Main Bonus #78: Farrow & The Hales (Patreon)

 IMPORTANT: Please do not screenshot and post any part of this bonus scene to other sites or share with non-patrons. All of the Patreon content is exclusive to Patreon and for current patron's eyes only.  Thank you!! xoxo Krista & Becca

RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

CONSISTENCY: If you're looking to read in chronological order, you'll want to read Farrow & The Keenes before this bonus for more context.

MUSIC: We listened to "Dig" by Incubus while writing this bonus.  

 THE SECOND I SEE FARROW, I know something went wrong. I’m in the middle of feeding applesauce to our eight-month-old. Ripley happily kicks his feet in his highchair and opens his mouth wide, but the spoon is caught midair as I marbleize.

Honest-to-God, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen that expression from Farrow. It’s a grave, hollowed-out look—like he jumped in a blender and got spit back out. Raw anger slams into me, surging past my concern. I’m angry at the person who switched on the blender. At his fucking father.

That’s who he went to see.

That’s who he was supposed to have a heart-to-heart with.

I thought there might be a chance it'd take a bad turn, but I expected Farrow to come in looking indifferent or disappointed…not this.

Ripley whines into a near-cry as I deny him the food. 

“Wolf scout,” Farrow says tightly.

Fuck. “Sorry, Rip,” I tell our son, giving him a spoonful. He swallows the applause, but I can’t get over how Farrow’s graveled voice is more constrained than normal.

I want to ask what happened, but we’re not alone in the kitchen. My mom is trying to open a jar of Prego for a spaghetti dinner, and he approaches her at the stove. “You need help, Lily?”

“I should be good, I think. I have the cheese, the frozen balls—meatballs,” she clarifies fast. “Daisy and I always call them frozen balls. I don’t know why, now that I think of it.” As she spins to Farrow, facing him, her brows crinkle. It’s clear that he’s unnaturally tensed. “How’d everything go with your dad?”

He just tips his head, his neck tight. “It went okay. We didn’t kill each other.”

I cut in, “Then why do I have the sudden urge to stab him?”

His smile inches his lips and almost smothers the heat in my chest. “Because you love defending me, even when it’s unnecessary.”

“Is it unnecessary?”

He raises his brows, but he looks stuck on his thoughts. “Yes and no.”

Yes and no? “Great. Let me go get a knife.”

“Like one isn’t strapped to your calf.” This is where he’d be locked in on me. Where his self-satisfied eyes would rake over me in a once-over. Where his lips would lift even higher. Where his pierced brows would quirk, and his confidence would radiate with his laugh as I’d glare back.

I am really glaring—because he’s not doing those things. He spoke more to the kitchen than to me. I’m more and more homicidal towards his father. “Thanks for the reminder,” I say under my breath, more pissed. What the fuck happened?

Mom oomphs as she struggles twisting the lid. “We don’t…commit murder…in this household.” She grits down on her teeth and twists with all her might. Nothing happens. Before I can stand, Farrow reaches out towards my mom, and she gladly gives him the glass jar.

“Tell that to Dad,” I say, watching Farrow more than I’m watching her. “I’m pretty sure he’s threatened every mortal being at this point.”

“I have told him it’s not nice. He just chooses to be mean.” 

Farrow unscrews the lid with one motion, and normally I’d find that hot—but my brain isn’t even fixated on his fingers wrapped around the lid or how easily he got it off. When he passes the Prego back to my mom, I’m so rigid in concern that I can’t think about anything but him.

Is he okay?

Is he avoiding looking at my mom right now?

Or is that just all in my head?

Ripley kicks out his feet and reaches for the spoon like he wants to feed himself. Yeah, I’m doing an excellent job at feeding my kid. Top-marks to me. Guilt isn’t assaulting me, though. I let Ripley try to grip the spoon, and I keep watching my husband. 

He snatches a Honeycrisp apple out of the fruit bowl, and when he rotates back to me, I just say it, “Can we talk for a sec?”

He’s about to answer when the door flies open. “Jesus Christ, I don’t care what it takes. We’re paying them how much an hour?” My dad lifts his sunglasses to the top of his head, phone to his ear. He’s fast to finish up his conversation. “You deal with the lawyers, love. Yeah. Whatever you want…” He kisses my mom on the cheek in greeting, and I can only assume Connor is on the phone. Outside of my mom, he’s the only other person my dad calls love. “Make him pay. Broke and destitute would be nice.”

“That’s not nice,” Mom points out, then tells me. “Not nice.” As if the vengeful Loren Hale will rub off on me. I’m already twenty-four—I’m not sure how much more my dad can influence pieces of who I am.

He hangs up and says, “It is nice, Lil. What isn’t nice is me saying Ernest Manshit deserves a prison sentence that includes scrubbing feces and contracting a deadly case of E. coli.” He flashes a dry smile.

