3. Wesley
WESLEY
There’s a reason we swore a pact.
Three dumbasses on a rooftop, stolen beer in hand, lying on tar paper and sweat, staring up at a sky that barely had stars. Sean, Huck, me. Swore up and down we’d never go after her. Not even if she wanted us to.
We didn’t want to make her choose. We didn’t want to know which of us she would pick. The dream of her had to be enough. Now she’s back—and all I want is to break that goddamn pact.
Bailey Beausoleil. The one that got away before any of us ever had a real shot. The girl who once climbed the fire escape just to kiss the sky. The girl who kissed me once, on a dare, and laughed when I stood there stunned like I’d been electrocuted.
That smile…it’s still the same. But everything else? It’s different now.
She walks like she’s balancing a sword on her spine.
Still beautiful—achingly so—but there’s steel where there used to be mischief.
And when she talks about her ex, that piece of shit who laid hands on her, there’s a controlled fire in her voice that makes me want to commit felonies in broad daylight.
I lean back in my chair, fingers steepled against my mouth, pretending to scroll through data I haven’t even loaded yet.
Sean’s already issuing orders. Huck’s already halfway through configuring the convoy plan. But I can’t stop thinking about her scent.
This is a bad idea. We shouldn’t take the job. There’s no objectivity in this. No distance. I saw it on Sean’s and Huck’s faces. Felt it in my chest.
She’s the one who got away, and now, she’s back.
There’s no way this doesn’t go sideways. I walk back to Sean’s office to say as much. Huck’s already there. Good. Two birds, one stone.
Sean has always read me like a book, and before I can get a word in edgewise, he quietly says, “She’s in trouble.”
Like that settles everything.
“I know.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I don’t answer right away.
Huck’s the one who says it. “You think we can’t protect her?”
“No.” I pace behind my usual chair. “I know we can protect her. That’s not the issue.”
Sean narrows his eyes. “Then what is?”
I stop pacing. “Let’s be straight about this. We all had a thing for her.”
Sean doesn’t blink. Huck doesn’t flinch.
I keep going anyway. “We made a pact, remember? We agreed. No moves. No messing around. We wanted her too much, and none of us were willing to burn our friendship to the ground over her.”
Sean crosses his arms. “That was years ago.”
“And she’s still Bailey. ”
“She’s not just some girl we crushed on,” Huck says quietly. “She’s someone who needs help. That’s what we do.”
That’s the problem.
Bailey is not some abstract fantasy. She was here. Vulnerable. Brave. She’s got kids now. Bruises we can’t see. A fear she’s gotten too good at hiding. And she came to us. Not some Hollywood security firm. Not her agent. Us.
I run a hand over my topknot and let out a slow breath. “I’m not saying we say no.”
Sean smirks. “Sounds like that’s exactly what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying we think before we send the offer. Tell her that we need to check schedules. Pull availability. Figure out who’s going to take point and whether we can actually give her what she needs without?—”
“We can,” Sean says.
I shoot him a look. “So you’re just going to jump into this?”
He holds my gaze. “She’s in danger. You want to sit on it for a week while we talk feelings?”
Huck shrugs. “She didn’t flinch when she said she needed us.”
“And we all flinched,” I mutter. “Just internally.”
No one says anything. They know I’m right. But it doesn’t matter in the long run. It’s Bailey. I’ve never been able to say no to her before. I’m not going to start now when she needs us the most. They know that too.
Finally, I sigh and grab my tablet. “Fine. We’ll make it work. But I’m not pretending this isn’t complicated.”
Sean claps a hand on my shoulder. “It was always complicated.”
Huck murmurs, “It’s Bailey.”
And that, apparently, is enough.
Bailey Beausoleil was the kind of girl your parents warned you about. Not because she was cruel, or wild, or mean—though she could be sharp when she wanted. No, it was because she saw things. She saw you.
That was the problem.
I was the quiet one when we were kids. The adopted kid with perfect grades and a perfect record and a dumbass sense of humor, raised by blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth people who wanted me to be safe and silent and grateful. And for the most part, I was.
Until Bailey.
She didn’t care that I was the quiet one.
She didn’t care that I kept my head down, followed the rules, worked twice as hard to be half as accepted.
She liked that I asked weird questions and made stupid jokes.
She liked that I took apart our landlord’s busted microwave just to prove I could fix it.
She liked me. And it terrified me. She saw me, and she still wanted to be my friend. So, I followed her.
Into late-night walks. Into science fair sabotage. Into one stupid, unforgettable kiss on the roof, after which she giggled and called me “Wes the Wonder Nerd” right before laying her head on my shoulder and telling me she wanted to be famous someday.
“I want to be so famous,” she whispered, “that people forget I was ever poor.”
“You’re already unforgettable,” I said, not even thinking.
She blinked up at me like I’d just split an atom. Then she smiled. And that smile rewired every circuit in my chest. I’ve never been the same since.
The fallout came a week later when my mom saw us holding hands in the stairwell. It was innocent—just friends holding hands. But Mom didn’t see it that way.
She didn’t yell. She didn’t punish. She just sat me down and told me how important appearances are , and how I needed to make smart choices , and how girls like Bailey are a distraction.
I was sixteen. And I broke her heart by pulling away.
Not completely. I still showed up on the roof. Still made her laugh when she was having a rough day. Still fixed her busted cell phone with a soldering iron I wasn’t supposed to have.
But I stopped holding her hand. And I never kissed her again.
