Chapter 2
The heavy silence of mounting pressure bore down on Savannah as she climbed out of the gleaming black town car. Her eyes scanned the hangar. The sleek black private jet waiting like a coiled threat.
Striding across the tarmac, the intense heat radiated upward, creating a shimmering distortion in the air, a wave of heat that curled up and under her collar, making her feel uncomfortably hot.
Jet engines idled in the distance, a faint smell of jet fuel mixing with the hot air rising from their exhaust.
Savannah’s stylish boots struck the concrete with practiced calm, the rhythm of someone used to pretending she belonged wherever she walked.
But her pulse was out of sync, drumming a little too fast in her chest. Maybe it was the tour, weeks of diplomatic concerts in politically sensitive regions.
Or maybe it was just knowing the Senator had inserted himself again, dictating her life like she was still thirteen years old.
“Non-negotiable,” he’d said. “I don’t care how independent you think you are, Savannah. You’re a headline waiting to happen. You’ll have protection.”
She didn’t want a bodyguard.
She wanted a chance to have control.
With a tug, she opened the door to the waiting area. Inside, the area was quiet, save for the faint hum of fluorescent lights, and her massive suitcase rattling behind her as her driver brought it in. It smelled like metal, jet fuel, and obligation. Clean. Controlled. Lavish. Overly masculine.
Exactly the kind of environment her stepfather lived for.
Her jaw flexed as she scanned the space, still irritated that the Senator had gone against her wishes in hiring a bodyguard..
“You’re the daughter of a United States Senator,” he’d said.
“Security is not only for optics but also liability mitigation.” As if she were a hostage to her own career.
As if the world diplomatic tour she’d spent a year helping to craft, every venue, every diplomatic invite, every note, was some chaotic stunt he needed to micromanage and sanitize.
She adjusted her sunglasses to sit atop her head, then continued to move further into the room. And then, of course, Kandy appeared.
Red heels. Sunglasses too big for her face. Designer luggage she didn’t lift herself. She leaned against a pillar like she was waiting for paparazzi to burst in.
Savannah’s stomach twisted.
Kandy lifted her sunglasses and gave her a smile sharp enough to cut glass. “Well, well. Look who showed up to play diplomat Barbie.” Kandy gave her a sugarcoated once-over and smirked. “Savannah. You look . . . efficient.”
Savannah matched her smile with one of her own. “And you look like a walking lawsuit. How comforting.”
“Please,” Kandy drawled, pushing off the pillar with a flip of her hair. “I’m curious. How is it that you make pink look so tragic?”
Savannah exhaled through her nose, already tired, already done.
She turned, looking for someone in a suit, maybe dark sunglasses, the kind of guy the Senator would’ve hired from a mercenary firm with a three-letter acronym.
Instead, her breath caught.
Not in fear.
In memory.
He was standing behind Kandy, hands at his sides, posture relaxed but alert.
Broader than she remembered. Older. Stronger.
His hair was darker now, brushing his collar in need of a trim, but his eyes .
. . Those eyes still held that same quiet steadiness that used to calm her when thunderstorms rattled her windows.
Still that quiet, thunderstorm gray. Still watching everything. Still watching her.
She stopped walking.
Sawyer.
Her heart stuttered, then surged like it recognized him before her brain caught up.
The world didn’t fall away, not exactly. It just . . . held its breath.
She reached into the pocket of her slacks before she could stop herself and closed her fingers around the cool edge of something small and worn: the wooden shield pendant he’d carved with a pocket knife the summer before she left. The one with their shared initials inside a heart.
She’d never stopped carrying it.
She’d told herself it was just a habit. A sentimental tic. Something from a simpler time. But the way her heart pounded now betrayed every lie she’d rehearsed over the years.
He turned, sensing her before she spoke, and their eyes locked. He didn’t say anything. Neither did she. But his mouth twitched slightly.
Recognition.
God, he still knew her.
Just like that, she was seven again, standing barefoot in the creek bordering their backyards, with the boy who’d been her world.
But the boy she remembered was gone.
The man standing in front of her looked like he’d been forged in fire and kept the burn seared into his soul.
Tattoos disappeared beneath the edge of his T-shirt sleeve.
A faint, pale scar, barely visible beneath his dark beard, curved under his jaw.
