Chapter 13
Bailey
It’s like jogging through Central Park with a zoo animal chained to my ankle.
I may as well be invisible since my run started twenty minutes ago.
And I don’t have to turn around to know he’s still there, jogging behind me.
It’s like clockwork.
Every woman we pass, from teenagers to elderly women sporting walkers, has the exact same reaction.
Their jaw goes slack, then their bottom row of teeth juts out a bit further than the top, and finally, they go silent, even if they’re in the middle of a sentence.
Others gasp. Most slow their speed to make the view last just a little bit longer. But each one is the same.
They’re all enamored with him.
And I get it.
“Your brother might as well be rocking three dicks,” I whisper into my AirPods. It’s my turn to multitask with Hollis on the other end of the line. “It’s like jogging with a meat truck trailing behind me, calling out to all the women of New York. How do you stand it?”
By this morning, I was feeling so restless that Rhett shocked me by agreeing to me going out for a jog. I wanted to clear my head and get outside after the last few days, and further than my own balcony.
The rule of the day? He’d jog behind me.
“Why not beside me?” I’d asked, pushing a rack of men’s shorts over to the side before rifling through them one by one. We were both looking for his size at the store so he’d have something to jog in.
The last few days have included plenty of impromptu security lessons with Rhett as my teacher: The need for tinted windows.
Talk of adding interior cameras, which we’d both decided against due to the potential for hackers.
And now this, the strange decision to have Rhett run a few feet behind me instead of beside me.
“I’m a trained observer,” he’d answered, holding up a pair of black running shorts in his size. “And I prefer the view from behind while I’m observing.”
He’d grinned and shoved another pair of shorts across the rack.
“I bet you do,” I’d answered, sarcastically, biting back a smile.
Hollis’ laugh rolls through my AirPods, and I click the volume down a few notches.
“My brother might not have three dicks, but he has been making girls drool since kindergarten.”
“Not surprised.” I smile. “He was a very cute kid.”
“The first time someone asked me if my brother was single, I was five.”
I glance behind me. Rhett’s barely worked up a sweat, although I’d call it more like a salty glow beneath that thin, white tee he’s wearing.
I didn’t even know men were shaped like that unless they were in movies and had a strict regimen of spinach and protein bars along with a drill sergeant trainer for eight full months before filming some Spartan movie scene.
This guy ate a Danish on the way here, and he still manages to look like that.
“It’s not like I’m trying to notice, but it’s impossible to blind my eyes to it when the trail of drool I’m seeing down the sidewalk is starting to concern me. If I go down, send help. It’s getting a bit slick out here.”
“Gross.” Hollis laughs.
“I can hear you from back here,” Rhett calls out.
I narrow my eyes and puff over my shoulder.
“It’s not like you’re unaware of the attention you’re getting,” I call back to him. “You’re probably used to it but I may as well be invisible up here! Which, I like, by the way!”
It’s a nice change of events, this being invisible thing. I might make a habit out of running with him, if he’ll let me.
“I’m only paying attention to what’s happening regarding you while we run,” he calls back. “From behind. Like we talked about.”
I can hear the humor in his voice.
“What’d he say?” Hollis asks. “I only heard the part about from behind.”
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Something about pretending not to notice the swath of ladies trying to climb him like a tree.” I raise my voice on that last half, so I know that he hears it.
“Typical Rhett.” She groans.
“Hey, did you ever kiss my brother that one summer?” I ask, suddenly curious since I’ve never gotten full confirmation from either one of them since dating each other’s siblings was strictly forbidden.
Hollis and Axel act like they hate each other, but I always thought there was something between them when we were younger.
My guess is that they’d rather agree to eat dirt than admit to it.
“I don’t want to know the answer to that!” Rhett calls from behind me.
“Why would that suddenly cross your mind?” she asks. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to fall for that sweaty, macho, brooding thing the ladies love about him.”
“Oh, what’s that? All I’m hearing is fierce deflection from answering my question about Axel, Holl.”
She laughs.
