Page 79 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
By the time I’m spent, my skin is slick with sweat and my throat raw from moaning their names, I can’t remember where the guilt ends and the love begins. All I know is that I’m theirs, completely, and that the thought of losing them is unbearable.
Sean tucks me against his chest, his lips pressed to my hair. Wesley strokes my arm. Huck’s arm cages me to his side, careful with the bandage but unwilling to let me go.
“You’re not sending us away,” Sean murmurs again, and this time I don’t fight it.
“You know I don’t want to.”
“I know you’re not going to either.”
I hate that he’s right. At this point, I can’t send them away, no matter how much I think it’s the right thing to do. The truth is I need them. Not only for protection.
I love them. With all my heart. Part of me always has.
“It’s selfish to make you three stay with me, knowing what’s on the line.”
Wesley snorts. “Make us? Do we look like the kind of men who someone could make stay somewhere they don’t want to be?”
“Obviously not, but you know what I mean.”
Huck murmurs against my shoulder, “Kick us out. See how effective that is.”
I roll my eyes and let their breathing lull me to sleep. No point in arguing with these three and I know it. Never worked when we were kids. It’s not going to work now.
I just hope I don’t get them killed.
26
SEAN
The smellof Huck’s blood still hangs in the house. No amount of bleach or candles covers it. Wesley scrubbed until his knuckles went red, Bailey lit every overpriced candle she had, and still I smell it when I breathe too deep. Copper and smoke and the memory of what could have happened if Huck hadn’t caught the man in the hedges.
I don’t like depending on luck.
By dawn I’m already on the phone, pulling in favors. I don’t waste time explaining. The men I call don’t need explanations. They trust me, and I trust them, and I pay them very well. They’ve followed me into places most men wouldn’t survive and walked out again. They know how to watch, how to wait, how to act without panic.
By mid-morning, the grounds are no longer bare. Six of my people spread out across the property like they’ve been here all their lives. Two at the gates, rifles slung. One sweeping the outer fence line, one pacing the long drive, two on the rear grounds. They move like they’re part of the land, blending into the hedgesand shadows. A stranger won’t spot them until it’s too late. That’s the way I like it.
Chief arrives without being asked. Of course she does. She looks at me once, no questions, no greetings, and I point toward the perimeter. That’s all it takes. She nods and heads for the tree line. Chief doesn’t need orders. She is the order. With her walking the edges of this place, and a team of six at her back, no one is slipping in alive.
Inside, it’s down to the three of us—me, Wesley, Huck. Huck’s arm is wrapped tight, the bandage bright against his skin. He moves like it doesn’t matter, like he hasn’t been stabbed, like the dizziness that hits him in waves is just another inconvenience. He even insists on walking the halls with a rifle in hand.
Wesley tells him he’s an idiot at least five times before noon. I tell him six. He ignores us both.
Bailey tries to act like she’s fine, like the attack last night didn’t rattle her. But I see her. The way her hands won’t stop fidgeting, the way she paces the length of the kitchen when she thinks no one notices. She startles at sounds that wouldn’t have made her blink a week ago. She wears her calm like a mask, but her eyes give her away.
I don’t blame her. Someone planted explosives under her stairs. That’s not a threat you shrug off.
The house feels different with the guards outside. Heavier. More alive. Every creak and shift in the walls carries down to us in the ops room, where Wesley is hunched over monitors and Huck pretends not to sway in his chair.
I keep walking the halls. I can’t sit still. Every window is a reminder of the blind spots I’ve already filled with cameras.Every shadow against the glass makes my hand twitch toward the knife I keep tucked at my side.
I want to take the fight to whoever’s out there. But Bailey’s here, and the kids will be soon, and that means I stay inside. I make myself the wall instead of the blade.
That mission doesn’t leave my mind. Not when I glance at the stairs where the device was hidden. Not when I catch Bailey staring out the window like she’s searching for ghosts. Not when I hear Eli’s laugh in my head and wonder what it would sound like cut short.
We fall into a rhythm for the next week. My perimeter team remains invisible until I call for them. We stay in the house. There’s no chatter, no attack.
Nothing.
