Alphas Like Us (Like Us, #3)

by Krista Ritchie

Our eyes latch for a heady moment as a flash strikes the air. As the night sky rumbles above us. Maximoff stares out in a short second before he looks back at me and says, “That’s us.” I don’t follow. “Plato talking to you again?” He groans, then coughs. “Relax,” I tell him, ambulance sirens blaring in the distance. And it’s only when lightning cracks the sky and thunder roars again do I realize what he meant by that’s us. Thunder. Lightning. My brows rise. “I’m lightning then, and you’re thunder. You always follow me every time I appear.” His lips lift in a choked laugh. “You’re right…you will annoy me to death.”

😭😭😭😭😭

“I’m alive,” I say with a sharp breath. “Sadly,” Charlie quips. “Charlie,” they all chastise. A pretentiously coy grin plays at his lips. “Only joking.”

💀

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

“I’d hear my mom saying my name at random times. I wasn’t thinking of the memory, but it’d surface involuntarily. It’s more of a sensory thing, and my father had his colleague speak to me. I was a kid, so I was confused.” Farrow held my gaze. “But he told me to focus on whether there could be a trigger. A time of day, a feeling, a sound.” “Was there one?” I asked. “Yeah.” His eyes trailed over my cheekbones. “A bed.” Farrow explained that every time he’d crawl into his single-bed as a kid and pull the covers up to his chin, he’d hear his mom say his name. And instead of avoiding the bed, he returned to it every night. “I tried to ground myself to something else. Another sound, another feeling, and after a while, the memory fell back.” It made more sense why he immediately told me, “it’s the rain,” on the roof. He was identifying the trigger, and he wasn’t panicked. He’s been mostly angry that it’s happening at all. So recently, my aim is to take more stress off him. Make his days lighter and better. In any way.

Donnelly doesn’t explain his past to me. I already know it. When he was fourteen, his parents gave him meth for the first time, and as an adult, he prefers not to be around hard drugs. Not out of temptation. Mainly, they bring back bad memories.

My heart hurts for teenaged Donnelly… he needs a hug, Tini

“Okay head sounds like bad head.” Donnelly wipes my skin clean. “If you’re just lookin’ to be eaten out, I’ll eat you out—” “Hey,” Maximoff cuts in on the bottom stair, eyes narrowed. His dark hair is wet from a shower, but he’s already dressed: jeans and a green crew-neck. “What the fuck, Donnelly?” He shuts off his machine. “I like eating pussy.” Maximoff looks at him like he lost his mind. “That’s my sister.” Luna falls supine on the loveseat in a groan. Donnelly packs his ink. “I think you’ve embarrassed your sister, man.”

💀💀💀

Donnelly tattooed a wolf with a pirate eye-patch, and two letters are inked on the patch. WS. Maximoff reaches me, and I rotate to face him so his gaze lifts to mine. And he tells me, “You broke one of your only rules.” My rule: never get ink that relates to a boyfriend.

Hello?… yes, i will be getting this tattoo. Wolf Scout is one of my absolute fave pet names I've ever heard

“Where do you see yourself in twenty years?” That’s the first thing his overprotective dad says to me at this casual burger joint—and we haven’t ordered food yet. I’m actually in the process of taking a seat next to Maximoff, scraping the chair back. “We just got here,” Maximoff cuts in with a glare. “Huh, I had no idea.” Lo drills his sharp-edged eyes into me. “Where do you see yourself in twenty years?”

He’s such a smartass 😂 no wonder Moffy is the same way

“It’s in your bones; it’s what keeps you alive. The foundation of your body. To suck out all the marrow of life…I think about how Thoreau went into the woods and stripped life to the barest necessities. To learn what life is really made of, the feeling of water slipping between fingers, the chilled glass in my hand, the wind that rustles your damn hair. And I think about how I feel these barest things every day with you. To live life at its most essential level so as to fully live.”

“Take care of my son,” he tells me. I make that promise. And then he adds, “My son will take care of you.” I rub my eyes and nod. Feeling those words well up inside of me.

This made me sob

“Dum spiro, spero,” he reads the Cicero quote. His eyes well up again. On a day that rocked us both, he said he loved that quote. It was a quiet moment inside a storm. The memory is as tranquil as the quote itself. While I breathe, I hope.

This is another tattoo i will be getting😅

Dear World, thanks for listening. Love, Maximoff Hale

I was so sad when I read this… but then I remembered they have at least one more book that I can remember and I’m no longer sad