Surprise, I’m not the late person here. Jane texts that she’ll be in the kitchen in a second.

Proactively waiting isn’t my thing. I can admit that. So when Farrow unwraps a piece of gum and tugs open the fridge, I ask him, “Need help?”

He chews his gum slowly and glances at me in a way that reminds me he’s twenty-seven. I’m twenty-two, and he’s more than capable to do shit himself.

Farrow starts to smile. “It’s cute that you think I need help getting eggs.” He grabs a carton and kicks the fridge closed.

“You could’ve dropped the fucking eggs.” I’m fighting a stupid battle. And I grimace-smile which makes me want to poke my own eyes out.

Farrow pops his gum. “You mean you would’ve dropped the eggs.”

“Did I? Pretty sure I meant you could’ve.”

Farrow sets the carton by the sink. “I have steadier hands than you.” He leans close and whispers huskily, “You’re not beating me at this.”

I shake my head on instinct. When it comes to Farrow, boyfriend or not, I don’t want to concede that fast. “It’s not proven yet.”

He rolls his eyes into a smile. “Hold out your hand.”

I extend my hand, palm-down. Wondering how he can discern any shake just by sight.

Farrow rotates my wrist. “Like this.” And then he smashes an egg right in my palm.

Don’t smile at him. Don’t smile at him. “Thanks for that,” I say sarcastically, hand dripping in broken eggshell and yolk.

“Anytime.” He laughs, and I act quickly and wipe the runny egg onto his black V-neck, feeling the ridges of his six-pack beneath.

Farrow props his elbows on the sink and actually lets me use his shirt as a towel, even while he’s wearing the thing. Christ.

He’s a Grade A sexy asshole.

“Sorry for being late.” Jane crests the doorway in an out-of-breath pant, and our heads turn. She’s dressed in coffee-print grannie jammies. A binder tucked beneath her armpit.

She sees Farrow. “Oh, you’re both here—” Her cat slippers slide on the slick hardwood, and she almost face-plants.

Binder drops to the floor.

I sprint to reach my best friend, but by the time I catch her elbow, she already steadies herself with outstretched arms.

My lips almost rise. “Bonsoir, ma moitié,” I whisper. Good evening, my other half.

Her big blue eyes smile weakly up at me. I wait for her to say it’s just you and me, old chap—or any kind of variation of that phrase. Just so I know we’re alright.

We’re the same as we always were.

Nothing’s changed.

She’s still Janie. I’m still Moffy. And we’re best friends until the bitter fucking end.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says and rubs her runny nose. Smothering her emotions. She picks up the binder. “This is for you. I need to talk with you about something important. Something I’ve already discussed with my brothers.”

I’ve always been the first person she turns to and vice versa. With secrets, personal struggles, something important, anything—Jane Eleanor Cobalt is my number one.

My ride-or-die.

But she talked to Beckett before me. And even Charlie. Though, I’m highly aware that someone is in my corner and currently in this kitchen.

Farrow pulls his dirtied shirt over his head and then washes his hands. His earring sways as he shifts around the kitchen to cook eggs. And his protective gaze meets mine in a stronghold.

He’s here for me. If I need him.

It feels more than good.

I know it’s no longer just me and Jane anymore, but I also don’t want the best parts of our friendship to change because of our other relationships.

I take the binder, and Jane lingers. I linger. Before the media blowout, we’d hug in greeting or I’d kiss both of her cheeks. Now, she hugs onto her arms, and I stand uncomfortably rigid.

God, I hate this.

“Tell me what you want to do,” I whisper.

“I will.” She nods assuredly and peels a piece of wavy hair off her freckled cheek. “That’s why we need to talk.”

“Alright.” I stretch my arm and head to the fridge. “Need anything?”

“No, I’m making coffee.” She’s already halfway to the pot.

I open the fridge and grab a Ziff sports drink. The label is a Z with the words Ascend beneath, a limeade flavor and a Fizzle product. The lake house is stocked with Fizz sodas, Lightning Bolt! energy drinks, and lots of Ziff.

I flip open a binder on the island counter and find blank white sheets of paper. “It’s all blank?”

Jane fills up a mug. “Since my handwriting is dreadfully hard to read, I thought you’d want to take some notes.”

I find a pen in the binder pocket. “No problem.” What the fuck am I about to write down? Being kept in the dark—not my favorite feeling.

But you know that.

I rest my elbows on the counter. “Are we planning a funeral, a trip to Jupiter, or the reinvention of the Invisibility Cloak?”

“She said ‘important’ things,” Farrow says and puts his frying pan in the sink.

I give him a look. “So funerals aren’t important to you? Great. Never plan mine.”

