14. Cash
14
CASH
M y fingers curl around warm, smooth skin. In my half-asleep state, I brush my thumb over the dip in her waist, wondering when the fuck Kacie started to stay the night.
Maybe she’ll be up for a morning cardio session.
A breathy, sensual female sigh reaches my ears, and my thumb movement stops instantly as I fully wake up. My eyes slice open, and the dimly lit motel room comes into focus. A stream of light spills from the edge of the covered window.
I’m not in bed with Kacie.
If I were a wiser man, I would never have even gotten into bed with Monroe Blue. The way she was sitting there, freezing to death, eyes wide with terror, twisted a part of my heart I hadn’t felt in years.
Before she had passed away, my mother used to tell me that I bury my emotions deeper than any of my brothers. I don’t let things get to me. I don’t allow my or other people’s feelings to taint the way I view the world or the logical actions I should take due to the current circumstances.
It made me an excellent soldier. It’s made it hard for me to be vulnerable with women, hence my last relationship ending because of me being too closed off.
Apparently, as a bodyguard to an alluring world-famous singer, one nibbled lip and a set of fearful ocean-blue eyes are all it takes to bend my iron will and shatter my sense of professionalism.
I’m lying on my stomach, still fully clothed and on top of the covers, but my arm is draped over her side of the bed, caging her against me. My heart thumps at the sight of her curled into me, the barrier of the thin motel blankets separating us by barely more than a hair. Her arms are crisscrossed around my bicep, and she’s cuddled me up against her like a pillow. Her knees are curled up and resting against my upper thigh. It’s not completely inappropriate or sexual in any way, except in the sense that Monroe can’t help but look sensual because her entire essence is soaked in sex appeal.
Right now, however, she looks small and peaceful for the first time since I met her. I should be pulling my hand away to stop touching her, but I can’t seem to make myself do it and risk waking her up.
Once she awakens, we’ll be faced with the fallout from last night. I basically kidnapped her. Fidel is most likely scouring the city, searching for her. Danny is sure to be furious, ready to rip me a new asshole.
Motherfucker can try .
Against my better judgment, I don’t remove my hand. I watch her sleep like a fucking creep.
After a few minutes, she begins to stir. Before she fully wakes up, I pull my hand away from her and stand.
It is cold as fuck in here.
Surprisingly, I slept better last night than I had since leaving the ranch.
I go into the bathroom and splash my face with water. I don’t want to turn my phone back on until she’s awake, maybe with a full belly.
I hear her footsteps before I see her face peeking through the door. I dry mine with the hand towel before meeting her eyes.
She smiles softly. “I never would’ve thought I’d sleep that good in a cheap, freezing motel room.”
My hoodie is still swallowing her small frame, igniting a dark, possessive feeling deep down in my gut.
If I ever get it back, I don’t know if I’ll be able to wash it.
Her sleepy blue eyes and messy blonde hair is a sight I know I could easily get addicted to. She’s arguably the most desirable woman on the planet. I can’t get sucked up in her wake, in the twisted cyclone of desiring her like every other fucker on the street.
I pull the door open and walk out to give her the bathroom. “We should get some breakfast.”
We walk in through the main hotel entrance. Policemen are scattered throughout the lobby. Monroe has my hoodie and her sunglasses on. We stroll right past them and get on the elevator without a look in our direction.
She doesn’t say a word to me as we travel up to the top floor, where she was staying before I insisted on the relocation. Her arms are folded over her chest. Before the elevator opens, she sighs quietly. My shoulders are tight. I’m worried about our reception. Not for my sake, but for hers. I can sense that she’s stressed over everything that happened when we left and the new information about her stalker.
Once the doors part, armed policemen are guarding the door.
Funny how Fidel pulls out all the stops when his moneymaker is actually gone.
He didn’t give a fuck about the safety concerns I’d raised countless times. I step closer to her.
“Gentlemen,” I say, barely restraining myself from scoffing.
The taller one of the two sweeps his eyes over me once before stepping toward Monroe. “Miss Blue, are you unharmed?”
She nods curtly. “I’m fine. Where’s Fidel?”
The agent raises his eyes to meet mine as he knocks on the door. When it opens, Danny’s cold gaze lands on me, sparking with rage. Again, I resist the urge to scoff or smirk in his face. Monroe steps toward him. I can feel the hot anger practically wafting off of her head of security as we enter.
“Holy shit! You’re here!” Ember lurches forward from her place on the sofa, crushing Monroe in an embrace. Tears immediately begin spilling down her cheeks as she sighs in relief. She looks haggard, her violet-red hair sticking out around her ears and mascara smudged under her red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m so sorry for worrying you. I didn’t mean to cause you so much stress.” Monroe hugs her back tightly.
