Page 61 of The Bodyguard

“When I told you pretending was as far as it could go, between us… When I told youwecouldn’t happen, I didn’t mean that. I didn’twantthat. Iwantus to happen. I want us to be together. God knows I tried to fight it because when I told you it was dangerous, that was true. Thatistrue. But I can’t ignore it, not anymore. I can’t ignore the way I feel about you. I want to be with you, Lena, but it isn’t as simple as that. None of this is simple.”

He squeezes my hand tight, his eyes locking on mine.

“Do you want that, too? Do you want to be with me?”

“I – I don’t know what’s going on, Bodie. You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to do that.” He drops his gaze, his thumb stroking mine in a manner verging on nervous. “I don’t know where this relationship’s going, I don’t know what the future holds, I just know…” He looks up, his expression softening. “I just know that I can’t let you go. And if we stay here, I’m going to have to. So I need to know if you feel the same way, if you want to be with me…”

I pull my hand away from his and sit back. My head’s spinning, and I still don’t understand what’s going on.

My family’s been lying to me.

Bodie wants to be with me.

My family’s been lying to me…

“This is too fast. It’s too fast, Bodie…”

“It has to be that way, Lena. We don’t have time to think about this. We have to move now, or lose this one chance we have to get away from here.”

I feel myself frowning again, I don’t think I’ve had another expression since we sat down. “Why the urgency? Why can’t we talk about this…?”

“It needs to be now, Lena. And you just need to trust me. Okay?”

Can I, trust him?

I’m not sure…

“Do you want to be with me?”

His eyes bore into mine as he repeats that question, and I close mine for a second and remember what it felt like – whathefelt like, inside me.

You can’t let one-time-sex – no matter how great it was – cloud your judgement.

What else do I have to go on?

I open my eyes and stare straight into his. “Yes. I want to be with you.”

Maybe.

Possibly.

But that’s all I have right now.

“You’re willing to take that risk?”

I nod, even though I have no idea what that risk is, exactly. No idea at all.

“And I promise, I’ll tell you everything, when we’re somewhere safe…”

“Are we in danger?”

He pauses for a moment, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s making me all kinds of nervous.

“Nobody’s in danger.” I get the feeling he missed the “yet” off the end of that sentence on purpose, but I don’t push it. There’s something about the look in his eyes that’s telling me, whatever the hell is going on here, it’s quite obvious I know precious little about any of it.

They’ve been lying to you for a long, long time…

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