Chapter 16
OLOG
I pocket the phone.
The agency termination is not the problem.
The five-star rating I spent three years building, the carefully maintained professional reputation, the steady stream of high-paying contracts that funded my grandmother's medical care and kept my younger sister in university, none of it registers as particularly significant in the immediate moment.
I have savings. I have other skills. I can work security, close protection, private investigation. The gig economy will survive my exit.
A heavily tattooed, six-foot-eleven Orc who works contract jobs and carries throwing knives in his boots and whose idea of courtship involves offering a blade in a parking lot and then breaking every rule in his employment contract to take a human woman to bed with enough intensity that the people in the neighbouring suites probably filed noise complaints.
Bliss Vance, by contrast, is a woman whose family owns vacation homes and whose cousin's wedding venue cost more than my annual income and who showed up to a destination wedding in a designer dress and heels that cost what I charge for three days of close protection work.
The gap between those two realities is not something I considered last night.
Last night, standing in the parking lot with her tears on my shirt and her voice breaking as she yelled at me, the only reality that mattered was the biological certainty that she is mine and I am keeping her.
The Orc part of my brain, the part that has been clawing its way to the surface since the hotel lobby, does not care about tax brackets or social standing or the fact that her family will take one look at me in the cold light of day and see exactly what I am.
A threat.
I exhale slowly, controlled, the way I was trained to do before entering a high-risk environment, and watch my breath fog faintly against the glass.
The bed shifts behind me.
I do not turn immediately. I am still running the calculations, still measuring what I have done, still trying to determine the correct course of action that does not involve dragging her into a life that will damage her reputation and her safety and her future.
She is soft and human and deserves a partner who can take her to family events without her relatives flinching.
She deserves someone who did not get fired from his primary income source because he could not keep his hands off her for forty-eight hours.
She deserves better than a man whose idea of conflict resolution involves physically removing threats and whose career involves getting between dangerous people and their targets.
The sheet rustles.
I hear her sit up.
I make myself turn.
She is smiling at me, sleep-warm and rumpled, her dark hair spilling across her bare shoulders, the morning light catching in her eyes, and the smile is the smile of a woman who woke up next to her mate and expected to find him still there.
She reaches for me, her hand extending across the gap between the bed and the window, and the gesture is so naturally affectionate, so entirely without hesitation, that the crack in my heart widens another fraction.
I step back.
The smile falters.
I watch it happen in real time, the way her hand drops slightly, the way her brow draws together, the way the warmth in her eyes shifts into confusion and then something sharper and more defensive.
I have seen that expression before. I saw it yesterday morning, when I overcompensated after waking up with her wrapped around me, when I pulled back and tried to rebuild the professional distance and she assumed I was repulsed by her.
I am not repulsed.
I am terrified.
I make my voice calm and deliberate and entirely devoid of the emotion currently threatening to compromise my ability to speak in complete sentences. "We need to discuss the logistical realities of our respective worlds."
She blinks at me.
"Logistical realities," she repeats, her voice flat.
"Yes."
"You're wearing your suit."
"Yes."
"At seven in the morning."
"Approximately seven-fifteen," I correct, and I hear how absurd it sounds the moment it leaves my mouth, but I do not know how else to create the distance I need to say what needs to be said. "I have been reviewing our circumstances."
She pulls the sheet higher, and the defensive gesture makes my hands curl into fists at my sides.
I force them to relax. She is not in danger.
She is safe. The only threat in this room is the one I am trying to neutralize by creating a gap between us before the reality of our situation does more damage than I already have.
"Our circumstances," she says.
"Yes."
"Olog." Her voice sharpens. "What the hell is happening right now?"
I take a breath. I have delivered threat assessments to clients in active combat zones with more ease than this. "Last night, I violated my employment contract. The agency terminated my account this morning. My professional rating has been removed, and I am no longer eligible for future bookings."
"I am also," I continue, because stopping now will make it worse, "a six-foot-eleven Orc with a history of working high-risk security contracts and no formal education beyond military training.
My income is irregular. My work frequently places me in dangerous environments.
I carry weapons as a matter of standard practice.
I have scars across sixty percent of my torso from a close protection assignment that went poorly three years ago. "
"I've seen your scars," she says.
"You have seen them in low light, in a context where they were not the primary focus of your attention."
Her eyes narrow. "Are you seriously doing this right now?"
"I am attempting to provide you with an accurate assessment of the risks associated with continuing this relationship outside the controlled environment of a destination wedding."
"Risks." Her voice has gone very quiet, which I have learned means she is either about to cry or about to start throwing things. I cannot determine which is more likely. "You're calling yourself a risk."
"I am calling the disparity between our respective social and economic positions a risk," I say. "Your family is wealthy. Your cousin's wedding cost more than I earn in six months. You arrived at this event in designer formalwear. You are accustomed to a standard of living I cannot provide."
"Money doesn’t matter to me."
"You should." I keep my voice level. "Your family will care. They already care. Your father attempted to bribe me yesterday."
"My father is an asshole."
"Your father is also correct in his assessment that I am not an appropriate partner for you in any traditional sense.
" I watch her face, watch the way the words land, watch the way she flinches slightly and then sets her jaw.
"I work irregular hours. I carry weapons.
I have been shot twice and stabbed four times in the course of my employment.
The likelihood of future injury is statistically significant.
