Page 47 of One Night With You

He answered, his face going gray as the other person spoke. I set down my phone and moved to sit right next to him, thigh to thigh, so I could put my hand on his.

“Yes. Yes. Tomorrow works. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. I’ll be there.”

He ended the call, and then sat there for a full thirty seconds without speaking, his heartbeat racing from the way that his pulse beat on his neck.

“Kingston?” I whispered.

“That was the testing center. They found another match.”

My eyes widened, and I turned to look at him fully. Another match for his bone marrow. I knew it was incredibly rare and almost never happened, but from what I’d read itcould. But for it to happen so soon after losing Eddie? My heart broke, only fastened together knowing that it needed to be the strong one here for him.

“Can you donate so quickly?”

“It’s been a few weeks now. So yeah. I think? They said it averages out around twenty days. I don’t really know the logistics of it, but they want me to come in and do testing. Just to make sure that I can.”

I held his hand, my heart racing. “Did they tell you anything else?”And how were you feeling?

“No. They didn’t tell me anything about them or timing other than getting in for testing. It can be anonymous, or they can meet me. I don’t know really what would be best. But it’s up to them. Right? If they want to meet me, I’ll be there. If that’s what they need.”

I knew I was going to probably say the wrong thing, but Kingston never thought of himself. Even if it broke me to do so. “You can protect yourself too by not knowing.” Because there was no question in Kingston donating if he physically could. He’d give every ounce of himself without realizing he’d left nothing for the man in the mirror.

“No, I’ll meet them. If they want. Because that’s what they need.”

Needs and wants. He kept using those words. But he wasn’t protecting himself. He had broken because his friend had died. Because he thought he wasn’t enough.

And now he was going to do it again, only a few weeks later.

Only he wouldn’t do it alone. He was slowly teaching me how to find my own strength—to find my own safety.

So I’d do the same for him.

Even if I didn’t know what it would mean.

11

KINGSTON

Tension on the job could kill. At least on my job. However, thanks to a team who knew what they were doing, I could at least try to lean into the chaotic thoughts that kept wrapping their way around me.

Getting the call from the hospital with Claire by my side had once again changed everything.

While part of me had wanted to jump off that couch and drive hell-bent to the hospital and do whatever I could for that person, that wasn’t reality. Reality was the crushing sense of disappointment, knowing that I probably wasn’t going to be able to do it.

There were so many uncertainties when it came to what happened next.

Maybe I didn’t have enough bone marrow. Maybe Iwasn’t fully a match. There was more to do than just a simple blood test. There were countless other things. Maybe I would get a cold. Maybe I’d be on a job and fall off a fucking ladder because of a dog and hurt myself to the point that I couldn’t do it. I could freeze to death in a snowstorm, and not be able to do anything.

Or maybe I could donate, bleed and be in pain and be sore and do everything that I possibly could and fail again.

My job was to keep people safe. And I hadn’t done it with Eddie.

“What’s going on, Kingston? Everything okay?” Daisy asked, as she came toward me, speaking into her mic so her voice was louder in my earpiece, and we weren’t disrupting the activities around me.

I shrugged, keeping my attention on the bigwig we were guarding for the afternoon. This was a last-minute setup, the local billionaire needing additional security for a charity event. Ford and Noah had done most of the setup for it, and Daisy and I were coming in to pinch hit for additional security since the man had gotten a few death threats.

Security details and bodyguard services were our normal job—this, and countless other things—and I needed to get my head in the game.

The fact that these death threats were because the man was donating hundreds of millions of dollars todifferent charities and organizations, flabbergasted me. The man was in the middle of depleting his estate he’d made after building a company that had developed a lifechanging scientific achievement. He’d made hundreds of millions in a few years and had become a billionaire because of it. Now he was in the midst of donating a majority of it to foundations to help others. Only not everyone was happy with how he spent it.

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