Page 21 of Guarding Rory

I sometimes wished I had the talent of making conversation when none was needed, rambling to fill the empty spaces, butI’d never mastered it. Hadn’t really had the opportunity to learn it, spending most of my childhood isolated from people who weren’t a part of my strange, mafia family.

So rather than trying (and likely failing) to converse with Dev as he drove, I looked out the window as we wound through the rural back roads where the houses thinned and people had more land to spread out. The trees rose high and grew so close together that you could barely see the outline of homes through the trunks. I’d grown up in a similar area on the opposite side of the city, but it’d been years since I lived with my father.

My childhood home was closer to a compound, a giant mansion that housed various staff and members of my father’s organization. It always felt too large, a place I thought I’d grow into, except I never had. Everyone had always treated me kindly, as Cormac’s daughter and Cillian’s goddaughter, but the floors always felt like they were steeped in blood, the walls too close for me to grow.

And then I’d moved to the city, where I thought I’d blend better among the people in the streets. I reasoned - and my father agreed, after some persuading on my part - it would be harder for someone to figure out who I was if I was one of many. That, combined with my constant security, left me feeling safe for years on my own. Until now.

But my safety was something I had little control over, at least no more control than agreeing to the plans put in place by those more well-versed in the topic. So instead, I spent my time on more intellectual pursuits. Like imagining the home Dev was driving us to. I tried to picture what Dev’s house would look like, having such little context for the man sitting beside me. The man I was now engaged to.

I couldn’t see him in a house like the one I grew up in. Impersonal, cold. Dev had too much personality. But I couldn’t see him in one like Alex and Ames’s either, the earthyminimalism not fitting his casual, friendly style. I wondered if I’d end up at a log cabin as we drove further into the forest, a place where Dev could chop wood - I eyed his biceps in his sweatshirt, confirming that he probably could cut logs with ease - and stay away from the prying eyes of his neighbors.

But that didn’t quite fit. So I thought up another house, this one sleek and modern and full of doors with biometric locks and caches of weapons, a prepper’s wet dream come to life. The type of home that would confirm every rumor about how dangerous he and Alex and Bex were as a team, both on a computer and in person. Though that didn’t quite seem to fit Dev, either.

If I were honest with myself, I was most worried about the house. The engagement, the marriage, all of that could be justified and rationalized and cut into manageable pieces until it felt digestible. I didn’t have a boyfriend, no one holding me back from entering a sham marriage for my safety. It honestly felt like the best offer I’d ever receive, since I didn’t live a life where true love would be so easily attainable.

But my home? The place I lived? That mattered.

I had spent most of my time at home, hiding out and keeping myself sequestered in the hopes that my identity wouldn’t be at risk. Staying home because there was nowhere else I wanted to go alone, nowhere I could go except with my bodyguards, whose presence made me feel even more alone. I had my father, sure, and Cormac’s family, who’d adopted me as one of their own, but there wasn’t a substitute for friends. For the freedom that average people had, the freedom I knew I never would. So I’d turned my bedroom at the compound into a safe space, somewhere I could be alone and be myself without worrying about who could discover my identity. My apartment had been a larger version of that, the place I felt most comfortable in my skin.

But now I was starting over, creating a space for myself in a home that I’d never even seen. The thought of having the place where I usually felt most like myself feel foreign had my anxiety simmering, making my chest feel tight.

Until Dev’s quiet voice reached out across the car, barely a breath, “I hope you like it.”

Before I could assure him I would - my worry suddenly gone with the small vulnerability in his voice - we’d turned sharply into a hidden driveway off the main road, the tires of the car bouncing along the gravel path. The log cabin was feeling more and more likely, until the gravel road abruptly turned to stone, the slide of our wheels silent on the smooth surface.

And then we were there, the trees thinning into a large plot of land with far-reaching swaths of grass that would be lush in the summer. Evergreen hedges lined either side of the driveway leading up to the cutest house I’d ever seen.

It was a white stone, cottage-style home with wide picture windows taking up much of the front of the house. Stone pavers led up to the front door, grass growing in the negative space between them to add even more of a cottage-y feel. Some sort of vining plant grew up the side of the house, though it’d been cut back for the winter, and I imagined what kind of greenery would grow, what kinds of flowers would bloom when winter turned to spring in a few months.

Dev parked outside the garage, hurrying over with his arms outstretched as I clambered clumsily from the passenger seat, as if scared I’d fall again in the minuscule jump to the ground.

“Do you have to spot Wren and Ames when they jump out of your passenger seat?”

“Do you want me to answer that?” He asked, lips twitching with mirth while I glared up at him.

“No,” I answered with a grumble. I couldn’t imagine self-assured Ames or graceful Wren falling out of a truck that barelystood higher than the sedans I’d been driven around in most of my life. My clumsiness had been an early indicator that I wasn’t cut out for my father’s business, considering few people would trust me with deadly weapons when I struggled with basic bodily movements. I blamed it partially on the ever-simmering anxiety that took up so much space in my brain, always causing my body to act a few moments before my brain caught up.

I followed Dev up the short stone path toward the house, watching as he ducked under the hanging branches of a low-lying tree, the leaves long gone.

“It’s a cherry blossom,” he answered my unspoken question, having turned around when I failed to follow him up the path.

“I bet it’s beautiful when it blooms.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Dev shrugged, reaching out so I could slip my hand into his as we made our way toward the arched stone of the doorway, the black door a stark contrast to the rest of the house. “I haven’t spent a spring here yet. So I guess we’ll get to find out together.”

He said it casually, as if it weren’t odd to talk about sharing his home and his space with a near-stranger. As if the idea of watching the buds on the tree turn to blooms in the spring was something he looked forward to, rather than a byproduct of the arrangement he had made with my father.

So I just nodded as we made our way through the front door, agreeing, “I guess we will.”

Dev allowed me to tour the bottom floor at my pace, the open-concept rooms flowing into one another. I heard the light tapping of Dev’s foot, an anxious movement he didn’t seem to notice as I took in his space.

The coziness of the exterior matched the interior, with a large, deep-set white couch set opposite a wide fireplace, covered in throw pillows and blankets. I imagined Wren and Ames had picked them out, mostly because they had told meearlier they helped decorate most of Dev’s house. The kitchen was small but updated, with white cabinets and butcher block countertops that matched the exposed rafters. The dining room held enough seating for ten, and it was too easy to imagine us sitting there, alongside Ames and Alex, Bex and Wren.

The second floor came next, a series of empty bedrooms painted in warm whites and beiges. Dev’s bedroom was covered with thick white carpet, softening our footsteps as we walked into the room. There were more exposed rafters, these seeming to hold up the vaulted ceiling of the bedroom. But what drew my eye was the wall of windows, the entire triangle that made up the back wall made of glass that allowed a view into the backyard and the forest beyond.

I walked close enough that my toes touched the smooth glass, cold seeping through the window and into my bones. My breath hitched as I took in the view. There wasn’t a neighbor behind us for miles, not one that I could see, anyway, just trees stretching far in the distance.

It wasn’t long before I felt Dev inch up behind me, his chin resting on the top of my head as he took in the view alongside me.

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