Chapter 26 Devon
DEVON
The drive back to the beach house was the longest thirty-two minutes of my life.
Lofton sat in the back seat with her arms folded and her eyes fixed on the window, never so much as glancing forward.
I sat in the front with my hands on the wheel and the rotting silence of a man on death row.
Fucking Henry Alexander.
Of all the people on the planet we could have run into, he was the absolute worst. Even Levee would have been better, because she at least had tact.
Henry had acted like ruining my life was his opus.
Years in the making. All culminating in that one perfect moment where he got to conduct the whole damn symphony of disaster himself.
And kudos to him, because that little prick had produced a masterpiece.
Lofton hadn’t spoken since Carter had escorted me, escorting her, to the car.
Yeah. Fucking Carter. As if suddenly, I needed the help keeping her safe.
The truth about my past had been bound to come out. LA was a small city dressed up as a big world. Levee and Henry ran in circles that overlapped with Lofton’s at parties, award shows, and as my supremely shitty luck would have it, a practically empty soundstage.
I’d just been operating on the tragically stupid assumption that I’d be the one who got to decide when and how she found out.
Now that I could add that to my ever-growing list of failures, my brain was ricocheting with all the possibilities of what was going through her head.
She’d shut down every conversation I’d tried to start with either a one-word answer or no response at all.
It was absolutely killing me, but I couldn’t get a read on her from stolen glances in the rearview mirror alone.
I hoped she’d let me explain. But even then, I wasn’t sure what to say. Or what it would mean for us when I figured it out.
I’d fought to avoid that job. But deep down, it wasn’t LA I’d been afraid of.
It wasn’t celebrity clients or close quarters or the intimacy that came from being someone’s shadow.I’d had a lot of clients in the time between Levee and Lofton.
I’d spent a year guarding a federal judge who received death threats every morning with his coffee.
I’d spent eighteen months with a tech billionaire who hadn’t left his compound long enough to remember what rain felt like.
I’d protected senators and executives and a foreign diplomat who required round the clock coverage.
Working with all of them, I’d been nothing short of the perfect model of professionalism.
Because the problem was never the job.
The problem was me.
Specifically, the part of me I’d been pretending didn’t exist.
The part that had been engrained in me since childhood and intensified as I’d gotten older.
I’d grown up the rock in my family. The man of the house before I was old enough to shave.
My mom worked doubles, my sisters needed more than we had, and I made damn sure they never felt it.
That’s just how I was built. I paid attention.
I stepped in. I handled things before they became problems. Because if I did it right, the people I loved never had to worry at all.
That wasn’t a trained skill set.
That was just who I was.
I was built to care about people in a way that didn’t stop at the edge of the job description. I’d known Lofton was going to be trouble from the start. Not because I thought I’d fall in love with her—even though I had. Fast and hard in a way that didn’t ask permission or offer an escape route.
I’d told myself that the physical was the extent of it.
That wanting her was just biology and proximity and nothing I couldn’t manage.
But truthfully, I’d been in way over my head long before she ever knocked on my door in a stolen shirt and a pair of heels.
Which, don’t get me wrong, had been fucking incredible.
But that had just been the culmination of her seduction rather than a grand strategy.
I’d fallen in love with Lofton morning after morning, when she’d consistently and relentlessly shown up as herself in front of a man who was wired to notice.
She hadn’t come at me with a crowbar, looking for chinks in my armor.
She’d just kept inching her way under my skin until my walls stopped making sense.
And I’d let her.
Despite knowing better.
Because I’d been avoiding the truth since we’d arrived in Tennessee.
With Levee, I’d mistaken proximity for connection.
With Lofton, I’d prayed that our connection was only because of proximity.
Anything to convince myself that it wasn’t real, and she’d eventually let go.
And now I was standing in the fallout of that mistake, scared out of my mind, that she was finally going to prove me right.
When we got through the gate at the beach house and parked in the sea of Guardian’s black SUVs, she bolted out of the car before I even had my door open.
I rounded the hood, catching her just before she made it to the stairs leading to the front door. “Lofton, come on. Just talk to me.”
She stopped abruptly and then slowly turned to face me.
The woman was expressive—every thought, every feeling, always written somewhere I could find if I looked hard enough. But as she peered up at me, everything was locked down tight. And that might have been the part that scared me the most.
