Chapter Twenty
Lennon looked pale as I trailed behind her out of the stage area and I wanted nothing more than to press my hands to either side of her face and comfort her… but I couldn’t.
That much had become obvious the night of the Kennedy garden attack.
I’d gotten distracted, and in that distraction, I hadn’t noticed the asshole with a gun until it was almost too late.
Not only that, people had heard Dallas’s comment to Lennon about the Prince of Wales and the argument that had ensued after that.
It was stupid and sloppy, and to make matters worse, the president herself had issued a verbal warning.
That was enough for me to take several steps back.
Or it should have been.
It was a fight every single damned day to maintain professional boundaries with Lennon because now, after the fact, I realized just how much they had crumbled in the few short months that we had been protecting her in ways that they never had when we worked with protectees abroad.
I woke up every day and thought about her.
About how messy her hair would be when she came out into the living area of the tour bus and requested the type of coffee that made your teeth hurt because of how sweet it was.
Or how she stayed up far too late into the night on her computer poring over the different iterations of speeches that the president’s people were sending her way for the various events she was supposed to attend.
My eyes seemed to follow her wherever she went even when they weren’t supposed to, my instincts keyed into her scent more than ever since we kissed in the kitchen weeks ago.
Then there were the things that weren’t even inherently romantic that had changed.
The dynamic of my team had shifted and I was afraid the changes were irreversible now.
We’d always been buddies and coworkers. Hell, we’d even lived together for the better part of our adult lives.
But ever since Lennon had crash-landed into our laps as the object of our protection things had changed.
It was almost instinctual that we were together now, moving as a group in tandem. Half of the time I didn’t even need to use the Comms unless I needed to talk to the outer team that we worked with.
I could move in one direction to protect Lennon and Brooks or Zeke or Dallas would naturally move in the opposite without me even having to ask. It was as easy as breathing.
It was almost pack-like.
Something I was terrified to say out loud.
“Lennon!”
“Lennon!”
“Can I get a picture?!”
People screamed Lennon’s name like she was some kind of popstar rather than a politician’s daughter, and normally it would have confused me why people were so obsessed, but I understood it now.
There was something magnetic about Lennon Holloway, something that I was pretty sure that people hadn’t seen during previous elections because she had been so sheltered by her parents and grandparents.
Now she moved as a solo operator. Add on all of the drama that seemed to swirl around her and her propensity to run her mouth? Lennon Holloway was a phenomenon, for better or for worse.
I watched the back of her, the way she held her shoulders straight and held her head high despite the fact that I had smelled the scent of her anxiety earlier when she came off of the stage.
She was still afraid and had been ever since the day of the shooting.
And yet she still stepped onto that stage and did the damn thing anyway.
I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her, how admirable it was to push past your fear and do something even when you were terrified.
But I couldn’t, and it was killing me and the very dissatisfied alpha instincts inside of my head.
The same alpha who seemed intent on pushing me right over the edge of reason and into Lennon’s arms—Collier and the president be damned.
A loud clanging sound filled my ears over the din of chaotic cheers and my entire body stiffened, already on high alert.
“The barricade is down!” Zeke shouted from the front of the little circle we naturally formed around Lennon and one glance around her showed that he was right.
About ten feet of the barricades had flopped over under the weight of the people leaning over it and several people had fallen with it, the people behind them stumbling into our path. The same path that led back to the bus and back to safety.
“Shit,” I muttered as I tried to figure out the best way to get back to the bus.
“Lennon!” a girl who had managed to slip around the barricade shouted as she held up what looked like an autograph book. “I’m such a huge fan!”
“Sorry, she doesn’t do autographs,” Dallas said, cutting her off.
Zeke and Brooks were doing similarly to others who felt entitled to Lennon’s time.
My gaze, which was scanning the crowd, shifted back to Lennon just in time to see a guy in an oversized trench coat and a blue baseball cap about to put an arm around her.
He looked familiar enough that it set off alarm bells in my mind.
“Back off!” I growled and despite knowing it was probably a bad idea to do so in front of so many people, I plucked Lennon off of her feet and into the air, cradling her in one arm as I grabbed the other guy by the back of his coat with my other.
“Hey! I just wanted a picture is all!” The guy protested but my eyes were already moving to the stacks and stacks of polaroids that were tumbling to the ground at his feet… and the shiny pair of scissors in his hand.
Every polaroid was of Lennon.
Every. Single. Fucking. Polaroid.