“I love you, but your brother is the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” she tells me, which is definitely not true, and nor is it the answer to my question. Axel is one of the best people she’s ever met, and she knows it.
“Okay. Your non-answer is starting to become an answer,” I point out. “Did you kiss him or not?”
“Stop talking about Axel kissing my sister!” Rhett calls out, loud enough for Hollis to hear. “They can’t be alone for more than two minutes without trying to kill each other and that’s all I’ve ever needed to know about what goes on between them.”
I laugh.
“For once, I agree with him,” Hollis says, then she doesn’t even try to hide the shameless change in topics. “So, nothing weird has happened since that last email with the photos outside the bookstore?”
I’ll take that complete deflection as a yes.
“Not one thing,” I confirm. “And no trace of those photos showing up anywhere else? Not online or anything?”
“Nothing that we’ve seen,” she confirms.
“How much longer do you have over there before you can come back?” I ask.
“They’re running so behind on the filming schedule due to Titus being a complete whacko, so it’s all up in the air right now.”
Hollis’ latest story about Titus losing his temper over a bad contour job with his makeup fades into the background when I nearly have to catch a young woman, probably in her late twenties, tripping over her own feet.
It’s not a coincidence that it happens the exact second her eyes land on my jogging partner.
“I might need to go put Rhett away and out of sight just to save these women from themselves,” I groan into the phone once she’s on her way again.
Hollis laughs.
“Go. Save the women of New York,” she answers bleakly. “I’m the one that might need saving next.”
“Hey, hang in there. Titus is shockingly lucky to have you, considering the way he acts.”
“I’d rather be jogging in Central Park. Hell, I’d rather be collecting trash at the bottom of the ocean than deal with one more of these outbursts.”
“I’d take the company here.” I glance behind me. “Although, Rhett and I are having a surprisingly decent time. He let me win at Speed Scrabble last night.”
“God, you guys really are having fun,” she says.
Sarcasm drips from her voice, making me laugh.
The one time I tried to get Hollis to play Speed Scrabble with me, she ended up tipping the whole board from pure adrenaline.
“But he’s lying if he said he let you win.
You’re the wordsmith, not him. I once beat him at regular Scrabble after getting my wisdom teeth out.
I was hopped up on Vicodin and he still lost.”
“Maybe tonight it’ll be a rousing game of Parcheesi?”
“Christ. I gotta get going. I’m grateful you’re not giving into all the urges your recent bestseller laid out so explicitly in Heartbreak, but please don’t kiss my brother out of sheer boredom.”
I laugh. “Not unless you kissed mine first, right?”
“Don’t even go there,” she muses, before adding, “Gotta run. Love you! Mean it! Be good!”
The call clicks off, and I slow my pace, forcing Rhett to slow his until we both stop.
Then I pick my feet up and start jogging again.
He immediately does the same until I stop short.
This time, he comes to a halt just short of hitting my backside.
I laugh and nearly start running again, but he grabs my hips from behind, keeping me from going anywhere.
My knees nearly dissolve right there on the pavement.
“Really, Bay?” he pants, groaning near the back of my neck. If I could bottle the proximity of that sound and open it back up to enjoy when I’m eighty-seven and need to remember the best feelings in life, I would.
I wait until he moves beside me to grin up at him.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. I go, you go, right?”
“Real funny. You ready to be done yet?” he asks.
We walk side by side, but his head remains on a swivel, shifting his gaze around the park like a hawk that hasn’t eaten in three days. Despite everything that’s already happened, I feel safe, but only because he’s right here. Plus, we haven’t heard anything new from the stalker for days.
“So good to get out,” I tell him, taking a deep lungful of air. “I love Central Park. The art, the people, the greenery. It’s some of the freshest oxygen you can get in the city, you know.”
“If you’re done, let’s get you back to your apartment,” Rhett answers, not even bothering to match my enthusiasm regarding where we are or the air.
He turns on his heels to go head in the opposite direction, but I stop and grab his arm.
