GUARDED

He was hired to keep me alive. Nobody warned me he’d be the danger.

Corbin Stone: ex-Navy SEAL, grumpy silences, eyes that track a room like it’s already gone wrong. He calls me "the principal." I call him insufferable. Neither of us means it.

Then the power goes out, a stalker gets too close, and a bottle of wine with no protocol attached to it lands on the porch between us.

He says my humming is distracting.

I kiss him anyway.

Every morning after, we orbit each other in the kitchen, him silent, me pretending the couch never happened, until his boss hands him an ultimatum: his license, or me.

I built an empire on never deciding out of fear.

I’m about to find out what it costs to decide out of love instead.