You would be attaching yourself to a man whose life expectancy is measurably shorter than the average civilian and whose social standing is nonexistent. "
She is staring at me like I have grown a second head.
"You are also," I continue, because I cannot stop now, "a woman who deserves stability and safety and a partner who will not attract the attention of violent individuals or compromise your reputation by association. I am none of those things."
The silence that follows is long enough that I start running through possible responses, cataloging her body language, measuring the tension in her shoulders and the way her hands have fisted in the sheet.
Then she says, very quietly, "Get out."
I go still.
"I'm sorry?"
"Get. Out." Her voice is shaking now, but not with tears. With rage. "Get out of this room right now before I throw something at your enormous, stupid head."
"Bliss—"
"No." She points at the door, her hand trembling.
"You don't get to do this. You don't get to spend the entire weekend defending me and protecting me and canceling your contract and proposing to me with a knife in a parking lot and then wake up the next morning and decide I'm too delicate to handle your life. "
"That is not what I am saying."
"That is exactly what you're saying." She shoves the sheets back and stands, and I have the presence of mind to avert my eyes because she is still naked and I am already barely holding myself together.
"You're saying I'm some fragile society girl who can't handle the fact that you work security and carry weapons and have scars.
You're saying I need to be protected from you. "
"You do need to be protected," I say. "That is my function."
"Your function." She laughs, sharp and bitter. "Is that what last night was? A function?"
"No."
"Then what the hell is this?"
I meet her eyes. "This is me attempting to prevent you from making a decision you will regret when the reality of my life becomes apparent."
She crosses the area between us in three strides, and I tense instinctively because she is angry and unpredictable and I do not know what she is about to do. She stops directly in front of me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of her skin, and nods her head back to glare up at me.
"Let me tell you something about my reality, Olog.
" Her voice is low and shaking. "My reality is a family that spent the entire weekend making passive-aggressive comments about my weight and my job and my relationship status.
My reality is an ex-boyfriend who cheated on me and then showed up at this wedding with his new girlfriend specifically to make me feel like garbage.
My reality is smiling through rehearsal dinners and pretending I'm fine while my aunt asks me why I'm still single and my father implies I'm a disappointment. "
I open my mouth.
She keeps going.
"And then you showed up. And you didn't just pretend to care about me for the cameras.
You actually defended me. You actually protected me.
You looked my father in the eye and told him I was worth more than money.
You got down on one knee in a parking lot and offered me a knife because that's how Orcs propose and you wanted me to know you were serious. "
Her eyes are bright now, but she is not crying. She is furious.
"So don't you dare stand there in your perfect suit and tell me I can't handle your life.
Don't you dare try to protect me from yourself because you think I'm too fragile or too rich or too human to deal with the fact that you work dangerous jobs and carry weapons. For twenty-eight years I’ve dealt with people who think I need to be managed and controlled and protected from making my own decisions. I don't need that from you."
I am silent.
She is breathing hard, her hands clenched at her sides, and I can see the pulse jumping in her throat and the way her whole body is vibrating with anger and hurt and something else I cannot quite name.
"I know what I'm choosing," she says. "I'm choosing you.
The real you. The one who works security and carries knives and has scars and gets shot at.
I'm choosing the man who canceled his contract because he couldn't take money for defending his mate.
I'm choosing all of it. So if you're standing here trying to talk me out of it because you think I don't understand what I'm getting into, you can stop. I understand perfectly."
I look down at her.
She looks up at me.
The morning light is stronger now, casting her face in sharp relief, and I can see every detail of her expression, every line of anger and determination and fear that I am about to walk away from her.
I have faced armed assailants with more composure than this.
"The agency terminated my employment," I say quietly. "I no longer have a primary income source."
"So get another job."
"I have scars—"
"I've seen them. I like them."
"I work irregular hours in dangerous environments—"
"Then I'll learn to worry. I'm good at worrying. I've been practicing my whole life."
"Your family—"
"Can go to hell." Her voice is flat. "It doesn’t bother me what my family thinks. I care what you think. And right now, what I think is that you're trying to protect me from something I don't need protection from."
I am silent.
She steps closer, close enough that I can smell the faint trace of jasmine perfume still clinging to her skin, and she reaches up and grabs the lapels of my jacket with both hands.
"Tell me the truth," she says. "Are you trying to leave because you don't want me, or because you think I don't want you?"
The answer should be simple.
It is not.
I look down at her hands on my jacket, small and human and entirely certain, and I feel the question settle into the area between my ribs where the certainty of last night used to be.
"I want you," I say finally. "That is not in question."
"Then what is?"
"Whether wanting you is sufficient justification for exposing you to the risks associated with my life."
She regards me for a long moment, and then she does something I do not expect.
She laughs.
It is not a happy laugh. It is the laugh of a woman who has reached the absolute limit of her patience and is about to do something dramatic.
"Olog," she says. "I just spent an entire weekend at my cousin's wedding being interrogated by my family and insulted by my ex and forced to smile through a rehearsal dinner where someone threw wine at me. You think your life is the dangerous part of this relationship?"
I blink.
"My aunt Susan," she continues, "once made my other cousin cry at Thanksgiving because she didn't like her hair.
My father has not said a kind word to me since I was twelve.
My ex-boyfriend is a narcissistic manchild who showed up at this wedding specifically to make me feel bad about myself.
And you're worried that your job is going to be the thing that breaks me? "
She tightens her grip on my lapels.
"I survived my family, Olog. I can survive yours."