by Riley Ashby
I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want to argue either. And he didn’t try to convince me. He held my hand until the tears finally ceased.
“Lie back,” he murmured as he re-wrapped my hand and made sure the splint was properly aligned. He pulled the thin hospital blanket up around my shoulders, then grabbed another off his bed to put over me as well. He pulled over a second chair to prop his feet on while he settled in next to me.
“I have a scar right here,” he said, rubbing his shoulder just above his heart. “Claw hammer.”
The horror made me forget my own injury. “What happened?”
“Caught off guard trying to arrest an insurgent. I was distracted while his wife yelled at me. I should have waited for my partner, but I thought I could handle him. I walked back to base with it sticking out of my chest. I was in too much shock to pull it out myself.”
“Did you get the guy?”
He nodded and looked away, and I thought for a second that the moonlight glinted a little too brightly in his eyes. “Left his body in the dust.”
“Archer …”
I sat up and leaned over the railing, gripping his neck and putting my forehead against his. He cupped my face softly, running his thumb over my cheek. For the longest ten seconds of my life, I felt no pain in my hand; I ran free from my fear of the dark while his rough fingers ran over my skin. I tried to memorize the ridges of his caress.
“You’ll be okay,” he said. “It’ll be hard, but you’ll get past it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I did. Lie back now and close your eyes.”
I let go of him, peeling one finger at a time off his neck, but his hand remained on my cheek as he guided me down. “You don’t have to stay there,” I said as I put my head on the pillow. I stopped short of telling him to leave me, though, because I didn’t want him to.
“I’ll be okay. I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.”
I nodded as he pulled the blanket back up around my shoulders. My eyes were already heavy, but I didn’t want to close them yet, not while he was still next to me.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered.
I obeyed. I matched my breathing to his as I finally drifted into a dreamless sleep.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. So dumb to let her touch me like that. Foolish to allow her in. She had her own issues, and I didn’t want or need her to feel sorry for me. There were trained professionals for that kind of thing. Not me, not when I was supposed to stay distant, not when I would be leaving her in a few days.
Her therapy started the next morning. It was good timing with the sad little pep talk I’d given her in the dark. She was enthusiastic about starting work, at least on the first day, but it became clear the days the physical therapists came would be the worst for her pain. Endless hours of asking her to squeeze a ball I could crush between two fingers brought her to tears. Eventually, I started leaving them alone in the room and taking the opportunity to go for a quick run and shower in the doctors’ locker room. I got some strange looks, but no one ever questioned my presence. Scars and tattoos will do a lot for a person’s authority in the right situations.
I rubbed my hand over the sunburst on my left pec one day as I studied myself in the mirror post-shave. It needed to be touched up; some of the lines around the scar it covered were fading. That was to be expected, but it was still a pain in the ass. I would have to get it fixed after she left the hospital.
No tattoos or cover-ups for Josie. She’d look at her scars every day for the rest of her life.
I got back to her room as the therapist was leaving, surprised to see her sitting with her feet over the edge of the bed. She didn’t sit up much without the bed propped up behind her, but she straightened even more as I came into the room. She was wearing street clothes, though they looked like they had originally belonged to someone a couple of decades older than her. Her feet swung in the empty air. She looked almost childlike as she smiled at me.
“Guess where we’re going?”
“Where are you going?”
Her smiled faltered. “We. We’re going to LA.”
I shook my head. “I’m only here to keep an eye on you while you’re in New York.”
“That’s not what Vail said.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to see I did have a missed call and a text from Castel, asking me to call him. I turned away from her as I returned his summons, already irritated at having decisions made about my future without my knowing.
“I’m not going to LA,” I said the moment he picked up the phone.
He sighed. “You haven’t heard the offer yet.”
“I don’t need to. I have a home here. And I need to convince them to give me my job back.”
A pause. “You think they will?”
I shook away his question because it was inconsequential. They were going to, one way or another.
Castel barreled ahead when I didn’t answer. “He’ll double your salary. We need someone else around to help keep her safe. Ellery trusts you now, and he doesn’t want to go through the process of vetting someone new.”
I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “I won’t go.”
After some shuffling on his end of the line, someone else spoke into the phone.
“Archer? What the hell are you talking about? You have to go with her.”
I tried to contain my sigh. “Vail, I’m not coming. I need to stay here. I have a lease in Virginia I can’t give up—”
“We’ll pay it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, what is the point?”
I looked over at the bed to see Josie staring at me. She looked away when we made eye contact but kept her head turned toward me to listen. I lowered my voice.
“It’s not good for me to be here, Vail. She needs female companionship.”
“And she’ll have that once she’s out here. But we can’t permanently reassign Tori to her, not while Sophie’s pregnant, and even if we did, she would at least need an escort on the plane.”
I let my hands drop to my side and growled at the ceiling. Effective. I ran a hand through my hair, still damp from the shower. My T-shirt had a soy sauce stain on it; I needed to find time to do laundry. Or buy new clothes. I brought the phone back to my ear. There wasn’t going to be any convincing them, and I didn’t want to argue for the rest of the day.
