Chapter 9
Luke
Iloved my job, most days I woke up rearin’ to get out there and dive in, but leaving Oliver this morning sat wrong in my gut.
Forty-eight hours hadn’t been enough time off.
Every instinct in me wanted to stay, hover, keep watch.
But he needed quiet. Maybe a few hours alone would help him reclaim a little of himself.
Still, before heading out, I did everything short of bubble-wrapping the guy to make his day easier.
I made breakfast, packed his lunch, and lined pain medication on the counter right where he’d see them, with a full glass of water.
I double-checked the living room, putting anything he might need in reach.
Things like the remote, chargers, blankets.
I even slapped a Post-it on the coffee table that said: Everything here is yours, food, TV, books, whatever you want.
I’d told him that like fifty times over the last few days, but without me there I figured he might feel like an intruder. The last thing I wanted was him sitting there, hurting, too scared to touch something because he thought it wasn’t “his.”
Arriving at the office, I plopped into a seat at the conference table, phone already in hand, thumb poised over Oliver’s name. It had barely been five minutes since I’d parked the car. I needed to get a grip. He didn’t need me constantly breathing down his neck.
Shawn, the newest and youngest on our six-person team, at twenty-six, sat in his usual spot, perched backward on his chair, arms draped over the backrest. I liked him.
He carried a different energy than the stoic, hardened demeanor most people pictured when they thought of people in our industry: unapologetically himself, shamelessly flirty, and somehow permanently grinning.
He had that magnetic, “walk into a room and people immediately like you” vibe.
Dude could legit charm a desert into a rainforest.
“Luuuuke, you’re back!” he sang the second he spotted me, in his exaggerated falsetto.
“Stand up, give me a twirl, let me see what two whole days of freedom did to your spirit. Mmm. No, something’s off.
The vibes are giving emotionally fragile yet pretending to be fine realness and I don’t like it. Spill. How were your days off?”
“They were . . . eventful.”
“Oof. That’s a PR-approved beige statement if I’ve ever heard one. So that’s a no to rainbows, puppies, and at least one hot man sensually washing a vintage convertible to an Ariana Grande remix? I am begging, talk to me.”
Sometimes I genuinely wondered if it was a universal gay superpower to sniff out feelings like a bloodhound.
Ezra was the same way, freakishly good at reading people.
I’d spent years being trained to read micro-expressions, threat patterns, all that tactical body-language crap, but put me in a room with those two and they could clock everyone’s mood and childhood trauma faster than I could blink.
Before I could answer, Brent trudged in with his one true love, his coffee mug. We’d both been on the team the longest. He could be a bit rough around the edges, but beneath the grumble existed a rock-solid man I trusted with my life—and had, more than once.
He dropped into the seat beside Shawn with a sound that was equal parts groan, greeting, and “speak to me before caffeine and I’ll end you.” The man fundamentally refused to acknowledge mornings as a valid concept until he’d mainlined at least three cups of coffee.
Shawn leaned toward me, whispering, “Don’t think you’re off the hook. You show up looking like a kicked golden retriever, it’s my sworn duty to put that pep back in your step.”
Then, to Brent, at full sparkle volume. “Good morning, my grumpy, caramel-centered silver fox. How are we today?”
Brent slid him a side-eye so dry it could’ve turned a cactus to dust. “Kid, if you keep talking at that volume, I’ll put a sock in your mouth.”
“I will take that to mean you’re delighted to see me. Go on, say it with your chest.”
“Keep dreaming.”
I bit back a laugh, leaning back as their usual routine kicked off. Brent had trained Shawn when he joined six months ago, and the rest of us had been reaping the entertainment value ever since.
Shawn seemed genetically engineered to get under Brent’s skin. And Brent, for all his fronting, had a soft spot the size of Texas reserved for Shawn, impossible to hide. He paid attention to Shawn the way a seasoned wolf keeps an eye on the pack’s most excitable pup, protective and low-key fond.
Dean trudged in next, looking like exhaustion had mugged him on his way to work, his hair only a few strands shy of total bedhead. “Someone put me out of my misery, please,” he said slumping into his chair.
“Whoa. You look even less ready for human interaction this morning than I am, and that’s saying something,” Brent said.
“Yeah, the baby had a fever. Screamed every time she wasn’t attached to me or Becca. I’m running on two hours of sleep. If I start drooling on this table, roll me under it and fill me in later on what I missed.”
