Tangled Like Us (Like Us, #4)

by Krista Ritchie

She’s perceptive. Especially when her whole attention is on you. It’s like you’re the center of the fucking universe. Like now.

I possess the unfortunate inability to run away from my own mortification.

Thatcher is like a sacred text. I’m tempted to rush through the pages, but something has compelled me to draw out each line, each word. Reading so slowly and carefully so as to never miss a syllable. So a single book, a single person, could last me forever.

But knowing Tom and Eliot, those two menaces will destroy all eternal pits of fiery damnation the second they enter.

I won’t devalue her achievements just to find value in myself. My mom is brilliant and beautiful. And so I am. Just in my own way.

I’m not a sad little cub about to be eaten. I’m a motherfucking lion.

Our worlds are more full of life with him here.

Thatcher is a soldier. Tremendously tall. He’s physically a powerhouse, a supreme godly and angelic being who is built to protect and defend. I see so clearly that this is where he wants to be. I see how much of himself he’s willing to give to keep my family safe. I’d just like to be next to him. To be a wingwoman. His confidante. His right-hand.

“Just date Moretti,” Oscar suggests so suddenly, and the room explodes in two exclamations: “What?!” “Oscar?!”

Thatcher. Thatcher. Thatcher. His name is a heartbeat in my head.

We ransack all the passion that has been vaulted shut. All the heat and the fire.

“You’re meant to be in my arms, Jane.” She pulses against me and sets her laced fingers along the back of my neck. “I…um.” She shakes out her scrambled thoughts. “We’ll be experts in the art of fake-dating in no time. Don’t you think?”

We’re a supportive clan but, more importantly, we all love grandiose displays of loyalty. And nothing screams loyalty like shielding a secret from the entire world.

“It seems we are dreadfully tangled, you and I.” Couldn’t agree more.

“I want to know all about you, but I can’t ask fast enough—and when I think about you, I wonder what your hands have held. What your eyes have seen.” My pulse has skyrocketed, but I keep speaking. “What your ears have heard and where your feet have landed.”

“Ensemble,” I tell him. Together. All four of my brothers repeat the word. And then Eliot grins, mischievous twinkle in his eye, and he says something I’ve heard him recite a thousand-and-one times. But tonight, it’s never felt truer. “‘Let me play the lion too…I will roar.’”

This girl is heaven-sent, and I’m fucking an angel. And gripping a one-way ticket to hell.

Jane and I are both alphas, and I’m attracted to that part of her. Anyone who thinks I’m less of a man because I’d rather uphold all of who she is, including her dominance—they can go stand on their own dick and spin around in twenty circles.

I want to be shielded within Thatcher Moretti’s powerful embrace tonight, tomorrow, and next week and far beyond Halloween.

“Moffy goes three-fourths Loren Hale, and there is no universe you’d ever survive one-half of my dad if he found out.”

But they are both grinning like they’ve discovered fairy dust and fountains of eternal youth. Between this and the Seasons name, I’m beginning to think Sul and Luna are like two impish pixies.