Page 64 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
“Think Sean will let me kill him yet?” Huck asks as we head for the van.
“No. But burying David alive in every possible logistical nightmare will be almost as satisfying.”
He grunts. “If you say so.”
“Huck, we’re going to ruin him. Let him live with the hell we will rain down on him. Death is too good for him. I want him to rot in this life for what he did to Bailey and his own daughter.”
To my surprise, Huck smiles at that. “And then we kill him, right?”
I sigh and pat his shoulder. It’s as big as my head. “After today, Bailey might let you.”
20
HUCK
I don’t wipe allthe blood off before I go to her.
Not because I’m trying to scare her. Or because I think it’ll make me look tough. It’s not about that. It’s about truth. Because when I knock on her office door—knuckles still stained, tension knotting my shoulders—I want her to see what her ex is making us do.
Bailey opens the door herself. She’s barefoot, hair down, wearing an oversized sweater that falls off one shoulder, and she looks nothing like the woman the world sees in magazines.
She looks likeBailey. The real one. The one who trusted me before she trusted herself.
Her eyes drop to my hands. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Did he talk?”
I nod once. “David hired him. Took the pictures. All of them.”
She leans against the doorframe like her legs don’t want to hold her anymore. Like she’s tired all the way down to the marrow. Her voice is a ghost. “I’m so tired of this.”
I reach out, palm up.
She looks at it for a long second before placing her hand in mine.
“I know,” I say. “That’s why we’re handling it.”
Her voice breaks. “Why is he still doing this? I left. Ileft. Isn’t that what he wanted?”
“No,” I murmur. “What he wanted was to keep hurting you.”
She closes her eyes. When she opens them, they’re full of heat. Grief. And something like shame. “I hate that he still gets under my skin.”
“He doesn’t.”
“He does.”
“Only because you’re still healing,” I say. “That’s not weakness. That’s proof you got away.”
She blinks fast. Then lets out a breath. “Okay, you win. That was…almost poetic.” She smiles, faint and tired. “Can you stay for a little?”
“Wasn’t planning on leaving.”
We stand like that for a beat—her in the doorway, me with blood on my hands, and everything between us softening.
There’s a question I’ve been carrying since we got back. The one that used to mean something when we were kids, up on rooftopsand cracked asphalt with stars overhead and cheap 7-Eleven snacks in our laps. “So. Do you still look at the sky?”
