Page 69 of Protecting Mr. Fine

“Oh.” I tried not to feel stung. “No problem. I understand. I need to touch base with the office anyway about the… uh…”The fucking email I hadn’t told him about.“…the updated Amsterdam protocol.”

They were also supposed to have an update on Noelle’s alibis for the three stamping events, and an update from Boomer about what he’d learned from trailing Bodhi around Dublin.

I began washing quickly so I could leave him in peace, but Zane reached out to stop me. “I didn’t mean to hurry you. And it’s not like… it’s not… I just want to work on this song without feeling like anyone’s listening. It’s not because I don’t want to share it with you. I just don’t want to share it with you until it’s right.”

“I understand. Zane, it’s fine.”

The word echoed in the enclosed space. Zane’s eyes widened. “It really does suck when someone uses that word, doesn’t it?”

I tamped down my hurt feelings and plastered a smile on my face. “Artists need time and space to create. I get that. As the Ventdestinians would say, ‘May the winds whisper fortune,’ and the song you write become your next mega hit.” I pressed a quick kiss to his lips.

But as I finished washing and made my way to my own room to find clean clothes, a niggle of worry took root in my chest, and I wished I hadn’t brought up superstitious Ventdestine or their winds.

In only a few more days, my time here with Zane in our sex-filled little bubble would be over. I would have to share him with the rest of the world again.

I’d have to relearn how to exist in his space without touching him. Without pleasuring him.

Without being able to ensure his complete safety in a perfectly isolated place.

Giving up a few of my precious hours with him, even for something he enjoyed as much as his music, made me selfishly annoyed. I wanted to spend every minute of this time with him that I could.

Because I had a feeling when winds whispered fortune onto him, they would blow my own happiness to smithereens.

SEVENTEEN

ZANE

Bears are sometimes portrayed as dangerous villains, but nothing could be further from the truth. They have always been curious, playful, protective, gentle, and trustworthy creatures when left to their own devices. Someone needs to get bears a better PR person and demand that those old fairy tales get a rewrite.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 37

I’d lied to Bear in the shower. The song hadn’t first come to me on the snowy trail. It had been percolating in my head for a while—ever since Barlo. But when I was in his arms in the shower, suddenly, the words had started coming, too, like popcorn kernels over a hot flame.

Pop pop pop.

They filled my head until all I could do was repeat them to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget them.

As soon as I was dressed in comfy clothes, I made my way to the sunroom and closed the door behind me.

My notebook and pen were still next to the guitar stand, so I grabbed them before sitting down on the sofa. I scribbled and plucked chords, playing around with the music until I began to feel it come together. The cheerful melody I’d been humming for days rolled like warm honey over me, melding with the lyrics, easy as breathing. And by the time the song was finished, I was giddy with the secret knowledge I’d written it about my bodyguard.

No one would ever know who the song was about, but suddenly, I wanted to sing it in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of people. I wanted to belt it out and feel the power of the music match the power of my feelings for him, especially after this week.

Part of me wanted the world to know that something inside me had been reborn because of Bear—that tiny shoots of happiness were sprouting up on once-barren stretches of my heart, unfurling like fern fronds in the sunshine, filling the places that had been parched and cracked from years of drought.

At the same time, though, part of me never wanted to share this gift, these feelings, with anyone but him.Thatpart remembered my mother telling me that fairy tales were lies.

I’d worked on a song about that this week, too, as a way to exorcise my thoughts and make sense of my feelings—a song I was loosely calling “Broken Fairytale”—but ironically enough, the happy ending I’d envisioned just wasn’t coming together.

“Fairy tales promise something that doesn’t exist in the real world, Zanie,” she used to say. “They make you think good things like that are possible, and so you keep looking for them until… well, let’s just say I would have been smarter if I hadn’t been looking for the fairy tale.”

I’d known at the time she’d meant my father. He’d been handsome and exciting, always showing up with a wad of cash from payday and the offer to go out and “paint the town red.” But by Monday… sometimes Tuesday at the latest, the cash would be gone, and so would he.

And she’d be back to working whatever jobs she couldfind. Nights at Waffle House. Afternoons at McDonald’s. One time, she had a job as a server at our local pizza place. They served beer and had a bar with sports on TVs hung over it. Enough guys from town would hold down the bar to make for decent tips. That year had been my favorite. She’d let me sneak into bed with her in the morning, and we’d sing songs I’d heard on the radio at Gran’s house.

She’d told me I had the voice of an angel and a heart two sizes too big. “That heart’s going to break into pieces one day, Zanie,” she’d say.

And that deep-down scared part of me now worried she’d been right.

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