Jane snorts. “Oh yes, in your life, bodyguard duties include giving head.” She narrows her eyes at the dark road. “God, could you even imagine? What would I say? Hello Mr. Moretti, I’m in need of some oral assistance. Would you be so kind to spread my knees?”

If eyes could make love, his eyes would be making love to me.

“You seriously brought Audrey’s cookies here?” I didn’t even notice him carrying them. “Yeah,” Oscar says. “We didn’t know if anything would be open, Redford. I was thinking ahead.”

“I’m an adjacent party to this treachery, you have to realize.” This is exactly why I’m fortunate to never be on a Cobalt family getaway. She just turned thirteen in January, and she speaks like she’s fifty.

He’s found a group of twenty-somethings willing to spend money on him rather than a ticket to that new Taylor Swift concert.

this feels like a personal attack

I go through the motions, but I’m cradling a human in my hands. And I’m just twenty-two. I’m not a superhero. I don’t have the answers or the meaning of life, but I’m fucking trying. All I can do is try. When they want to quit, I’m not going to fucking quit on them.

My mouth curves upward, my body lightening, and I shake my head, surprised at what he makes me feel. I shouldn’t be that shocked anymore, but I kind of like that I am. Everything always feels like the first damn time with him.

I’d rather take the chance to do more damage than never try to repair what we broke. The hardest part was opening this door. I’m not shutting it now.

“It’s all these little moments that have made you. You mean everything to my siblings. To the Meadows girls, to your sisters and brother, and that makes you a shadow I can’t escape. Because I can’t be anything to them when you’re every fucking thing. So who am I?”

I never even fathomed that someone like Charlie, a Cobalt, could be less than confident, less than colossally self-assured.

“I’m not a natural born leader. I don’t want to be one, but sometimes it feels like that’s my only path to be someone or something to the people I love. Then maybe they’d need me like they need you.”

“You know, I used to believe that we were just meant to be opposites. That for all the compassion you had, I lacked. For all the responsibility Maximoff Hale acquired, I was left with none. And in everyone’s eyes, you were the hero, and I’d become the villain.” A tear rolls slowly down his cheek, dripping off his jaw.

In some cosmic way, I think you and I were fated to be rivals or friends.” I lick my dry lips. “I guess friends isn’t in the fucking cards for us, huh?” And

“Non, il te suffit de m’attendre,” Charlie says in a perfect French lilt. No, you just need to wait for me. “De quelle manière?” I breathe. In what way? “To be strong enough to be near you and not hate everything about you and me.”

It hits me again and again. How I could spend hours and hours upon hours doing absolutely nothing with Maximoff Hale. Just this.