Page 35 of Escorting the Bodyguard
He’s here. He came back.
“Ford.” His name comes out as barely a whisper.
12
Gemma
The fabric samplesslip from my fingers, scattering across the table like expensive confetti. The materials I’ve been wondering about for weeks, now forgotten as my world narrows to the impossible sight in front of me.
He doesn’t disappear.
Not when I blink. Not when I look away and back again.
Ford stands there—real, solid, impossibly familiar—and everything in me stumbles.
My lungs forget how to work. The careful composure I’ve spent weeks rebuilding threatens to shatter like glass.
Don’t you dare fall apart. Not here. Not in front of everyone.
But my hands are trembling as I reach for the scattered samples, and I’m pretty sure my face has gone as white as the silk clutched in my fist. I can’t look away.
He takes a small step closer, hands tucked deep in his pockets like he’s physically restraining himself from reaching for me. The movement is careful, controlled, like he’s approaching a skittish animal that might bolt.
“You sent the fabric,” I say, and it’s not a question.
“I wanted to help,” he says, and his voice is exactly the same—that low rumble that used to whisper my name in the dark—but also rougher somehow, strained.
My brain scrambles to catch up, to process what’s happening, what he’s saying, what it means. “How did you even—” I stop, shake my head. “You’ve been watching me?”
Something flickers across his face. “Your Instagram. I saw you were starting a business.” He trails off, runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you should have the best materials. You deserved?—”
His jaw tightens like he’s swallowing the rest of that sentence.
The realization settles over me slowly. I cross my arms, suddenly needing the barrier.
He’s been quietly supporting my dreams while staying away himself. It creates a confusing tangle of emotions I can’t sort through. Gratitude mixed with hurt, wonder tangled up with betrayal.
All this time I thought I was alone. But he was watching. Helping. Like some kind of guilty ghost.
“Why?” The word scrapes out of my throat.
“Because you deserved to have your dream. Even if I couldn’t be part of it.”
The tenderness in his voice nearly undoes me. Around us, the showcase continues—people browsing the last few booths, vendors calling out end-of-day deals, the normal world moving forward while mine shifts off its axis. Ford’s gray eyes never leave my face, and I can see something in them I’ve never seen before. Vulnerability. Hope mixed with fear.
We stand there with everything unsaid hanging between us like a bridge I’m terrified to cross. I open my mouth, but no words come.
What do you say to the man who broke your heart but never stopped believing in your dreams?
A month of building this life alone crashes over me—crying myself to sleep in my empty apartment, going to doctor’s appointments with no one to hold my hand, learning to be strong because I had no other choice. All because he chose to leave.
“Gemma,” he says quietly, and I can hear the uncertainty in his tone.
“I can’t...” My voice wavers somewhere between hurt and anger. “I can’t do this right now. I have to finish here.”
He immediately steps back, hands raised. “Of course. When does this end?”
“Five o’clock.”