He didn’t smile. But his eyes—they softened when they met hers.
When he uttered the long-forgotten nickname, a familiar tightness constricted her throat, and a wave of bittersweet memory washed over her. “Sawyer?”
His mouth twitched. “Haven’t heard that name in a long time.”
“You . . . You’re the bodyguard I didn’t want?” she said, her voice lower than she intended.
He tilted his head. “Apparently. And you’re the assignment I didn’t expect.”
Kandy let out a loud, exaggerated yawn behind them. “Ugh, is this going to be one of those broody, slow-burn dramas? Someone warn me so I can pack a sedative. Oh my God, Savannah, did your stepdaddy order you a personal fantasy? He looks like a bodyguard-slash-regret from a small-town romance.”
Savannah didn’t even look at her. Couldn’t. Not when all her focus was locked on the boy who once swore he’d always protect her, and the man who’d shown up twenty years later to keep that promise.
As others from the tour began to arrive, she barely remembered walking toward him. Just a blur of footsteps, heat, and the hum of a memory waking up from a twenty-year sleep.
Unbeknownst to her, he’d efficiently led them away from Kandy’s line of fire and the prying ears of the other musicians, finding themselves alone at last, her pulse, which had been racing wildly, finally settled down, a nervous flutter in her throat.
Sawyer stood in front of her like a wall she’d forgotten she’d ever leaned on. Tall. Quiet. Still.
Overwhelmed, she embraced him, the pounding of her heart echoing the desperate yearning in her soul.
Everything that was him enveloped her as he wrapped his arms around her.
She breathed in deep, clean soap, and something woodsy filled her senses.
As they hugged, she perceived a sharply defined body, all hard angles and taut muscles, a stark contrast to the unexpected sense of belonging she felt for the first time in two decades.
It was a sense of finally being home. The familiar comfort of his presence washed over her, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in twenty years.
With great reluctance that surprised her, she pulled back. “I didn’t know,” she said softly, “that you were him. The bodyguard.”
“I didn’t know you were you until you walked in,” he replied. “Didn’t exactly expect my next assignment to be someone I used to watch the sunset with from my front porch.”
She laughed, the sound quiet and far too breathless. “Your porch had the better view.”
He gave a faint nod, something flickering behind his eyes.
A beat passed between them, thick with all the things they didn’t say.
“Your hair is longer,” she offered, instantly hating how stupid it sounded.
He tilted his head. “Yours is the same.”
Her hand went to the end of one wavy strand, like she could hide the years in the length of it. “Guess some things are harder to let go of.”
His eyes dropped, just for a second. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Some things stick.”
Her fingers tightened in her pants pocket. Around the pendant. With a familiar motion, she rubbed her thumb across the worn initials, a ritual repeated so often that the carved initials were nearly erased, leaving only the faintest suggestion of its former presence in the aged wood.
“Do you remember . . .” she began, voice catching, “when I cried the night before we left? You held me and told me we’d see each other again.”
“I remember everything,” he said. No hesitation. Just fact. “Guess I was right.”
She swallowed hard.
“I thought maybe you forgot. That it didn’t matter as much to you as it did to me. That I was just . . . a neighbor kid you once knew.”
“You were my best friend, Savi.”
She hadn’t heard that name in so long it nearly broke her.
“You’re the reason I started playing the piano,” she said, smiling now, a little sad. “You said my hands were too small to reach the keys and play well, so I tried to prove you wrong.”
His mouth twitched. “You did.”
“Barely.”
He shook his head. “You were always meant to be something special, Savi. Gifted.”
That hit her straight in the chest.
They fell quiet again.
Savannah looked at him closely then, really looked spotting the edges of exhaustion around his eyes, the scar at his throat that made her stomach twist, the slight restlessness in the way he stood, like he hadn’t learned how to be still in years.
“You’ve seen things,” she said quietly.
He didn’t answer.
“You’re not the same,” she added.
“No,” he agreed. “Neither are you.”
“I thought I lost you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
But his eyes—God, his eyes said everything.
He opened his mouth, eyes darkening with something heavy, something real—
“Savannah.”
The name cracked like a whip.
Savannah’s spine snapped straight. She turned before she could stop herself, instinct kicking in before logic.
Senator Harlan McNabney made a beeline across the waiting area toward her. His own personal security fanned out around the room.