Fidel’s angry eyes cut from her to me. His phone is pressed up to his ear. “Yes, sir, she just walked through the door. No, no, but I will update you as soon as we have something. She seems unharmed, praise God.”
He lowers the device. Ember releases Monroe, and her manager steps close to pull her toward him with a side hug.
“I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” he chokes out.
A stab of guilt shoots through me. I could’ve let them know she was okay—Ember at least. I wasn’t convinced they wouldn’t be able to track us somehow. I feel confident that Monroe’s phone would’ve led them straight to us if she’d had it, and at this point, I don’t trust a single one of these fuckers, aside from Brooks and Ember.
Monroe hugs him back, smiling sweetly. “I’m fine. I didn’t have my phone, and Cash’s battery died.”
A white lie, but she doesn’t give it away. I told her I was keeping my phone off so they would think it had died.
“Why didn’t you bring her here last night? You ignored protocol.” Fidel turns to me, redness spreading up his neck.
Danny comes around to stand behind him, arms folded and feet spread wide. His jawline is set. The detectives have quietly left the room, so it’s just Danny, Fidel, Ember, Monroe, and me now.
Fidel shakes his head, pointing a finger at me. “You should have brought her back here. Where did you take her?” He turns to her. “What did he do to you?”
Monroe rolls her eyes at him. “He did his job and took me to a safe place. We were exhausted after escaping the fans, and I just wanted to lie low until today. This morning, we had breakfast, and then we came straight here.”
She collapses on the sofa, grabbing the remote. I didn’t want to bring her back here at all. I told her we should be on a plane back home, postponing the tour until she could increase her security team. She said no. I get it, but her refusal basically means I’m stuck here as the full-time bodyguard on duty because I clearly can’t leave her with any of these fuckers.
Who knows what could have happened if I hadn’t stolen a moped instead of waiting in the dressing room … like I was supposed to.
Fidel exhales slowly, closing his eyes. “I would have appreciated a heads-up. You disappeared. We searched the entire venue and contacted the CIA. We had no fucking clue where you were!” The vein in his forehead pops out as his volume increases.
Danny raises his hand to point a finger at me. “I want him gone. He’s a fucking clown for taking her like that. He knew better. Keeping him on the team is a liability.”
Monroe snorts, grabbing her phone from Ember’s outstretched hand. “I wasn’t aware I was a prisoner. Cash stays, and that’s final. He saved me from the mob that had somehow been let into the passage from my dressing room to the car. He got me to safety. We stayed at another hotel to avoid any more unruly crowds since the whole night had gone to shit. If anything, he’s the only one I view as capable on this entire security team.”
Danny’s face pales. He lowers his finger, but my eyes don’t leave his face.
“Mija, you have to realize how precarious this situation is right now. You can’t just up and disappear. You could have contacted us, and then if you wanted to switch hotels again, we could have made it happen.”
Could have , not would have.
She sighs, tapping on her phone. Her persona has shifted completely. The woman she is with all of them is vastly different from who she was in the hotel, fragile and terrified, asking me to sleep with her to keep her warm.
The doorknob clicks. I reach for the gun in my waistband, placing my hand on the pistol before seeing that it’s Katherine, Franky, and Brooks. Brooks’s face breaks into a wide grin when he sees me. He looks down at Monroe, smiling wider before stepping to the side.
Relief sweeps over Franky’s wrinkled face. “I told them you were probably just off souvenir shopping.” He goes up to her and presses a kiss to the top of her head before finding a chair to sit in.
Monroe smiles, shaking her head. Katherine goes over to sit on the sofa next to her, her eyes bright with excitement. She’s wearing a purple velvet blazer, a tight black dress, and six-inch Louis Vuitton stilettos.
“Has anyone been online today? Have you seen what they’re saying about you?”
Monroe’s smile fades. Her eyes rise to meet mine, blinking slowly. I can practically hear her thoughts about everything that happened—from the left hook I threw at the photographer to the stolen moped. I could have royally fucked things up in the eyes of the media last night.
Like I give a fuck.
But she does. My stomach muscles tighten.
She gives a lot of fucks about the media’s perception. It’s her entire career.
Monroe shakes her head warily, biting that damn lip. Katherine taps on her phone, screen mirroring it to the large TV hanging on the wall so everyone can see. It’s a social media video from last night outside the venue. The on-screen text reads, Monroe Blue spotted with a hot new man!
The video is of us already on the moped, stopping at a red light. Monroe’s hoodie flies off, and she looks directly into the camera. Her face is recognizable, but all that can be seen of me is the back of my head. It has millions of views.