“We’ve been through this. You’re not dying before me,” Farrow says matter-of-factly. He grabs his bowl of scrambled eggs and sidles next to me. “Give up that dream.”

“No,” I say, voice firm.

A smile edges his mouth, but we both fixate on Jane.

She cups a mug between two hands. “I told my brothers and Sulli that you and I don’t want our friendship to change, but inherently, the media and paparazzi will put pressure on us to split apart. And how do we stay the same, Moffy?”

I gesture to the door like the paparazzi are on the other side. They’re not. But somewhere in Philadelphia, they wait like desperate vultures. Hungry for our carcasses. “We ignore them, Janie.”

“Can we?” She sips her coffee. “Every time we’re together, they’ll be in our faces. I don’t care what they think, but they’re gnats and we’ll both crave to swat them away. To do that, all we have to do is add distance, stop being seen out together, don’t look at each other—”

“No, fuck no.” I shake my head.

Janie starts smiling.

Realization sinks in. “You have a plan?”

* * *

“This is insane,” I mutter, still staring at the binder. Now crammed full of notes, some of which are lyrics to a Semisonic song. Farrow apparently shelves notes with rules in the “fuck it” category.

He leans against the island. Eating his eggs slowly. “You agreed to this insane plan.”

“It took me thirty fucking minutes.” I glance at the doorway, but Jane left to tell Charlie, Beckett, and Sulli that I agreed.

“All five of us are going on tour,” I say aloud. Letting this reality sink in.

No, it’s still a-hundred-million-percent bizarre. All five of us together. Sleeping on a tour bus with our six bodyguards. A total of eleven people on one bus. Driving across America.

How’d I agree to this fucking mayhem? I skim my notes.

The plan: book meet-and-greets at various cities. People will pay to take photos with us and get autographs. Television actors do convention circuits all the time. I even jotted down short Q&A panels. The whole FanCon will be run by H.M.C. Philanthropies. All proceeds go to charity.

I’ll be working, but that’s not exactly why I agreed.

Farrow swigs a glass of water. “You’ll be out of Philly for a while.”

I nod. I was never planning on isolating myself at the lake house forever. Eventually we’d have to deal with paparazzi in Philly, but it’ll be easier dealing with cameramen on the road. Not all of them will want to follow us.

Our parents still live in Philly.

Our parents are still more famous than us. Many cameramen will choose to stay in the city with them.

People always say, just leave if you hate the media that much. I always reply, my family and my work are here, and I don’t hate the paparazzi. We coexist.

Since I was born, I’ve dealt with their sometimes friendly and sometimes frustrating presence. I don’t even know what it’s like for cameramen not to trail me.

I take a bigger breath. It’s still sinking in.

I flip a page in the binder and then glance at Farrow. “From an outsider’s perspective, do you think the tour will help with the rumors?”

Farrow considers this for a second. “All five of you haven’t been publicly together in years. That tour will be front-page news and bury any other shit.” He scrapes a spoonful of eggs. “I’d take the risk, but my laces aren’t triple-knotted like yours.”

I blink. “Thank you for that last-second, unneeded addition.”

He smiles into his bite of eggs. “You’re welcome.”

I flip another page. His presence is like a magnet that says look at me and then I veer off track. I’ll relax too much, and I need to think.

“I can’t let him fucking do this,” I say aloud, reading a sentence I underlined five times: Beckett has taken a temporary leave from the ballet company. As a principal dancer, that’s a big deal.

Farrow barely skims the page. “You forgot to write the tour is his idea.”

Yeah, I still can’t believe Beckett Cobalt concocted this plan. To help Janie, his sister, most of all. It’s why his twin brother Charlie agreed. Heaven and Earth and every air particle knows Charlie didn’t signup for a 4-month tour just for me.

He may be at the lake house out of support, but the seeds of our relationship are still rotted. They have been since that night on the yacht. Nothing good can grow overnight.

And Jane said that Sulli talked about the moments where I’d been there for her. Like the time when she thought she broke her foot on a desert hike. I carried her in a piggyback for eight miles, and I kept trying to calm her. Saying she was a kickass human being and strong. I gave her my canteen early on, and her tears soaked my shirt. She kept telling me her swim career was over, and for Sulli, swim was synonymous with life.

Even at twelve.

I was fifteen, and I remember how when we reached the end of the primitive trail, her parents found us. Uncle Ryke and Aunt Daisy immediately drove their daughter to the ER, and I felt responsible for Sulli getting hurt.

For eight miles, I wished that’d been my foot.

I keep shaking my head, and I grip the counter. “Everything I’ve ever done,” I tell Farrow, “it wasn’t to cash in for a favor later. I never thought I’d be in a position where my younger cousins feel obligated to put their careers and lives on hold.” For Jane.