She squints like he’s about to add more, but he just wraps his arms around her in a tight, welcoming hug and she reciprocates tenfold.

I look over at Farrow, but he’s just combing a hand through his hair a few times. 

Ernest Mangold. I knew my dad wanted to go after the former CEO of H.M.C. Philanthropies for defamation, at the least, since there is video evidence of him bad mouthing my son. But it takes a lot to convict. It’s not like the video leaked and our familial companies suffered in consequence. Likely, the case will be thrown out and the worst that’ll happen to Ernest is this massive job loss.

That has to be enough.

What Charlie did for me is enough. Even if I haven’t fully decided if I’m taking helm of the philanthropy again. Right now, that colossal decision is stowed in the very bottom drawer of my brain. The ones that are opened at the top—they belong to Farrow. Containing my concern for him.

My love for him.

“Lo.” Farrow’s voice is still edged in a strange way. “You mind feeding Ripley? I need to talk to Maximoff.”

“I’d love to feed my favorite grandson.” He detaches from my mom.

I’m quickly toweling off Ripley’s messy fingers with a rag as I rise to my feet.

Ripley squeals in delight, as if he knows who’s coming over to him. Once I trade places with my dad, my son only gets a little bashful and shy as I distance myself from the breakfast table.

But he loves his grandpoppy and giggles as my dad airplanes a spoonful of applesauce towards his mouth. “Whoa, whoa, what is this? Flying applesauce. What in Magneto’s name—Lil, you see this?”

My mom beams. “He must’ve put a spell on it. He’s magical. I’m telling you.” 

Ripley babbles and gleefully eats the flying spoonful. My dad scrunches his brows at Rip in such a familiar way, and I have a flashback of being a kid opposite him, of my dad’s dry humor and the light in his eyes that lit up my world.

I wonder if he knew the light was there. That I could always see how happy he was to be with me. To be with my brother and sisters. Like we were his universe. Like he loved us.

Not one damn day did I doubt his love for me. I don’t doubt his love for his grandson now.

I had a good childhood. The best, really, and it stings and physically pains me knowing Farrow didn’t have anything similar. He’d say it wasn’t bad. That he had the basics. He had more than most. He was never harmed.

But I know it wasn’t enough.

We both take one step towards the door, but before we leave, my dad glances at Farrow with confusion. “Didn’t you plan to talk to your father today?”

Farrow twists the apple in his hand, but he doesn’t take a bite. “I already did.”

My dad nods back. Air strains.

Farrow just says vaguely, “We’re okay.” It doesn’t sound like a lie. I’m not sure if it’s satisfying enough for my parents, but they don’t pry for more.

Now we’re upstairs, alone in my childhood bedroom, and Farrow isn’t sitting on the desk chair or the Spider-Man bedspread. He’s not casually taking a bite out of an apple. Hell, he hasn’t even eaten any of the fruit. He just keeps twisting it.

He just keeps glancing at the black-painted chalkboard wall. Like it has the answers to a riddle in his head.

I haven’t sat down either. My arms are crossed hard against my firm chest. My biceps flexed.

I want to help him. I want to do more for him, like he always does for me, but I can’t figure out what happened or what’s going on. My brain is cycling through a million scenarios.

“You want me to guess?” I ask him. “I’m the best guesser alive, and I’ve thought about everything he could’ve told you about a bajillion and one times in the past five seconds.”

It causes Farrow to abruptly laugh, and I swear the ceiling splits and reveals paradise for a moment. I can admit the sound is euphoria to my body. But it fades too fast.

I say, “Now I’m thinking I should drive to Chestnut Hill and strangle him.”

His lips rise. He just keeps smiling at me, and he lifts the apple up to his mouth. “Murder in my honor?”

“Yeah. Thousand times over.”

“Now it’s a killing spree?” His amusement should aggravate me, but I’m tripling down.

“If it needs to be one. As long as you’re okay.”

He leans on the dresser. “I almost forgot how cute you are when you’re dreaming up unrealistic plot lines to our lives.” He grins into a bite of apple.

Yeah, I’m not cute. I’m hot.

The rebuttal dies in my head. “Farrow, seriously.” It’s easy for us to derail away from the serious conversations, but we always find the tracks. Looks like I’m locating them first this time.

He swallows, then rotates the apple in his hand. “Seriously, I’m…” He stares at the fucking chalkboard wall again.

“You’re more of a space cadet than me, I know.”

His smile stretches slowly. “Sorry to stomp out your hopes and dreams, wolf scout, but no one is more of a space cadet than you.”

I uncross my arms and shorten the distance between us. Farrow watches, his eyes staying on my eyes. “There’s no way you could ever mess with my hopes and dreams.”

“Yeah?” He looks me up and down.

“Yeah,” I say confidently, assuredly, with everything inside of me. “Because what I dream up and what I hope for is you.” An inch is between us. Barely any space.

