Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

28

Gage

When we pulledup to Bear’s place, I got out of the car and stretched. I was stiff and sore after the punishing twenty-four hour round-trip drive. Except for the time we’d spent in the house searching for whatever it was that held the information we were after, we had taken only the shortest breaks to refuel and use the restroom. Our meals had been from drive-throughs.

Any time we spent out on the open road was time we were exposed, and we didn’t want to waste any time getting back to the relative safety of Bear’s place.

Savannah climbed out from the back seat. She stretched, too. I noticed she looked haggard. For the first time, the toll that the past few days must be taking on her was very visible.

Not to mention, though Bear and I had switched off driving and sleeping, I hadn’t seen her sleeping once. Not on the way there, not on the way back.

She’d lain down on the seat a few times. Closed her eyes. But each of those attempts had only lasted a few minutes before she was sitting up and staring pensively out the window again.

I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t wish what she was going through on my worst enemy. And I didn’t try to insist she get rest because I knew that we were coming back here to Bear’s, and that I could make sure she got a good night’s sleep. After a hot shower, and in a safe bed, with me there to guard her—she would sleep. I was sure of it.

Are you sure, though, Crawford? Are you sure she’s even going to want you in the room after the last time?

I wasn’t sure. But it also wasn’t up for debate. I wasn’t leaving her side. Not until all of this was over. And that was final.

She looked over at me and her head tilted to the side, a puzzled smile lighting her face. “What?”

I realized I’d been staring at her intently, a glowering scowl on my face at the prospect of not being in the room to protect her. I shook my head. “Nothing. Let’s get inside.”

When we were safely ensconced inside the safe house, Bear said, “Get a good night’s sleep, kids. Tomorrow, we regroup.”

I nodded. “Right. And hopefully we’ll have something from Crypt by then.”

Bear chuckled. “Yeah. A little information to give some direction to the regrouping would be helpful. But we can worry about that tomorrow.”

Savannah and I stepped into the bedroom. I suddenly felt awkward. Fuck. I’d felt a lot of things since Savannah Langley had walked back into my life. Protectiveness. Confusion. Bliss. Pain. But awkwardness was new.

I cleared my throat, hoping to get the upper hand back. “So. Do you want the first shower, or the second?”

She cast her eyes to the floor and smiled a little, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It took me a minute to place it before I realized what it was.

She was feeling awkward, too.

“I’ll go first, if you don’t mind,” she said. “I feel super scroungy and gross. I need to get under that hot water and wash the road off of me.”

The words were innocent enough, but my dick immediately got hard when I heard them. The thought of her in the shower. Naked. Water running over her skin. Over her breasts, down her belly. Fuck. It just got to me.

I clenched my jaw. When I looked over at her, I saw that she was staring at the part of my body that her words had affected, and she had a part amused, part melancholy smile on her face.

She looked up and met my eyes. “Well,” she said, her voice infused with that same part teasing, part sad energy, “I guess we know that wasn’t the problem. I guess it was just me.”

With those words, she disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the water of the shower come on almost immediately.

God damn it. The look in her eyes when she’d said those words had been so despairing. She’d been teasing, sure. But there was a lot of truth behind the joke. And that truth had been really difficult for her. Really sad.

And I was the one who had put that look in her eyes, and on her face. I was the one who put that tone in her voice, and that pain in her heart. Because I was a cowardly asshole who couldn’t face his own feelings. No other reason.

Face a bullet? Sure. That was no problem. Especially for her. I’d take a bullet for her in a hot second, it wouldn’t even be a consideration. But let myself be vulnerable? Let myself touch her, and kiss her, and hold her? Let myself be inside her, and by doing that, let her get inside me—into my soul and my heart?

No. Apparently all of that was beyond me.

As I stood in the middle of the room and listened to the water beating down on the fiberglass shell of the shower, I flashed back to the last time I’d listened to that shower. To when I’d almost knocked on the door, but stopped because I heard her crying.

My heart squeezed in my chest, and just like that, I’d had enough.

“Fuck it,” I mumbled under my breath as I stripped off my clothes. “This ends. This fucking ends right now.”