Lennon walking Ginny, Lennon outside of hotels, Lennon younger at what looked like university.
“Zeke,” I said, my voice cold as I tucked Lennon’s face into my neck so she couldn’t see. “I need you to call for backup. Immediately.”
The guy was trying to twist out of my grasp, but I wasn’t having it.
“You better knock it the fuck off before I break your skinny neck,” I growled, low and quiet so only he could hear.
His eyes widened. “You can’t say that to me!”
“Try me, asshole,” I said before shoving him at Brooks. “Deal with him.”
“What was it?” Lennon asked, confused. Her breath was hot on my neck and I could feel the fast beat of her heart and the fear coming off of her in waves.
“Don’t worry about it,” I soothed, lifting my now freed hand and cupping her face against my neck. “Just keep your eyes closed and it will all be over soon.”
Hours later I stood in my hotel room staring at the face that I’d known looked familiar.
After all, I spent every morning looking at the watch list that intelligence sent me. All of the people who had spoken about Lennon online or had been identified as a potential threat to her or the Holloway family as a whole.
This guy had been around for years but there had never been anything to actually hold or charge him on… until today.
According to the agent who questioned him, he said he’d purchased the polaroids of Lennon online and that all he wanted from her was a bit of her hair and when the barricades went down he saw it as an opportunity.
His house an hour away showed more polaroids than even the ‘favorites’ from his jacket.
It was completely disgusting and it filled me with a special kind of rage that made me want to go and break something or blow something up.
How could people act like this about someone they didn’t even know?
This guy had been following her around for years even when she was just a kid.
I wanted them to lock him up and throw away the key, but unfortunately that wasn’t how things worked.
Not only that, all of the events of the afternoon had happened under the harsh scrutiny of over ten thousand people and the news cameras who had gotten their drama for the day.
Instead of the headlines reading ‘STALKER OF PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER APPREHENDED,’ they read: ‘THE BEAUTY AND THE BODYGUARDS, JUST WHO ARE THE SECRET SERVICE AGENTS OF LENNON HOLLOWAY?’
Then they’d proceeded to dig up each and every photo they had of us with Lennon, from Dallas helping her backstage in Arizona when she had heatstroke, to us innocuously standing behind her at events.
Our names and histories were currently being scrutinized by the news and the internet at large.
My niece had even sent me a TikTok edit earlier that had made me shudder when the words ‘bodyguard thirst trap’ popped up.
This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid and I had been the one to do it because I’d picked Lennon up and cradled her like an alpha would an omega.
And the shittiest part was that I didn’t regret it one bit.
Even if I had spent the past hour being reamed out by Collier on the phone for ignoring his earlier warnings.
Lennon had needed comfort and protection in that moment and my instincts had been screaming that I was the one who needed to provide it for her.
That bastard with the polaroids in his pockets was just one of many on that damned watchlist and just the thought of any one of them touching her made me want to shred my own skin off.
Someone knocked on my hotel room door, stopping the ferocious pacing that I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing.
I was technically off-duty for the night as we had the entire floor of the hotel to ourselves… but I’d never had a good work life balance before so I figured why start now.
Opening the door, I fully expected to see Zeke or one of the other agents on the other side, ready to talk about the freak with the polaroids or the events in New York in the morning, but instead there stood Lennon in a nightgown that nearly made my eyes bulge out of my head.
It clung to every soft curve she possessed before falling around the tops of her thighs like champagne colored water.
Where she had even procured such a thing when she’d spent most of the tour dressing in pajama pants and a t-shirt I wasn’t sure.
“Lennon,” I said, my voice coming out in a low growl that made her shoulders shiver.
She gave me a little wave, her hands wringing the long braid that fell over one shoulder, showing me just how nervous she was.
“What are you doing here?”
I could connect the dots. I wasn’t a stupid man, despite some of my choices over the past few weeks.
But I wanted to hear her say it.
“You know why I’m here, Maverick,” she whispered, her whole body seeming to flush from her cheeks, to the tops of her pale shoulders. “Can I come in?”
This was a monumentally bad idea. There were so many things that could and would go wrong if I let her into my room tonight.
We were already skating on thin ice with Collier and I was pretty sure that her mother was about two seconds away from throwing us inside of some kind of scary ass prison and throwing away the key…
And yet I still slid my arm up the doorframe, creating enough space for her to walk underneath.
Lennon’s lashes fluttered as she looked up at me.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
I nodded. “Now get in here before I change my mind.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.