Chapter 12
Diana
THEY SAY LOVE conquers all, but I disagree. Money conquers everything. Money conquered my childhood. Money built the walls I live behind, and money pays the man in front of me to make sure those walls stay standing.
“Use me,” Kai says again, and I can see the next sentence already loaded behind his teeth.
“But just me.”
I don’t move. I don’t say anything.
“Don’t give yourself to other men.” His voice drops; the words are quiet but weighted with intent. “None of them deserves you. They look at you, and they see a beautiful woman with a beautiful body, and they don’t realize they’ve hit the goddamn lottery. They’re blind, every single one of them.”
I let a breath out through my nose. “You don’t know that.”
“I know it because I don’t see any of those men kneeling. Begging. Offering you their lives.”
I let another breath out, through my mouth this time.
“What is this, the dark ages?” I say, and I want it to land dismissive, mildly bored. But there’s a muscle in my chest contracting, a muscle that hasn’t been asked to do anything my whole life is now being told to do its job.
Here is what Kai Romero doesn’t understand about himself.
He is young and he is beautiful. He is the kind of man every woman in every room loses her composure over without meaning to.
No exception. No one is immune to him, I dare say.
But underneath all the muscle and all the anger and the way he stands like he’s always bracing for impact, there is a man who is deeply devoted.
And if I am not careful, if I let this warmth spread even an inch further than it already has, I will fall for this man. Falling for me has never been a metaphor. Falling is the one thing I cannot afford because I have already spent every spare life I have getting here.
“I know what I am,” Kai says, and his voice has gone quieter. “I’m not deluding myself. I’m not saying I deserve you either. I can’t offer you anything you don’t already have. There’s nothing in my hands that matches what’s in yours.”
A man telling me he has nothing to offer me is a man I have heard before. But none of them ever meant it the way Kai means it.
“Let’s say I agree,” I say.
He stops breathing. I see it.
“Hypothetically.” I smooth the fabric over my knee and take my time with the word. “Let’s say I agree to this exclusive arrangement you’re proposing. What if I’m tempted?”
His eyes have gone wide, and there is a light in them that I do not want to be responsible for.
“Kai.”
“You said you agree,” he whispers.
“I said, let’s say. That’s conditional.” I snap my fingers once in front of his face.
“Whatever the condition, I’ll do it.” He doesn’t even blink at the snap.
“The condition is what happens when I’m tempted. What then?”
“I’ll make sure you’re not.”
I stare at him.
“I will make sure,” he says again, slower, “that there is no room for temptation.”
The confidence in that statement. I want to laugh.
I want to cup his face and tell him that is not how any of this works, that temptation is not a man you can intercept at the door, that temptation is a mood at three in the morning.
But I don’t. Because the truth is, the only man I have wanted to touch since the day I met him is right in front of me.
“You can’t give me a Rolex on my birthday,” I say instead, and he looks away. I reach out and touch his cheek until he looks at me again.
“I’m not going to tell you not to worry about it.
I grew up in an average family. Everything I have, I built.
I built it because I needed to never be powerless again.
So I understand you, Kai. The feeling that you’re not enough because your bank account doesn’t match.
I understand it because I lived it. I chased it down because I refused to keep feeling it. ”
He is watching me with an expression I have to look away from, because if I hold his gaze one more second, I will lose the thread. I look at the crate behind him instead.
“But if—if—I agree to this exclusive thing, and I have not agreed yet, I am still evaluating—”
“You’re evaluating.”
“Shut up.” I hold up one finger without looking at him.
“If I agree, I don’t want you doing anything stupid.
I don’t want you quitting this job and going off to guard some tech CEO’s twenty-two-year-old daughter because you’ve decided the gap between us is too wide.
Because I’m your employer and it makes you uncomfortable.
That is not an option. I need a bodyguard.
Tonight proved that rather definitively.
I need you guarding me. Not somebody else. Do you understand that?”
He opens his mouth, but I keep going.
“I need you. The person. Not the money or the car or the jewelry, because I have all of that already.” I take a breath.
The next part matters, and I want to put it down right.
“If you need my help, in whatever way you need to chase down that feeling of not being enough, I want you to be honest with me. Tell me and I will be in your corner, because I understand the climb.”
His hand comes up.
I don’t move as his palm cups my face. His skin is warm—almost hot—and his thumb travels the line of my cheekbone, and his fingers curl behind my ear into my hair, and he is trembling. Tears are moving down his face again, and he is not trying to wipe them.
“I love you so much,” he says. “I will die without you, Diana.”
I narrow my eyes. “Where is this coming from?” My voice is steady. My heart is not. “Why are you declaring love all of a sudden?” His thumbs brush across my cheeks, back and forth, even though there’s nothing there to wipe away. “You’re trying to guilt me into something.”
“I am in love with you,” he says again, each word lands separate, deliberate, weighted.
“And it is killing me to watch you go to other men. It kills me. I hear it. I see it. I can’t—” He stops.
He swallows. “I don’t need you to say it back.
I don’t need you to change your life or introduce me as your boyfriend.
I just need you to let me stay beside you and think of me first if you need sex.
That’s it. That’s everything I’m asking for. ”
I look at this man with tears on his face he refuses to hide. And I will admit it, being offered a man’s heart like this is doing something to me I did not account for.
I am a goner. And I have been one for longer than today, if I’m being honest about it.
“I will give you my whole life,” he adds. “Whatever you decide to do with it. Please just think of me first. Before anyone. If you need sex, I’m there. If you need someone by your side to lose his mind quietly, I’m already doing that one.”
The storage room is quiet. His hand is on my face. This young, handsome, foolishly devoted man is crying and telling me he loves me, and my steel-reinforced heart has a bend.
“Fine,” I say.
His breath catches.
“Fine,” I repeat it because I want him to hear it twice. “I’ll think of you first.”
His whole face reorganizes itself. The tears are still there, but the joy and the disbelief are fighting for the same square inch of him.
“I will be evaluating your performance,” I add, and my voice is perfectly even, and I am lying through my teeth.
He leans forward and he kisses me. He carries the taste of sweat and copper, and he is kissing me with everything he has.
I’m done. I know I’m done.
The fortress I held for as long as I can remember, this man walked through the front gate without breaking stride. It’s a full break now, and I cannot weld it shut again.