Alphas Like Us (Like Us, #3)

by Krista Ritchie

Life is finite; we all die, and when you’re dead, you’re dead. I couldn’t wish my mom back. I have a single memory of her and a handful of pictures. I know that I have only one life, and I need to live for what I love. Not what my father loves.

I can’t even be upset that I’ll lose my father with this career change. Because I don’t feel like I ever had a good one to begin with.

I skim his striking but also tensed face, and my hand slides across his broad shoulder and rises slowly up his neck. I hold his jaw; I tighten his hand in my hand, and my lips veer to his ear. “Maximoff Hale, will you marry me?”

WHAT

I don’t love him because he’s a coveted piece of art to the thousands here and the millions outside. I love him because he’s so pure it hurts, so moral it aches, and so strong-willed it kills me not to speak to him, not to be near him, not to look at him or to protect him.

“Before I had you and your siblings, your mom was the one good thing in my life. And I know I’m supposed to tell you how love conquers all. How we could move mountains together. But the love we had almost destroyed us both. Love is like having a mortal wound and you’re bleeding out and no matter how hard you look, you can never find the goddamn cut.” He never broke eye contact. I kept looking. Listening, feeling his words. “It’s its own special brand of pain,” he told me. “Because no matter how much you love, you’re still a passenger to their life. You have to watch all their bad decisions. You can’t think for them or change them. Just be there for them. And sometimes, it’s not going to be good enough. Sometimes things happen out of your control.”

“Love is pain, and you know what…I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t met it yet.”

Charlie takes a pair of black sunglasses out of his pocket. Prolonging the answer, and he slips them on. It’s nighttime. We’re indoors. Cameras aren’t even flashing at us. There’s no sense in most of what he does, and sometimes I think that’s why he does it.

I’ve never treated a loved one before. Fuck, I’ve never loved someone the way I love him. With a father married to medicine and no mother, I didn’t grow up seeing love, but I sought that in every relationship, and I thought I met it. But I realize that I never even came close. Then I fell for him.

It’s a love that pummels me every time I wake and crave to near him. Every time I see his morality and think, how good you are, and fuck, I’m lucky. It’s a love that beckons me towards him when he’s gone. One that reaches into my core and wraps itself around me. It’s that persistent, unforgettable undetachable love.

“You’re stuck with me, wolf scout. I’ll annoy the shit out of you every single morning for decades. Longer, and our kids will take your side because you’re good and lovable.”

I’ve never been afraid to die. And then tonight. I was afraid. I was fucking terrified. My mortality, my fragile life, just crashed against me, and I remember that I’m only twenty-two. I remember that I can’t control the direction of anything, and I’m a passenger to the universe—but God, this ride can’t end for me. Not here, not now. I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready.

I begged and pleaded to receive one more minute with Farrow. I’d been surrounded by the love of family for twenty-two years, but I didn’t even get a full year with the love of another man, a companion, a soul mate—and maybe I was being selfish. Asking for more when I’d been given so much already. But then I thought about how he never had a family that really loved him for him. And I thought, if not for me, don’t do this to him. Don’t gut him.

Farrow raises the book somewhat, just to read, “‘However short your life may be, it will still be long enough to live honestly and decently.’” He looks at me. “Sounds like you.” “Maybe,” I say, thinking hard, “but what if I want to live longer at the risk of being less decent?”

“All I know is that I know nothing, and I’m alright with that as long as you’re in my life—and that’s fucking hard for me to admit. That I’m clueless about where I go from here and what the fuck I’m doing, but it doesn’t matter as much as you matter to me. And I’m rambling…”

“In medicine, I’ve met a lot of death, and it’s made me appreciate the present and not regret or fixate on the could’ve beens. But if something happened to you tonight and you became a could’ve been, it would’ve crushed me for the rest of my life.”

“And all I know is that I know everything.” I blink slowly. “Give me my book so I can throw it at you.” Farrow smiles. “Let me think about that.” He doesn’t think about it and he keeps my paperback right in his hand.

“My mom needs to take it easy,” I tell Jane. “Never. Aunt Lily loves love.”

“I love you, Maximoff,” he says. “And I know you overthink because that’s what you do, and this is new for you. But I love you. And I know it fucking hurts to see someone from my past because it fucking hurt when I went through your NDAs. So if you need me to tell you five-thousand times, a million, that I’m so fucking in love with you, I will.”

I live my life for most of the world to see—for you to see—but there are a lot of moments just meant for him. And this is one.

“Cicero said, ‘The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time.’”

“Dum spiro, spero.” I circled that phrase in my paperback. I know he took Latin in college, but I ask anyway, “You know what that means—” “‘While I breathe,’” he translates, “‘I hope.’”

We both rub our wet faces, and as our bloodshot eyes meet again, I know and he knows that what we share is greater and stronger than whatever the world has to throw at us. We won’t end here.

I can’t recall how I ended up back at my townhouse. Maybe I apparated or a teleportation power kicked in. I do know that I slept most of the day.

“What the fuck did I say?” I have to ask. Farrow is close to laughter. “You told your dad you’re naming your son Batman.” My eyes pop out of my head. “No I didn’t.” He has to be fucking with me. “Yeah, you did,” Farrow smiles wide. “Your dad asked you, what son? And you said the one in the Batmobile.”