For me.

Fuck. “We’re the ones who’ve protected them,” I explain to him. “We even used to take their phones and block numbers of porn producers who had called us. Just so they wouldn’t be able to fucking reach them.”

Farrow shuts the binder. “Look at me.”

I can barely rotate my taut shoulders. I want to open the fucking binder and reread everything. Again.

“Maximoff—”

“I get it. I’m overthinking.” I’m white-knuckling the counter, and finally, I look at my boyfriend.

His eyes carry complete understanding. And somehow he still looks like he’d love to undo my tight-laces. “I’d be irritated, too, if my younger cousins decided to pay it forward when I didn’t want to be paid. But it’s happening, and you have to deal.”

I nod, my neck stiff. I want to be the kind of guy who can thank them, but I’m not there yet. I recognize the power in family, in that willingness and sacrifice, but just having this conversation, I feel like I failed Sulli and Beckett and even Charlie.

I reopen the binder. I circled the date December 14^th a billion times. The start date. It’s soon.

“What are you thinking?” Farrow asks.

“None of us will be here for Christmas.” My family normally stays at the lake house for Christmas—a pretty secure place—and our personal bodyguards are allowed to leave and spend the holiday with their families. “I’m thinking about how you and the rest of SFO will feel—”

“We don’t care,” Farrow cuts me off.

I frown. “You sure?”

He smiles. “Man, most of us are in our late twenties. No kids, no spouses, no other obligations. We’re fine to spend holidays where our work takes us.” He lifts his spoon to his mouth. “We know what we signed up for.”

I nod again. My little brother turns fifteen on Christmas day. I’ll miss his birthday, and I don’t want to hurt him. I think it might.

Me being in a serious relationship—it’s new to my family. Cousins and siblings have been blowing up my group chats since they found out I’m dating a bodyguard.

Kinney texted that I’m uninvited to her funeral until I go on a double date with her and her future girlfriend. Luna keeps sending me confetti and thumbs-up emojis. But Xander…

He hasn’t said anything at all.

Maybe my little brother is thinking back to the hickey on my neck. And how I could’ve confessed the truth then. Maybe he thinks we’re not as close as he believed we were. Maybe he’s questioning everything.

I tried calling him multiple times today, and he never answered. I’d rather eat a bowl of nails than be out of touch with my brother. So I’m hoping I can reach him soon.

All the thoughts about my relationship sidetrack me. I crack a knuckle. “How is this going to be…for us?” I ask Farrow.

He cocks his head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot—”

“No shit.”

I almost smile. And he notices. Fuuck.

Farrow stares at me like I blew him. Way too satisfied.

I pull my face, brows scrunched. Scowling. “Like I was saying,” I tell him, “how am I going to survive being on a bus with you for four months. Plus my family, plus SFO, and again, you. Sounds like hell.”

His mouth upturns. “Sounds like fun.”

“My hell is your fun,” I realize.

“Wow.” Farrow grins. “When you put it that way, I love it more.”

I give him two middle fingers, but his hand slides around my waist. We draw closer. His chest against my chest, my bicep instinctively curves around his shoulders. We’re almost eye-level, almost exactly the same height.

In the past thirty minutes, I’ve thought about every small moment.

The private hours I spend with Farrow. Every drive in Philly. Nights where we’re alone in my bedroom. The morning wakeup calls where we whisper about stupid ordinary shit.

It’ll all change slightly, and he may like change—but I don’t know what our relationship looks like when we start moving pieces. And I’d be lying if I said the unknown didn’t scare me a bit.

Farrow breathes, “We’re going to be…” His voice trails off, his fingers touching his earpiece. “Those fuckers.”

We detach, and before I ask, he tells me, “SFO knew about the tour before I did. Come on.” He heads into the hall with his bowl of eggs.

I follow him, my stride lengthier than his. Easily, I catch up to his side.

We’re step-for-step.

He’s not running. He’s not alarmed. Farrow eats and walks, looking more unconcerned than concerned, and his tattooed fingers comb through his hair.

“You’re still in hot water with SFO?” I question.

“I’m always in hot water.” Farrow eats a spoonful. “It’s where I do my best work.” The sexiest smile inches up his mouth.

Fuck me.

We turn a corner, and as soon as I open the door to the study, I spot three bodyguards. Lounging on dark leather furniture. Ceiling-high bookshelves landscape the forest-green walls.

Their heads automatically swing in our direction.

And Thatcher, Oscar, and Donnelly are only looking at me. Appraising me like I’ve intruded into an exclusive Bodyguards Only Club and I’m not allowed inside.