Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Squared jaw, a pretty-boy haircut, and the second tallest Cobalt, he could play Superman in a summer blockbuster, but a devilish grin always inches up his lips. Mischief glimmering behind blue eyes.
You know Eliot Alice Cobalt as the king of drama. Literally, he’s starred in local plays from William Shakespeare to Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and he’s already signed to a theatre company for the next two years. He often films himself and posts humorous soliloquies about a lamp or toothbrush, and he’s not afraid to be uninhabited and wild.
I know him as my passionate eighteen-year-old cousin who thrives in chaos. Who, 9 times out of 10, will light a napkin on fire if I’m at dinner with him. Who loves stories but struggles with reading. Can’t make sense of street signs or restaurant menus. Can barely pick apart a single sentence. Who used to ask Jane, his brothers, and me to read books out loud. Hardbacks pile high in his bedroom, and for fun, he writes plays using a voice-app. He’s dyslexic, and a fucking brilliant, soulful actor who can make an audience cry with a few words.
Fair Warning: even with all the mayhem he brings, I love this guy, and I’ll drive a sword straight in your gut if you fuck with him.
“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.” He grins and lifts a calico kitten to the camera and waves the paw in goodbye. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” The video goes black.
Quiet lingers, all of us missing family. Sulli stares off, more downcast and homesick, and Jane and I exchange a damage control look.
Janie tucks her phone away and stands. “No more videos of home. Let’s enjoy tonight.”
I hug Sulli around her broad shoulders. “Remember, we’re on an adventure.”
Beckett raises his mug to his lips. “That includes half-naked bodyguards. What you’ve always wanted to see, Sulli.”
She chucks a pillow at him. “Very fucking funny.”
He laughs.
But she’s smiling. “I know I really fucking miss my parents and sister and everyone else, but I like that we’re all together with our bodyguards…this is cool.”
Jane unzips a baggie. “And there are chocolate cookies.” She passes out three cookies, and everyone accepts them but Beckett.
He picks a holiday playlist for the underwear contest. “Christmas” by Darlene Love booms.
Cocoa in the cookie is fucking overpowering. I cough in my fist and swig eggnog. Jesus.
“We’re ready!” Akara calls from the ajar door.
Jane pretends a candy cane is a microphone, angling towards Beckett’s phone as he films, the footage just for us. “I’m your host and one of four judges Jane Kitten.” She bats her lashes. “The Hot, Hot, Hot Santa Underwear Contest features the bodyguards of Security Force Omega. Who will win the ultimate prize this Christmas Eve? Let’s see. Starting in alphabetical order, we have…Akara Kitsuwon.”
Akara slips out of the second lounge. Shirtless, muscles cut, and fire-engine red boxer-briefs hug his thighs. He walks the length of the hall towards us, and Sulli whistles in a cat-call.
He mock beauty pageant waves.
I smile as Jane narrates a bio on the fly, “A Muay Thai pro, this strapping bodyguard just turned twenty-six this December and owns the extraordinary Studio 9 gym. He’s a bossy boss and a friendly friend.”
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.”
We applaud, and Sulli already marks 10 in the runway and question categories. And they said I’d be fucking biased. Akara takes over driving so Oscar can go change.
“Next up,” Jane narrates as Donnelly emerges, same red color underwear. Different style.
This time, he has on trunks, similar to boxer-briefs, but higher cut on the thigh. A tattoo I’ve never seen peeks out of the elastic band, a scorpion with fire out of its tail.
He blows kisses to us and the invisible audience.
“Donnelly, Paul Donnelly,” Jane says, “a twenty-six-year-old Leo and former tattooist. He hails from an Irish household and knows how to kick serious ass in mixed martial arts.”
Donnelly twirls at the end and then bows.
I’m subconsciously eating these shitty cookies. I finish my third one, and I’m surprised Sulli likes them enough to grab the bag for more.
Jane straightens. “Donnelly, what word best describes you?”
“Thirsty.”
Beckett cracks up laughing, and Donnelly blows a kiss to the camera. Then he plops down in the booth, waiting for the next bodyguard.
My bodyguard.
“Farrow Redford Keene,” Jane says his full name, and Farrow saunters out with casual confidence. Only wearing red briefs. The cut shows off his thigh muscles and sculpted waist—Christ, his package…the underwear barely holds him in.