Beckett glances at Charlie. “Remind me to never fall in love.” He grins. “Already in my calendar for the rest of your life.”

Friends make long days feel good, but it’s the simple, little things that make the bad shit feel nonexistent. I just want to crawl into bed next to my boyfriend. Simple. Easy.

He loves people so overwhelmingly, and he cares. Shit, he cares more than anyone, and when people need him to be their everything, he is always there. But it only makes me want to be there for him. Every time. Every day. Twice as hard. Ten times as much.

I love safeguarding the good in Maximoff while also being the one to loosen his tight laces. It sounds contradictory, but to me, good isn’t straight-edged. Good is compassion and love for all people, for humanity. Good is a selfless kindness so unadulterated it stings your eyes.

Akara is playing with her chocolate brown hair, and he coils a long strand over his upper lip in a fake mustache. Sulli cracks a smile and shoves his chest.

I fucking know Farrow like he knows me. He will tell you that he has no best friends. He has two that he treats like brothers. He will say that he’s an open book. But it’s a book he only allows his boyfriend to open. His casualness reads to some like indifference. Yet, he lives to save people. He’s independent and self-reliant, but he seeks out companionship and love.

“Why the fuck would you lose me?” I cut him off, brows furrowed. He leans his weight back. “We’re really doing this right now,” he realizes. “Yeah, unless you’d like me to overthink for the next millennium.” His mouth stretches. “I wouldn’t take that long, wolf scout.”

I inhale like I haven’t taken a breath in eons. The one constant in my off-kilter world has been us—Farrow and me. Hearing him say that he wants to stand upright next to me, for the long haul—it’s a goddamn dream.

Farrow tears open the silver individual pastry wrapper with his teeth, his smile my fucking undoing.

“When I love someone,” he says in a rough whisper, “I love them proudly, and you deserve the achingly normal, romantic shit more than anyone. Everything you’ve never had. All the pictures you post, all the videos you do on your own, I want to be in them—and it’d kill me not to give you that. Especially now that we’re public.”

Something inside of me has changed. I can’t tell you if it’s being in love or almost dying or maybe I’m just getting older—but something in me is different. And being CEO of my company doesn’t feel as important anymore.

I cut the tension by saying, “Two stops to death and straight on ‘til morning.” It’s a play on a Peter Pan quote that I know my dad will get. He does. He glares at me and says, “Not even a good joke.” “Fucking terrible,” Ryke agrees.

😭

My dad’s brows scrunch at me. “Did your mom and I not teach you the art of being a couch potato? Jesus Christ, I’ve truly failed as a parent.”

I love him. Fuck, I love him more than is comprehensible, more than anyone can possibly see, and I’ve always run towards what calls me. Maximoff. He calls out to me every second of every minute of every day, and to willingly turn my back and race away from him is unfathomable. Because it’d tear me apart. I’d sooner drop to my knees and scream, and then I’d dig my way back into his arms.

“We’re getting our Meredith back.” He slow-claps. I smile. “Man, you know I’m a Christina.”

AISKSJD

Oscar says, clapping with Donnelly before he walks over and pats my shoulder, bringing me in a hug. He whispers in my ear, “We’re going to keep your guy safe. Don’t agonize over it.”

awww<3

Shit, I can’t believe I’m laughing after that shit show. But he brings me this effortless joy, and I cling onto that for dear fucking life.

Part of me almost wishes I could be a resentful bastard. Rub salt in his wounds before I give him what he’s wanted for so long, but I’ve never really enjoyed being needlessly bitter. That shit just isn’t for me, and if I can help it, I try not to be.

On the semi-flipside, my mom overcompensates and will tweet fifty times a day about us: #Marrow for life! This is what love looks like #Marrow Proud mom #Marrow

I’m aware that I look ready for an Armageddon. I always fucking do. But I think about how Farrow is attracted to that part of me. To every part of me. I’m already comfortable in my skin, but he makes me love who I am times infinity.

Even though Farrow doesn’t have a 24/7 bodyguard and he’s not one himself anymore, he’s still being protected by Alpha, Omega, and Epsilon. They’re treating him like family. And I don’t just mean a part of the Hales—I can’t take credit for this. I think it’s mostly because the security team loves him.

I know how much I’m like Ryke Meadows, and I’ve been reaching a place where I can be proud of the similarities. I no longer feel like who I am is a knock against my dad. And I’ve realized something. My dad raised me to be like Ryke. Because he loved his brother more than he loved himself.

He thinks he needs to give me peace and quiet away from the chaos. But I want everything that comes with him.

People make stupid decisions, and I’m not you. I don’t bear responsibility for other people’s choices. How do you even live with that? How are you not dying from that?”

I turn to Jane. “Happy Birthday.” I drop a necklace in her palm, a cursive pendant spells: merde. She’s distracted a little since her bodyguard is bleeding, but her face brightens as she says, “A shit necklace.” “Love it?” I ask. “Oui.”

“My mom,” I tell him. “I told her why I was scared, and she said that my dad’s liver was made of vibranium.” Off his confusion, I add, “The same indestructible steel that Captain America’s shield is made of. She said that it’d take more than a single drink to destroy him.”