CHAPTER SEVEN
ADORA
I wake to the scream of a woman I know crying murder in the house of a man I’m falling for.
Pulling away from Hendrick is hard. I want to stay in his arms forever.
Pressed to him, skin to skin, with nothing between us, still wearing the evidence of last night’s sins is my new favorite way to wake up.
I want to do it every day. I want this to be my new normal.
But when Athena screams the house down and scatters horses two fields away, my chances of making love with Hendrick—his rough, fast sort that leaves me sort and craving so much more—is ruined.
Just like my heart after ending the night with him, because I don’t want to be with any other man again. Ever.
I grab the shirt he throws at me, ignoring the look that follows it that promises we can't talk our way out of whatever is about to happen.
“What is it?” Taylor darts out of a bedroom near the back of the house, followed by Crew. Both of them are hastily pulling shorts and pants on...
Rather like Hendrick and myself, only I’m not bothering with the pants option and that’s all he has on.
Athena stands in the doorway to my room, her hands cupped over her mouth.
Her eyes are speared wide, and she stares between us, panicked.
“I swear I only wanted to see you,” —she breaks protocol for the first time since the rules went into action— "I thought we could work on a plan to get you up and going again but then I saw– I saw—” Athena falters and sobs, slumping against the doorway.
Hendrick reaches back to grip my hand. I let him but can’t look at Taylor or Crew, knowing that they’ll know. I shouldn’t care so much but like him I had been hoping to keep what he had between just us, and not need to share it with everyone. Broadcast into the world.
But now it looks like we need to.
“What is it?” Hendrick cuts through all the faff in his blunt way.
One of the things I’ve come to love about him in such a short time.
Oh, hell. I’ve fallen for my bodyguard.
I stare at his bare back, studying the neat row of stitches over the thin mark that will create a scar left on his skin because of me.
How many others does he have/ Who else has he loved like he did with me last night?
Hendrick held me like I was the only person who mattered to him in the entire world and he held me like that for the rest of the entire night, not letting me go until we were woken by Athena’s tortured scream that heralds all the nightmares.
I shiver and reach for his hand, relieved when he grips my firmly without question.
How do we make this work? I know nothing about you.
But I do. Hendrick is in everything I see here. This house is all about him. The way he treats his horses., How he tried to feed me from the first night together.
How he loved me last night. Slow and caring, then rough and hard.
Everything this hard edged man I’ve fallen for is. I can only hope that our two worlds that should never cross over find something in each other to love.
His thumb brushes back and forth across my hand. “We were asleep, Athena,” Hendrick says without preamble. Without hiding. “What do you need?”
That he doesn’t like her is obvious, but then I get the impression that he doesn’t like anyone much at all.
Athena presses the door to my bedroom inwards and steps aside.
Without so much as a glance over his shoulder, Hendrick strides forward, towing me along with him.
Not stopping me or protecting me from whatever is inside.
He doesn’t let go, but takes me, too. And I fall harder.
I cling to his hand, my nails digging into his skin in a parody of last night.
Athena’s eyes drink in the sight of both of us clinging together: him guiding me, me wearing his clothes as he tows me forward, and then stops.
Turns.
I look at him. Glance over my shoulder. Count who isn’t with us.
My heart stops. “No,” I whisper.
No. Not my bear.
Not Milo.
I want to self opt out. But I don’t.
“Adora,” Hendrick murmurs.
A collective gasp fills the hallway around us as he races for me, but I rip my hand free of his and duck under his arm. Hendrick curses, grabbing for me as I slink through the gap in his arms and dart into the bedroom.
And stop cold.
“Damnit, love,” Hendrick swears. All our promises of secrecy from last night are shattered.
But none of it matters. Because the only other man I trust in the entire world lies on my borrowed bed, a neat bullet hole through his temple.
Otherwise, he could be sleeping.
Not Milo, Not Milo, Not Milo.
I sit on the sofa in Hendrick’s living room, a pillow clutched in my arms as four bodies circle around me.
Apparently there are other security members coming from the firm that he works for, but my team wants to move now.
I don’t blame them, but I don't really care, either.
Because no matter what we do, Milo will never be with us ever again.
“Adora. Get up. The harp is in the car. Come on.” Athena snaps her fingers at me.
I stare at them. “You did that for Milo.” Not that I've started speaking, it feels a whole lot easier to keep going.
“Leave her alone.”
“She’s going through a lot.”
Taylor and Crew are on my side, I think.
For once, at least. I flash them a smile and they smile back.
It’s a brief exchange but I can see that for one, they are hurting, too.
We all miss him. Athena, too. We all deal with grief differently.
She’s in organizational mode and when nothing goes her way, life gets hairy.
Hendrick has entered bodyguard mode, his face set, his orders sharp and brief. They clash with every step in a whirl of color that I can’t stand and want to hide from.
A whirl of color that should include Milo.
A sob breaks from my chest and everyone freezes.
“But we need to go. Hendrick says so.” Athena crouches before me, one hand on my knee.
I tuck my legs under me and scoot backward.
She comes, too. “Come on,” she murmurs in a softer tone, one reserved for sick children or puppies that don't do the right thing. She used it on Milo often when he didn’t do what she wanted.
It worked, for him. “Let’s get in the car.
It’s a short trip back to the place where Hendrick works. Then we can reset. It’s what he wants.”
I close my eyes. I want to stay here. I want to be with Milo until they move him. I want to understand why everyone isn’t sadder or more frightened.
I want, I want, I want.
But they don’t seem to hear me, or care.
I shrug. It’s not like any of it matters to Milo anymore. Why should I care? “Alright. If it’s what Hendrick wants.”
“It is not what Henrick wants.”
