Bodyguard by Melanie Shawn

7

Savannah

I sankinto the hot water, another moan escaping my lips. Damn. I’d only been back in Gage’s presence for a few hours, and I just could not stop moaning.

Of course, it wasn’t for the reasons that a person might hope you’d moan when you were back with your long lost first love for a night. But, still. Barring that, I’d take a burger and a bath in my state. Those might be second choices, but they were still damn good ones.

As the heat penetrated my muscles, I really felt the effects of the last two days. The cold, the wet. The hunger. The terror. The lack of sleep. The uncomfortable position I’d sat in on the bus I’d taken back to my hometown. The weariness in my legs from the miles I’d had to walk from the bus station to Gage’s house.

Thank God he’d bought his parents’ place when they’d downsized. Otherwise, I would have had no way to find him.

I had been forbidden to keep track of anyone from home. The consequences of that were made very clear to me. I could never interact on social media, even from a fake account. I couldn’t even look at their social media pages. I could never google them. All of those things were trackable. The dire nature of the warnings was hammered home to me again and again.

But, fuck. I couldn’t help myself.

Of course, now I was tortured by the thought that my need to keep track of Gage, to make sure he was okay, was what had enabled the people after my father to find us. That I had gotten my father killed.

But...I’d been so careful.

I’d only ever googled his name once a year, and looked at his parents’ social media accounts. I’d always done it from a library computer, always in a town at least six hours from my new identity’s home.

And I hadn’t even picked the towns randomly. I knew that, with the human brain, there was no such thing as truly random. I would end up leaving some kind of pattern.

So, instead, I’d created a pattern. An intentional one. All of the towns formed a loose circle around the Chicago metro area. Which was far from where my father and I were.

I’d always taken a bus to the town, and always paid cash for the ticket. No records.

I never stayed in a hotel. I rode the bus to a random city, then bought another ticket to my destination, walked to the library, spent twenty minutes or less on the computer, walked back to the bus station and rode the bus to another random city, then bought a bus ticket home.

All cash. All of it.

Socareful.

But still...the thoughts tortured me.

Even with the turmoil I was in, though—both in reality, and in my emotions—I couldn’t really regret having done it. For one thing, if I hadn’t, I would have had no idea that Gage was living in his parents’ old home. His mother had posted about that on Facebook two years before.

For another thing, I would have had no idea that he was a bodyguard. There had been an article in a security industry journal that had come up when I’d googled him five years before.

But, the main thing—the only thing, really—was that I hadn’t had a choice. Not truly. I couldn’t live without knowing he was okay. It just wasn’t an option.

I closed my eyes.

Whatever had led to my dad and I being found, I couldn’t change it now. I could only move forward. So I had to do what Gage told me to. That was the only way.

He had said to relax in the bath. To let it raise my body temperature so that I wouldn’t get sick. Me being sick would only make his job more difficult.

I knew that stress also destroyed immune responses. So I had to at least try to relax. I didn’t know if it would be possible. But Gage was seriously putting himself out for me. Potentially even putting his life on the line. The least I could do was follow his instructions.

I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. After only a few seconds, though, they flew open again, and I sat up with a gasp.

The image of my father’s murder had flooded my mind. Horrible, overwhelming—like I’d been there again. It had felt so real.

I struggled to get my breath under control and slow my heartbeat. It wasn’t easy while also fighting tears.

I couldn’t do this. I knew that. This wasn’t the time. I had to be strong. I owed it to my father. I owed it to Gage.

The last thing my father had said to me—yelled at me, really—was, “Run!”

And I had. And he’d stayed behind. He hadn’t run. He’d provided enough of a distraction for me to get away. He’d paid with his life.

I would never forget the sound of the shots that had filled the night air behind me as I blindly fled. They would ring in my ears for the rest of my life.

And now Gage was putting his life on the line for me, too. He hadn’t even hesitated.

Yes. I definitely owed these two brave men. I owed them a lot more than just keeping my shit together. But if that was the only thing I had to offer at the moment, it would have to be enough.

I took another deep breath and leaned back into the hot water. I was going to do my best to relax and rest my body. But I was going to have to do it with my eyes open.

I focused my mind, intentionally blocking out everything but the heat of the water, the way it penetrated my muscles, loosening them and making me feel blissful. Physically, anyway, if not mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

When I had sat still in the water as long as I could stand it, I climbed out of the tub and dried myself off, then wrapped up in the fluffy towel and emerged into the bedroom.

Gage was sitting in an armchair next to the bed, and his eyes widened at the sight of me in the towel. It was just the tiniest of movements, and no one that didn’t know him the way I did would ever have noticed it.

But I did. And it sent a flush of pride and pleasure through my body.

He nodded toward the bed, and my breath caught in my throat. Could he really be asking me to—?

But, no. When I moved my gaze to follow the line of sight he’d indicated, I saw a fresh pair of sweats and a T-shirt, folded neatly and sitting on the edge of the king size bed.

I took them and ducked back into the bathroom, pulling them on over my freshly-scrubbed body. My skin was still pink and warm and sensitive from soaking in the heavenly hot water, and I felt the cotton fabric of the sweats against me in a way I hadn’t before.

It occurred to me that the same sweats I was pulling on over my legs right then had also touched Gage’s body. That the T-shirt I was about to pull over my head had pressed against his chest.

I flushed, a heat filling me that was more dramatic than anything the steaming bath water had been able to accomplish. Damn. Talk about warmed up. I sure was.