“What will it take to make you understand this? I’m not coming. Period.”
I hung up the phone and stuck it in my pocket, ignoring the buzzing as he called me back immediately. I couldn’t talk to them right now. They didn’t understand; I couldn’t just leave. I had responsibilities. Goals.
“It won’t be the same without you.” Josie’s small voice startled me. I’d almost forgotten she was in the room. “You know all my physical therapy moves.”
I walked back across the room and sat gingerly next to her on the bed, leaving plenty of space between us. “You’ll have someone else out there. Someone much better equipped to handle your issues.”
She bit her lip and stared out the door into the hall, eyes glistening. Dammit, now I’d made her cry. I reached out to pat her shoulder, intending to leave it at that, but she slid across the space between us and put her head against my chest, her shoulder slotted against my side like she was made to be there. I froze for a full ten seconds, unsure of how to react before my body decided to let my arm come down around her shoulders and pull her a little closer.
“Another stranger,” she whispered, more to herself than to me.
I’d always liked being the person everyone could count on. It made me feel good to have someone thank me for stepping in and being there when no one else was. For finding the solution to a problem no one else could solve. But I couldn’t be the problem solver for Josie. I wasn’t a therapist; I wasn’t a recovery buddy. I was just some unemployed bum who got lucky enough to find a temporary paycheck while I worked out my situation at my real jo
b.
“I know I have issues,” she said, quiet as a mouse. She was always quiet around me. I didn’t know why she tolerated my presence as much as she did, unless she’d managed to fall prey to some form of Stockholm Syndrome while she was captive. Maybe she saw her captor in me, and that didn’t exactly make me feel good. I knew I could be hard and stern, but I’d never thought of myself as the abusive authoritarian she was all too familiar with by now.
“For weeks, I’ve been unable to sleep well at night. I counted out pills every evening, trying to work up the courage to down them all. When I heard about Vail’s arrest, I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. So I got my hands on that gun and waited.” She laughed and had to clear her throat. She hadn’t made that sound in a long time. “I guess I should have checked the quality of my black market firearm a little better, but I honestly didn’t have a plan. At first, I was just going to bring it with me to the courthouse. And then I was going to get closer to him. And then I was right in front of him; he wore that smirk on his face and all those reporters begged for his attention. I stood right there—the victim of what had been done to him—and all they wanted was him. I thought about shooting him for a second, but that wouldn’t solve my problems. I would still be broken and angry and unable to walk down a hallway in the dark.”
My hand slipped around her waist of its own accord. She slid her good hand into mine, intertwining our fingers. I tried not to think about how soft and vulnerable her hands were. I tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped as she pulled my arm tighter around her.
“So I decided to finally end it. Archer”—her voice broke—“it was such a relief to make that decision. To know that I wouldn’t be a burden on anyone anymore. No more eating up government money. No more asking for an escort every time I walked to the ice machine.”
I propped my chin on the top of her head, trying to imagine what I’d be doing if she weren’t here.
“I thought shooting myself would be easy and quick, like going to sleep. It was so painful, but I still thought I succeeded. I thought I was in hell. But then I opened my eyes and saw Vail hovering over me, and I knew I was still right there. And I had never felt weaker in my life. Waking up here just confirmed it by having to go through withdrawal again and a million people buzzing around me and monitoring my every move.” She inhaled deep and pushed her fingers into my palm, pushing and rubbing, and I knew she was feeling the bones and tendons that didn’t work for her anymore. Prodding the muscles. Remembering the feel of them. “But having you here every day ... the way you see my progress and comment on it, the way you know how to pick the right movie to put on TV or read me the right bit of news to cheer me up ... it’s the first consistent thing I’ve had in a long time that wasn’t pain or fear. And maybe it’s not fair to put all this responsibility on you, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
When she tilted her head up, I couldn’t keep myself from looking down into her hazel eyes despite my own inner battle. Not clouded with drugs or creased at the sides from pain. Open, and clear, and asking me for help in the most humble way she knew how.
“Please come with me. Please be the stable thing in my life for a little bit longer.”
I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as chivalrous, but I couldn’t help feeling a little superhuman when she talked about me like that. As if she needed me around to advise her and show her the right way to recover. What kind of person would I be if I let her down when she was looking to me for guidance?
It wasn’t often people asked me to stick around because they wanted me personally. But with her shoulder pressed into my side and her cheek on my chest, she knew how to make me feel like I was the only man for the job. And God help me if I let her down.
When my phone buzzed in my pocket again, I answered it with my free hand. “I’ll come,” I said and then hung up and threw it across the bed.
She put her arms around my middle and held me as tightly as she could. It was unavoidable then, the defilement of our professional relationship when I saw how clearly the power I wielded affected her. And I knew I would have to pull away eventually—soon—but for the moment, I allowed myself to be happy that we would stay together a little while longer.