“Rhett, it’s been days,” I remind him. “Nothing else has happened. It was just one weirdo obsessed with taking a few photos and a video. Weird, but not really dangerous. Plus, I’m convinced the lipstick thing was left by someone else.
Maybe the cleaners that I had in there earlier?
I still haven’t gotten them to return my call to confirm it, but that’s still more likely than this guy getting into my apartment unnoticed somehow. ”
He frowns. “We still need to know who he is so the police can clear him,” he tells me, sounding skeptical.
“I don’t disagree. But, we can walk out here a bit longer before going back, right? It’s so gorgeous out,” I plead, his jawline hard to miss from this angle, but he’s too busy scanning everything around us to hear what I’ve suggested. “Rhett?” I dig my elbow into his hip.
“Yes?” He nudges me back on the shoulder.
“I was just thinking . . . it’s been nearly a week and nothing has happened so . . .” I wiggle my brows. He needs to catch on. Even better if he’s the one to suggest what I’m thinking since I’ve taken a vow to follow all his mega-rules without complaint.
“So?”
He looks everywhere but at me as we loop around a fountain and back toward my apartment.
“I think it’s time we loosened the reins a bit, don’t you?” I ask, point-blank. “Nothing else has happened.”
“This is only the second or third time we’ve left your apartment in days, Bailey. Nothing else could have happened.”
“Unless he was coming to my place. And, look how well it’s going here!” I exclaim, twirling my hands around the open expanse of humans, landscaping, and grass. Other than the women who are openly staring at him, everything has gone surprisingly well. Completely uneventful.
“You should give this at least a week or two before you start to relax. And even then, I’m going to have to give you a few pointers on how to stay safe when I’m not around.”
I groan internally at the thought of Rhett leaving, but he agrees to take a few laps around the park, walking and talking, catching up on parts of life we haven’t thought to catch up on yet.
He tells me what SEAL training was like for him, although he doesn’t want to talk about the rest, or he can’t due to his security clearance — I’m not sure which.
Then he listens while I tell him what the publishing industry was like for me at first, and how I never thought I’d make it to where I am now.
Subtle jokes he makes or little things he says remind me of the way things used to be between us.
Back when we could just hang out talking for hours, doing nothing important.
I forgot how good a listener he can be, asking me about the smallest details I mention, wanting me to explain more.
Except he leaves his head on that damn swivel as we walk.
Looking everywhere but at me while we keep to the path.
Some parts of him are so familiar that I can feel myself getting sucked back into the Rhett vortex — that invisible force I felt around him as a girl. And then other parts of him are so new, it’s like looking at a stranger, and I have to remind myself how good of friends we once were.
Sometimes, being this far away from the lake, the only place we ever spent time together, it’s like two fish learning to recognize each other on land.
I only thought of Rhett as being the Rhett I knew.
Yet, there’s this whole person who’s been living outside of Cedar Shores for the last ten years without me. I wonder if I feel like that to him.
Inside my apartment, he’s started to relax more and more, but out here, I can see exactly how he made it through grueling training schedules and years of missions soon after.
He’s perfect at what he does. Flawless, really.
Even if he doesn’t believe it anymore. And even if it’s changed him in ways he might not recognize in himself, yet.
Every time I peek up at him, I’m reminded that Rhett’s a full-on man now.
There’s a three-day stubble shading his jaw.
And he’s nearly sweated through that white V-neck tee he’s wearing.
It’s no wonder the women out here aren’t capable of keeping their appetites to themselves each time they walk or jog by.
I’m having a hard time keeping mine to myself, too.
Because no matter how much time has passed, or how much he’s grown or changed, it’s still him in there. And the heart doesn’t forget. At least, not mine.
By the time we circle one of the paths in the park and get into the elevator back at my building, I’ve nearly got him agreeing to going out to dinner tonight instead of ordering in. Baby steps toward normalcy.
When the elevator slides open, we walk to the end of the hall and push my apartment door open, past the foyer, and down the long hallway.
When we get to the open room, my hand instantly flies to my mouth.
Every false sense of security I was convincing Rhett to have on our walk dissolves the instant I see what’s waiting for us.