The room is completely silent as Katherine swipes to the next video. This one has even more views. There’s no on-screen text, but it’s a clean shot of me and Monroe escaping down the passageway from the fans. It takes me a second to realize that it’s the man with purple hair filming us as he follows us toward the dressing room. The camera shakes as he gets closer. The audio is muffled, but the camera is clearly knocked out of his hand as he crumples on the floor after I punched him in the face. It keeps filming us as we escape down the hall.
Unease inches up my spine. The video cuts, but it doesn’t turn off. The cameraman’s face fills the screen as he speaks directly to the viewer. The skin around one of his eyes is a purple-blue hue, a shade darker than his hair. He’s speaking Korean, but the text on-screen auto-translates into English.
“You saw that, right? I was capturing content after the Monroe Blue concert when her bodyguard punched me in the face for getting too close to her!” He points at the black eye, grinning widely. “Now, I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it, but what I can’t help but notice is that he didn’t have to hit me like that, right? I mean, he’s a huge motherfucker, big barrel chest and over one-hundred and ninety centimeters! I was just filming them! I wasn’t even asking her for a picture, an autograph, nothing. As soon as I got close enough, he didn’t even warn me to back off. He went in for the punch, and I fucking collapsed. It was like he really wanted me to get the fuck away from her. What do you guys think this means?”
Katherine skips to the next video. This one is back outside the venue, but it shows me and Monroe walking in the crowd. We don’t think anyone has noticed us, so I wrap my arm around her shoulders to keep her close to me just in case someone does. She leans into me before looking up into my eyes … which reveals her face to the person holding the camera.
The girl behind the camera gasps, speaking quickly in Korean as she follows us across the street. “I knew it was her! Look!”
Thankfully, her path is blocked off by the crowd, and the video ends before I was caught stealing the moped.
Katherine pauses it. Her eyes are wide, face lit up and animated like she just won the lottery. The room is brimming with stunned silence. Brooks is trying to hide a knowing grin as he glances at me. I don’t react, folding my arms across my chest and planting my feet wide.
Katherine reaches for Monroe’s hand. “At first, I was worried about the spin this could take. If people thought you were cheating on Zade, that could look bad. But we’ve always known the fans weren’t really loyal to Zade. They can sense there’s no spark. Barely anyone even likes you two as a couple. I thought the answer might be you rekindling things with Clint, but now, I think we need to shift gears.”
Katherine looks over at me, as if seeing me for the first time through new eyes. She scans me from top to bottom, her smile growing.
Monroe’s brows pinch together. “What do you mean? They’re not upset about the guy with the black eye?”
Katherine laughs, shaking her head. “My gosh, no. No one cares! It’s still early, but it appears that they think the overprotectiveness is all very romantic.”
My fists clench tightly. The protocols I’ve broken, combined with the lack of professionalism, are sure to cause an issue. The security team and her manager already want me gone. Even though nothing happened, it looks bad. Really fucking bad.
“I guess this is as good a time as ever to tell you. I broke up with Zade before the tour. We agreed to keep it out of the public.”
Katherine gapes at her. “Well, good for you, putting on quite the show. We can tell the public when the time is right that you and he were over before this footage was leaked.”
She’s been single this entire time.
I’m glad I didn’t find out before we cuddled in a cold hotel room. My self control was already hanging on by a thread.
The news sends an unwanted thrill through my system. Their relationship never seemed very authentic, but the fact that she ended it with him makes me feel strangely … lighter.
Katherine skips to another video.
This one is a blonde American influencer with a microphone. She speaks excitedly into a microphone. “Did anyone else end up on the Korean side of social media today? I was scrolling mindlessly at two a.m., and I saw the most bizarre thing. A content creator was following Monroe Blue after her concert last night, and he was basically assaulted by her bodyguard! This man is huge and sexy as hell, and he just dropped the creator with one swing. Bam! There’ve been videos popping up of them together all over the place every minute. Him guiding her into a hotel, him opening her doors, him scanning the crowd at the concert with a death glare. People are trying to figure out who he is because he’s way too hot to just be her bodyguard. I mean, Zade who? Clint who? We want this guy. We need to find out who he is, but for now, we’re just calling him Watchdog. He’s fucking fine .”
Katherine pauses the video. “Do you realize what this means?” She looks from me to Monroe. “This means we have our new juicy story to feed the fans! Love triangle is out; hot, new, mysterious bodyguard is in. You’re more desirable than ever—movie stars, ex-boyfriends, bodyguards, everyone wants a piece . This is exactly the kind of viral story we needed to kick off your world tour!”