Lofton didn’t want me to get a read on her.
“So now you want to talk,” she said evenly. “After I was absolutely blindsided back there? Now you want to talk?”
I blew out a hard breath. “I was going to tell you. I just—”
Fucked up.
Waited too long.
Failed you.
“I’m sorry,” I finished instead.
“Is this what you do?” Her arms crossed over her chest. Defensive.
Guarded. Nothing like the woman who used to lean into me without thinking.
“You get a new client. Say all the right things. Make her feel safe. Then you do the brooding, emotionally unavailable thing. Let her think she’s breaking through.
Give her tiny morsels so she feels special.
Just enough that when she finally acts, she thinks it was her idea.
And then you don’t even have to make the first move. She’s already there.”
Bile crawled up my throat as her eyes locked with mine.
“Congratulations, Devon. You slept with Levee Williams and Lofton Beck. Your celebrity bingo card must be filling up nicely.”
“This isn’t a fucking game,” I snapped. “I never slept with Levee.”
“Bullshit!” she roared, her voice echoing off the house, assaulting me from all angles. And she wasn’t done with me yet. Her voice shifted into an eerie calm. “So, tell me, Devon. Who got you off harder? The rock star or the actress?”
My head jerked to the side. “That was a low fucking blow.”
She bent down, taking her heels off one by one, and hurled them into the bushes. “Is it safe to assume that means it was Levee?”
“I did not sleep with her,” I repeated, slower and unmistakably clear.
“But you wanted to,” she shot back.
I exhaled sharply, forcing the words out before instinct could twist them into something easier. “Yeah. I did. And I was a fucking dumbass.”
“You’re right about that one.” She stepped around me, heading for the steps again. “We need to leave early in the morning. I want Nobu tonight. Black cod. Yellowtail. I’ll send you the wine—”
“That’s not you, Lofton,” I growled. “Quit hiding behind the diva bullshit.”
She spun around, hurt bleeding through her anger. “Me? Hiding? I just found out you’re in love with Levee Williams and never thought to mention it.”
“Was,” I corrected. “Past tense. Though I’m not completely sure that’s accurate either.”
“Okay, well, is this accurate, Devon? You knew everything about me. I handed you every embarrassing, devastating, ugly piece of my life. My dad. The farm. Sebastian.” Her hand pressed to her chest. “And you, Mr. Always Has a Plan, Always One Step Ahead, just never thought I deserved the real you in return?”
“This is the real me.”
She laughed without humor. “No. This is the curated version made specifically for Lofton Beck. The smooth edges, laced with just enough charm and truth to ultimately lead me to fall head over heels into your bed.”
“That’s not what happened. And you know it.”
“Then what did happen? Please, God, enlighten me. Because right now, it looks a hell of a lot like you struck out with Levee Williams, so you put on the performance of a lifetime and found me to fill her shoes.”
She could have kicked me in the nuts. Hand to God, I would have preferred it. “That’s not fair.”
“None of this is!” she boomed. “Because, now I have to wonder if any of this was actually ever about me. Or if I’ve just been cast in a role I didn’t even realize I auditioned for.”
My patience snapped. “Trust me, babe. If I was trying to find some fucked-up way to continue that nightmare with her, there are far easier targets than you.”
“Bullshit? She and I have way more in common than those ‘easier targets’.” She lifted her hand in the air, dropping fingers one by one as she spoke.
“Woman in danger that you made feel safe. Forced to spend an exorbitant amount of time together. Falling for her.” Her eyes sharpened on mine as she dropped the last two fingers, my stomach dropping right along with them.
“You sleeping with her. And her falling in love with you.”
“For the last fucking time, I didn’t sleep with Levee!”
She pressed up on her toes, tears spilling freely now.
“Oh, my bad. I forgot to mention those last two were me. Guess, I’m just picking right up where she left off, huh?
” She cupped her hands to her mouth, her voice cracking through a hollow attempt at humor.
“And the winner of the Levee Williams consolation prize is… Lofton Beck.”
“That’s bullshit. You don’t get to reduce us to some damn pattern.”
“You don’t get to pretend we aren’t one,” she fired back.
I clenched my teeth, wanting to lash back, but just like the first day I’d met her—Lofton was bleeding.
And this time it was all my fault.