One week later
The apartment building lobby I stood in was easily more opulent than anywhere I had ever lived in my entire life, including the time I spent as the captive of a millionaire sex trafficker. I never got to experience the finer parts of his lifestyle because I was nothing but a dog to him. Whenever I got anything nice, like a dress to wear to an event, he made me wear it for days afterward until it was caked with sweat, dirt, and my own urine if he kept me from the bathroom.
And now you’re the Make-a-Wish kid for your fellow captive’s brother. I snorted to myself under my breath. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. I had thought about trying to run off somehow before we got on the plane, but Archer never left me alone long enough to even consider it. It wasn’t as if I had anywhere to go, and I couldn’t take care of myself with my hand the way it was anyway. As much as it pained me, I needed to rely on someone else’s charity for a little longer.
Archer looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He had trimmed his beard before we left, and it was much shorter now. I liked it a little longer, but I wasn’t going to complain. His green eyes pinned me in place whenever he looked at me, holding me down with the weight of his authority. He had gotten a little bit of a tan too during all his outdoor runs, and his skin was still tinged red with sunburn.
“Something funny?”
“Not exactly. Can we go upstairs?”
He grunted and led me to the elevator but didn’t say anything else as we rode in silence. When we got to our floor, he stopped outside two similar doors right next to each other. He pulled out two key chains, each with two keys, and handed me one.
I tried to grip the key in my right hand, but it was too small. I sighed in frustration as it fell to my feet.
“Don’t worry about it,” he grunted as he bent over to pick it up before I could and unlocked the door himself.
I gasped as I stepped into the lavish apartment that was to be my home. Rose gold-hued marble floors covered the entire foyer and a kitchen complete with granite countertops. I didn’t ever imagine I would live in an apartment with a foyer. I kicked off my ratty Converse as I came to the carpeted living area, already furnished with a plush couch and flat-screen TV. A reclining armchair sat facing the window, giving me a gorgeous view of the far-off mountains.
“Where do you want your bag?” Archer’s gruff voice snapped me out of my daze.
“Can you find the bedroom in this place?”
He looked around, then took off down the hallway. He stuck his head in three doors before finally entering one of the rooms toward the end. “This one has to be it.”
I followed him into a room nearly as large as the entire living area I had just explored. A king-sized bed sat against one wall, cloaked in gold satin sheets. Archer dropped my suitcase—brand new and fully stocked, thanks to the Kings—next to the bed and walked briskly toward me. He shrank as he turned to pass me through the doorway, despite my attempt to lean into him.
“Where are you staying?” I asked, forcibly holding myself back from stepping on his heels as I followed him back out into the main room. He pointed without speaking to a door next to the fridge.
I frowned. “The pantry?”
He actually laughed, then caught himself as if embarrassed. “You know those hotels with connecting rooms? We’ve got a similar setup here. This is specifically made for celebrities with live-in bodyguards.”
I tried to lighten the mood. “So I’m a celebrity.”
He smiled briefly, then turned it into a frown so quickly I would have thought I imagined it if I hadn’t seen him do the same thing a dozen times over the past few days. Ever since he agreed to come to LA, he was determined to be as unhappy as possible. It was an abrupt change from the gruff but otherwise helpful man
who’d helped me through some of my worst nights in the hospital. Completely different from the man who pressed his forehead against mine in the dark as he told me about his scar.
He walked across the room and unlocked the door connecting our two suites. “It locks from your side,” he said, “but I have a key. I’ll be nearby if you need anything in the middle of the night.”
His tone told me clearly I had better not need anything, at least not while he was sleeping.
He stepped through the door into his apartment, and I darted through behind him before he could shut it. His setup was similar to mine but smaller. He also didn’t appear to have any guest rooms. Not that either of us would be entertaining guests.
Would we?
He wouldn’t try to bring girls back here, right?
He strode to his own fridge and opened it. It was fully stocked, and I suspected the same of mine. Fresh fruits and veggies in addition to meats, cheeses, beer, and wine filled the device to the brim.
“At least we’ll be well fed,” he said, pulling out a beer and opening it with his hand. He took a long pull, draining half the bottle in one go. He offered another one to me as an afterthought. I shook my head and held up a hand.
“I’m good.”
“Well … do you need anything?”
He wanted me to go. This was another emerging theme. He shadowed me only as long as was required, enough to satisfy the conditions of his employment as my new full-time bodyguard. I wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to move him from FBI darling to the companion of a suicidal ex-sex slave, but I was grateful for his presence all the same. Much more so than he was for mine.
He’d only let me really get close to him a couple of times, most recently on the day I convinced him to come to LA with me. It had felt almost out of body for both of us, cuddling tentatively on my hospital bed and me doing my best not to climb onto his lap and beg for his attention by pleading for him to stay with me because I didn’t know how I could bear to get to know anyone else new. Something I’d said clearly worked, but he’d been distant ever since.