My heart soars as he stops behind me. His voice is loud and clear, pushing the pressure of the world back several steps. Athena stands and retreats. It’s one step but also…it’s one step.
I inhale and manage to keep my breath for longer than two seconds. A record for the past hour, I know.
“I want to go with you.”
My words push out and I’m proud.
“You got it, love.” His hand lands on my shoulder. More rule breaking.
A smile flickers my lips. Milo would have loved it because it’s so inappropriate. My smile grows bigger, for him.
“Bye,” I whisper.
Athena frowns. “We haven’t decided anything, yet,” she objects.
Hendrick gives my shoulder a decent squeeze. “She wasn’t talking to you. Ready to saddle up with me, harp girl?”
I twist and blink up at him.
“But the limo…” Athena splutters.
I find Hendrick’s dirty smile, and I like it. Love it, even. Like I do him.
“I’m ready.”
Being on the back of Hendrick’s Triumph is nothing like I expected to experience in my life.
My day to day is about practice and keeping my hands strong, not whipping across the desert on the back of a bike that has chunky tires swearing a man’s leather jacket that bears a stitched logo that says SIN EATERS and a picture of a death’s heat and wafting smoke behind it.
The look on Hendrick’s face when he put the jacket on me was nothing shy of pure possession.
When he asked if the leather felt good, I said yes.
His mouth crashed down, his kiss hard and rough and breath stealing.
And then we are flying across the desert floor, grit and dust flying around us with the knowledge that the person who shot at me and killed Milo could be anywhere between here and Valor Springs.
Hendrick has been silent otherwise, his hand occasionally drifting to settle over mine where they wrap tight around his waist. Otherwise, he only rides hard, dodging around rock formations that I swear some Texas desert god has placed there just so there’s no such thing as a straight line between hi home and our destination.
Eventually, the building we seek comes up. We're approaching it from the wrong angle, but Hendrick cuts a wide berth, anyway, circling around. Before we get there, metal pings off metal, then again. He swears, peeling away.
Black flares at the corners of my vision,. The sound and color melding like it does whenI play my harp, but this time the music and the notes are different. Violent and hideous.
“What’s happening?” I shout, but my voice, weak and not used to volume, doesn't carry.
“She’s not letting us get closer," Hendrick calls back, apparently understanding my question just fine.
“Who?” I shout again, pressing to his back as he weaves about, cursing as the same pink happens on the other side. I see the next bullet hole appear in the metal on the bike’s beautiful black exterior and grip him tighter. “Who, Hendrick?” Not again. Not him.
He grips me one handed, and then heads straight for the office where we met his boss. It’s a suicide run. Even I know that.
Athena.
He knew, and he said nothing. And I… I knew too. All her rules. All her deceptions. Bile rises in my throat. She killed Milo. Milo is dead because of me.
Hendrick never stops, determined as always to do the job he was hired to do. Protect me. But who will protect him?
“Keep your head down, love. Make it inside, and that’s all you have to do.”
Fear grips my heart. I know what he’s doing and I’m not okay without it, even if it is his job. I didn’t sign any of the paperwork or hire him but that doesn’t mean that I want them to die because he shouldn't be protecting me in the first place.
“No. No, you oversized asshole," I manage to shove out volume, unknowing if he can hear me or not. “No, no, no!”
He laughs and increases speed, looking around for the source of the shot. I spy it before he does, the glint of sunlight on metal. I don't know if he’s counting in his head, but I am. The Ranch comes up fast. Real fast.
But not fast enough.
“Eight,” I mutter, gathering my legs beneath me. “Nine.”
“Not yet, love,” Hendrick reassures me. “You have time. I'll get you there.”
“I know you will.”
I kiss the back of his neck as I launch, pushing my arm hooked around his neck and I swing, hoping I don’t pull him off the bike or over him or anything catastrophic.
Mind, death is fairly catastrophic too, but I need him to keep going and not stop until we get there, no matter what.
I need him to stop taking bullets for me. But I also need him to live.
Even if I don’t. Because I shouldn't have survived that first bullet outside the theatre the night he met me. I know that, and maybe I've been living on borrowed time for a while. I don’t pretend to understand why Athena does things that she does, but it makes a strange sort of obsessive sense.
For ages, I assumed that my stalker was male.
Hendrick made the same mistake. We all did, and Athena fueled that fire.
Let us believe the lie. She was the one who created my false persona.
The one I perform under. She created my rules and made me live by them, the strict ones that made me seem like such a diva when I hated treating people like that.
Milo understood, he got it. Sometimes I wondered if he ever saw through the facade.
Now I wonder if his death was an accident—maybe she genuinely thought that I was on that bed and this morning she thought that she’d found me and that scream was one of frustration at getting it wrong, or if she killed Milo for another reason–because he was the sweetest, nicest man a girl could have a as a best friend and if she was obsessed with me, maybe I couldn’t have that?
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Too many questions. Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I won’t get a chance to ask. At least, not after this.
I complete my swing around the bike, crashing into Hendrick’s side. He catches me with an oath, and I smile, relieved that the bike doesn’t topple. The Ranch where his boss and the Lone Star security company is just ahead.
We did it. Mission achieved.
And when the impact comes that I expect, taking the shot intended for me all along as he did for me that first night, it’s not painful at all.
More like a punch. Two of them. A double whammy of all things that Athena has slammed into me even though.
All the pent up rage and obsession and resentment that she seems to have harbored for so long.
The horror on Hendrick’s face isn’t right. I try to smooth the lines, even as my hands drop on their own. He faces too, and my voice. I push it out, anyway.
“I love you,” I mouth, because that's all that I have in me.
And then I’m gone.