I thought distance would protect me. Us. The group. That stupid pact we made was born from the same fear—none of us wanted to lose her or each other. So we did the stupid thing. The noble thing. We stayed out of it.
And eventually, we watched her fall for an unworthy man. That’s the part of this that haunts me.
She’d had a few bit parts before she caught Oswalt’s eye, and after that, she entered his orbit.
The old Hollywood money, the glitz and glamour.
I kept alerts on her name until her name popped up so much that it was the only thing in my email.
Eventually, I had to let it go. She was living her life to the fullest, a married woman with kids and a career most would envy.
She seemed happy. So, I let the distance grow. Stopped sending her flowers on her birthday. Stopped occasionally texting. I let us drift apart. I figured she didn’t need someone from her past mucking up her future.
Now she’s giving us a second chance to do what we should’ve done back then. Protect her.
Back in my office, I swipe through my tablet, scrolling through the site schematics for her house.
The backyard’s got poor visibility. Two gates, both chain link.
The cameras she has now are low-res and badly positioned.
Her street’s quiet, but that’s not always a good thing—no witnesses if someone shows up when she’s alone.
The extended driveway adds to privacy, and again, that’s good and bad.
I make a note to overhaul the whole system. If we’re going to take this job—and it looks like we are—then we’re doing it right. Bailey doesn’t deserve halfway anything. She never did.
By the time I hit the war room, Sean’s already got three monitors lit up and a whiteboard full of bullet points I didn’t authorize but can’t argue with. He’s nothing if not efficient.
Huck’s sitting on the edge of the long conference table, one boot planted on a chair, arms folded across his chest like he’s ready to fight anyone who so much as thinks about making a suggestion he doesn’t like.
I kick the door shut behind me and nod at the board. “Looks like you two couldn’t wait.”
Sean shrugs. “You stalled. We acted.”
“I wasn’t stalling,” I lie. “I was gathering intel.”
“You were spiraling,” Huck rumbles.
I glare at him. “Thanks for the emotional diagnosis, Dr. Doom.”
Sean points to the screen. “We’re doing a three-tiered rotation—one on-site, one shadow, one remote. Huck takes point on school pickups and drop-offs. You handle home surveillance and schedule syncing with Jessica, the nanny. I’ll run lead on field ops and talent site coverage.”
I cross my arms. “And what about her house?”
“Already sent in an unmarked car for a perimeter sweep. We’re rebuilding the cam system ourselves—quiet and fast. You’ll oversee that install.”
Of course I will. Because when someone needs to control every variable down to the MAC address of a thermal cam, they call me. “What about her ex?”
Sean doesn’t look up. “Waiting on a deep scrape from our legal contact. I’ll do the soft recon tonight.”
“She gave us permission?”
“She gave me permission.” His voice is clipped. Final.
I glance at Huck. “You good with the schedule?”
He nods.
“Great. And what happens when we’re all in the same room with her again? You know, frequently , since she’s our client now.”
Sean’s jaw ticks. “We’ll be professional.”
“And when that stops working?”
He finally looks at me. “Then we adapt.”
Adapt. Right. Because nothing says “stable business model” like a woman who broke all our brains and caused a decade of unresolved tension pacing around the office in heels.
“You really think we can protect her without…crossing lines?” I ask.
Sean holds my gaze. “We’re going to protect her no matter what. Lines or not.”
Huck finally speaks. “We already crossed the line the day we let her walk away.”
I hate that he’s right. But I’ll be damned if I let anyone else touch her again. Not after what she’s been through. Not after what we didn’t do the first time around.
We should have stopped her from hooking up with Oswalt.
I knew it then, and now, I can’t stop blaming myself.
That’s probably the real reason I’m stalling on the job.
It’s not our friendship, although it is a factor.
So is our business. If this goes tits up, Orion could fall apart.
But what’s truer is this—now that I know what that piece of shit did to her, the guilt is gnawing at me.
Being frustrated with myself won’t fix this. I exhale hard and head for the door. “I’ll start mapping out her tech profile. I want full system access before nightfall.”
Sean nods. Huck just watches me with that silent, knowing look that says I’m not as unreadable as I like to think.
I don’t look back. Because if I do, they’ll see it. That I already made the mistake I swore I wouldn’t. I let her in again. Just by being near her, hugging her, smelling her, I’m in my head. I don’t like it.
She’s already in everything now.
Every gut instinct. Every twitch in my hands when I think about the kind of man who could put his hands on her and sleep at night.
It’s been a long time since I let myself care about anything other than clean code and predictable risk. Since I let myself feel like the kind of man who could matter to her.
There’ve been women, God knows. But none could hold a candle to Bailey. I told myself it was ridiculous. That I’d romanticized a childhood crush. That it was puppy love and I had to get over it. Never managed that trick, though.
Seeing her today—same fire, same fight, same everything —it messed me up.
I close the file on the screen. I already know what it says. The truth is, we don’t need to run diagnostics to know she’s worth protecting. We don’t need full clearance or an operations map to know the call’s already been made.
We’re taking the job.
My reflection stares back from the dark window—older, broader, harder than I used to be. But some things haven’t changed. I still remember what she looked like the night we made that pact. All of us pretending it was noble, not cowardly. All of us lying to ourselves.
We said we’d never make her choose. But what if she didn’t have to?
Dangerous thoughts.
I sink into my chair and stare up at the ceiling. The stars are out there somewhere, beyond the concrete and noise and electric hum of the city. Somewhere, Orion’s still watching. We named this company after a promise.
I might break it.