Shawn grimaced. “Oh, honey, you want a Red Bull? I’ve got a spare watermelon one in the fridge.”
“That stuff is vile and tastes like regret, but yeah, I’ll take it. I need all the help I can get.”
The last of our crew to roll in was Sarah.
Even though she’d been out of the service for five years, her posture still carried the discipline of two military tours.
When Paul hired her, we were all hyped. Sarah more than held her own in this male-dominated field, known for handing you your ass without ever raising her voice.
Case in point, a few months after she joined, Paul sent us to a multi-agency field training day with a bunch of other security teams. Real mixed bag of guys, some solid, some walking HR violations. Sarah hadn’t been there five minutes before a couple of them started in with the usual sexist crap.
Eventually one of the louder idiots, right in front of everyone, said, “Accuracy takes strength. Women don’t have the grip for recoil control. Smaller hands, weaker wrists, you can’t expect a chick to shoot like the boys. Biology’s biology.”
Opening my mouth to tell the guy where I thought he could shove it, Sarah gripped my shoulder in a silent “I’ve got this.” She looked at the douche with an expression so bored it came across as pitying and said, “Want to test that theory?”
They set up a target challenge. Hundred-yard range.
Double-tap accuracy test. He went first, decent grouping but nothing to brag about.
Then Sarah stepped up, adjusted her stance, and emptied her mag.
Every round landed clean. Tight cluster, dead-center bullseye.
You could’ve covered all holes with a silver dollar.
She ejected the clip, handed the weapon back, and said, “Huh. Guess these small, weak hands work just fine.”
Not one of those guys said a single sideways word around her for the rest of the day. Brent, Dean, and I damn near cried laughing about it later.
“Morning, boys,” she said, claiming the empty chair beside Brent. “Everyone surviving?”
“That depends on your definition,” Dean muttered.
“I see the cheer is strong today,” she said.
“Dean’s baby’s sick, kept him up all night,” Shawn announced as he reappeared from the break room, pressing the Red Bull into Dean’s hands and giving his shoulder a supportive pat. “Drink this. You will rise like a phoenix from the ashes, or at least a raccoon that got into the good trash.”
“Or he’ll infect the rest of us. Babies are tiny biological weapons,” Brent said. “Don’t breathe near me. No way you’re getting me sick.”
Sarah elbowed him. “We all know you’d still show up to work if you were bleeding out. Don’t pretend you’re fragile.”
“He is mentally,” Shawn said.
Not dignifying that with a comeback, Brent flipped him off.
Dean groaned again. “Why are we like this?”
“Because we’re underpaid and overexposed to the worst of humanity. We have to find some outlet for that kind of stress,” I said.
A round of knowing nods, followed by a chorus of “Yeah, fair” and “Makes sense” came from everyone.
Shawn clicked his tongue. “That’s what we get for not obtaining big fancy degrees so we can work in STEM.”
“Speak for yourself,” Brent said. “Some of us have degrees that required brains to obtain.”
“Yeah?” Shawn shot back. “Was it in advanced grump studies or applied cynicism?”
That drew the first real laugh out of Brent—a short, low sound that might’ve been mistaken for a cough if you didn’t know him. “Better than your diploma in wasting oxygen.”
“Ouch, you wound me.”
“You wound yourself, every time you open your mouth.”
Dean shook his head. “Jesus, I swear you two bicker like an old married couple.”
“If we were married, I’d have smothered him with a pillow by now,” Brent said.
“Kinky! I’m not opposed, big guy, but at least buy me dinner before the breath play, yeah? Maybe light a candle, whisper something sultry like ‘This is for your own good’ while you straddle me.”
Tough-as-nails, forty-year-old, grumble-for-breakfast Brent sputtered, and a flush—actual pink—crept up his neck.
The rest of the team chalked Shawn’s antics up to him being a natural flirt who lived to rile Brent up for sport, and yeah, that was definitely part of it.
But sometimes I wondered if there was more to it.
Shawn didn’t cross that line with anyone else.
And Brent, for all his huffing and eye-rolling, never shut it down.
In no reality would Brent let someone talk to him like that unless, on some deep-buried level, he wanted to hear it.
“Shawn,” Sarah warned. “Leave the man’s blood pressure alone. We can’t afford to lose a senior agent before the staff meeting.”
“I’m fostering a safe, judgment-free exploration of alternative workplace relationship structures. It’s called team building. And for the record, he invited this energy,” Shawn replied.