His Adam’s apple moves the inked swords on his throat as he swallows hard. He’s latched on my gaze, like he can’t consume the sincerity and love fast enough. “You’re being weirdly frank.”

“You’re being weirdly upset.” I step back, but he catches my waist, not letting me go. Setting the bitten apple on the dresser behind him, he straightens up only a little and spreads his legs apart a bit. Before he tries to draw me near, I close the distance, walking into the vacant space between his legs. My chest pushes up against his chest.

I hold his hip with one hand. With the other, I grip the dresser beside his arm.

Farrow slides his palm up my jaw. Our breaths are heavy every time our gazes latch, and very quietly, he says, “I have a lot to tell you.”

“Good thing I’m immortal and I've got all the time in every universe for you.”

“Good thing you still play make-believe.”

“I would flip you off, but I don’t really want to stop touching you.” I stare at his lips now.

“Good.” His graveled voice is a stroke against my cock. “Because I don’t want you to stop.” We’re a breath away from kissing, and under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t wait around. I’d make the first move. I’d crush my lips against his, pressing our bodies even deeper, and his back would grind into the dresser. It’d be explosive.

We’d detonate.

Our hands all over each other.

Emotions are heightened. Like we’re standing in four inches of water and a live wire is snapping the air, threatening to fall and electrocute us. It’d be easy to fuck each other in this intensity, but this shouldn’t derail into sex any more than it should humor.

Farrow holds my face. He’s diving into my eyes that melt against him, and I’m trying to understand the look in his.

“It’s pretty much confirmed now,” I tell him.

“What is?”

“Getting married doesn’t spawn mind reading abilities. You’re my husband of three months, and I have no damn clue what you’re thinking, man. None at all.”

Farrow smiles a little, but it’s faint. Then it’s gone. “He apologized for missing the wedding.”

I can’t even ease. “Your dad?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good, right?”

He nods a few times. “Trip was there. He was playing mediator or some shit. I think if he wasn’t around, it would’ve ended worse.” He winces. “It was just…it was like opening wounds I didn’t know existed, Maximoff.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s apparently been upset that I dropped Keene and took Hale as a surname.” He tips his head back and forth. “Which is whatever…he should’ve told me earlier. Not that it would’ve changed what I did. And basically, he didn’t go to the wedding because he couldn’t stomach seeing Lily there as she…” He looks away from me, his eyes reddening. He glances back as emotion guts him, and I wrap my arm strongly around his shoulders, bringing him into chest in a new way.

I feel his chest heave. Behind my deltoid, he pinches his eyes with one hand and hugs me back with the other. “Shit,” he quakes out.

“He didn’t want to see my mom take your mom’s place,” I realize. “It was too hard for him?”

“Yeah.” Farrow smears a hand down his face, then eases back to look at me again. “I wish he told me sooner…” He trails off and then lets out a sharp laugh. “That’s about how it went. Lots of I wishes being thrown out like fucking grenades.”

“He hurt you?” I ask tightly, worried he might’ve really done damage. I'm prepared to go knock down his door.

Farrow smiles again, but he’s staring at me in a way that tries to thieve oxygen. “Fuck, I love you. It’s ridiculous how much I do.”

My heart pumps harder. “It’s not that bizarre. Most would say I’m easy to love.”

“Okay, Cocky.” He’s fixed on my lips, and we do kiss this time. Farrow slides his hand to the back of my skull, but I force myself not to draw this into more carnal territory. Between the affection, he explains so much more to me.

I listen as he tells me exactly how their back and forth evolved. How he ended up asking his dad to be there for Ripley. How Trip seemed to know that Farrow wanted his father to be there as a father, too, but he didn’t ask him. How he’s not sure if his old man can commit to our kid, so he couldn’t ask him for more.

I hope Dr. Keene becomes the kind of father that Farrow’s mom would’ve wanted him to be. But I guess the first step is ensuring he’s a good grandfather.

At the end of it all, I ask Farrow one thing, the most important thing to me, “Are you okay?”

“When I first came in here, I would’ve said, I will be. It’s been one of those days, man, but now…” His smile takes wider shape, like there is little torment, and I sink my gaze as deep as he is, both of us consuming each other with one look. Heat ratchets up between us.

“But now?” I ask and watch him undo his belt buckle—at the same time that I’m pulling my shirt over my head.

And when our bodies collide, when we detonate, he says, “I’m more than okay.” 

Thank you so much for reading this month's main bonus! We loved getting to show what happens after the pivotal conversation between Farrow and the Keenes. Plus, returning to Maximoff and Farrow moments really balloons our hearts in the best way. They're definitely a comfort couple for us! We hope you enjoyed this one, and another bonus is right around the corner!!

All the love in every universe,

xoxo Krista & Becca

 “Farrow & The Hales," Copyright © 2024 by K.B. Ritchie