Chapter 14
Tucker
Three months later, and Calder assigns me to security detail for my girlfriend's book launch.
"Really?" I stare at him across his desk. "You're assigning me to guard my own girlfriend?"
Calder doesn't blink. "She's the guest of honor at a public event in Tidehaven. There will be two hundred attendees, a media presence, and Diana Hartwell, who is still technically a client. You know the venue, you know the principal, and you're my best operator."
"The principal is my girlfriend."
"Consider it professional development."
"That's the same thing you said when you sent me to the retreat."
"And look how that turned out." The ghost of a smile crosses his face---Calder's version of a standing ovation. "Briefing's at 0800. Don't be late."
Channel 16 erupts before I'm out of the building.
Riggs: TUCKER IS ON BODYGUARD DUTY FOR KASSIDY'S BOOK LAUNCH
Riggs: this is the greatest day of my life
Decker: it's 7 AM, Riggs.
Riggs: THE GREATEST DAY
Calder: This is an operational assignment. Treat it accordingly.
Riggs: can I come? I'll be professional. mostly.
Calder: Denied.
Riggs: what if I bring flowers for the author?
Calder: Still denied.
Riggs: what if I buy the book and get it signed?
Decker: ...that's actually reasonable.
Calder: Fine. Buy the book. Do not engage the principal. Do not embarrass this organization.
Riggs: SIR YES SIR
The drive to Tidehaven feels like a homecoming. The coast road is different from the last time I drove it---no hurricane, no debris, no white-knuckle visibility. Just autumn sun on water, live oaks arching over the highway, and the salt-sweetness of low country air.
Three months since I showed up at Kassidy's apartment with Thai food and a speech I barely got through.
Three months of the relationship she outlined for us---and yes, she literally made an outline, complete with milestones and communication schedules, which she presented to me over coffee the next morning like a project proposal.
I loved it. Not because I need structure, but because watching Kassidy Monroe apply her considerable organizational powers to something she cares about is like watching a force of nature with a color-coded planner.
The relationship works. Not perfectly---we're both too stubborn for perfection---but honestly.
She writes in the mornings, and I work, and we talk every night, and every other weekend one of us drives the three-hours to close the distance.
She's met Calder (who was polite), Decker (who was quiet), and Riggs (who asked her to sign his chest, which she declined).
She finished the book. Breaking Point---the novel that started as a desperate attempt to outrun writer's block and became something real.
Her editor called it "a masterpiece of romantic tension.
" Her agent cried on the phone. Diana Hartwell sent a bottle of champagne and a note that read: You bled on the page. Now let them read it.
The book launch is at the Tidehaven Community Center---a white clapboard building on the harbor that's been decorated with twinkle lights and book displays and an alarming number of flowers.
The local bookstore co-hosted, and the turnout exceeds expectations.
Two hundred chairs. A signing table stacked with hardcovers.
A podium with a microphone that Kassidy will stand behind in approximately one hour and address a crowd about the book that changed her life.
My job is to keep her safe. My personal mission is to keep from staring at her like a man who can't believe his luck, because that's unprofessional, and Calder is watching.
Kassidy arrives forty minutes early, which surprises no one. She's in a dark blue dress that matches the book cover, her hair deliberately loose, and when she sees me standing by the entrance in my security detail posture---feet apart, hands clasped, earpiece in---she stops dead.
"You're here."
"Calder assigned me."
"Calder is a menace."
"Calder is my boss."
She crosses the distance between us, and the professional in me says maintain position, and the rest of me pulls her into a kiss that is absolutely not in the operational briefing.
"You look beautiful," I tell her.
"You look like a bodyguard."
"I am a bodyguard."
"You're my boyfriend pretending to be a bodyguard."
"I'm your boyfriend who is also a bodyguard. Both things are true."
She laughs, and the nervous energy she's been carrying dissolves by a degree. Her hands are cold in mine---she's terrified, I realize. Not of the crowd or the cameras. Of standing in front of people and owning the thing she created.
"Hey." I duck to meet her eyes. "You wrote the book. It's extraordinary. All you have to do is tell them why."
"What if I forget how to talk? What if I stand up there and the words just---"
"Then I'll start a security incident and evacuate the building. Everyone will be too distracted to notice."
"That's not helpful."
"It's a contingency plan. You love contingency plans."
Her smile breaks through the anxiety, and she squeezes my hands once before pulling away. "Okay. I can do this."
"You can do this."
The event begins. I position myself at the back of the room---standard protocol, clear sightline to exits and principal.
The crowd fills every chair and spills along the walls.
Diana Hartwell sits in the front row, regal and attentive.
Tara---Kassidy's best friend, a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper mouth---sits beside her, already tearing up before anyone has spoken.
Kassidy takes the podium.
She grips the edges, and from my position I can see the tremor in her fingers. But when she speaks, her voice is steady. Clear. The voice of a woman who talks to invisible characters on beaches and makes them listen.
"Six months ago," she says, "I couldn't write a sentence.
I'd lost something---not my talent, though it felt like that.
I'd lost the belief that what I had to say mattered.
That stories about love, about connection, about two imperfect people finding each other in the wreckage---that those stories were worth telling. "
The room is silent. Two hundred people, not breathing.
"And then a hurricane happened. Which sounds like a metaphor, but it's not.
An actual hurricane." Laughter, scattered and warm.
"And in that hurricane, I found the story I didn't know I needed to write.
Not just the one in this book---though I hope you'll read it and love it---but the one I was living.
The one about a woman who thought she'd lost her voice, and the man who showed her she never had. "
Her eyes find mine across the room. Two hundred people, and she looks at me. The connection is instantaneous---a current that bridges the distance and makes the crowd disappear.
"This book is dedicated to T.B.," she says. "He knows who he is. He's probably standing in the back of the room right now, pretending to do a security sweep."
Laughter. Heads turn. My ears burn, but I don't look away.
"T.B., you told me once that sometimes the bravest thing isn't proving you don't need anyone. Sometimes it's admitting you do." She pauses, and her voice softens. "I needed you. I need you. And admitting that---living it---is the bravest thing I've ever done."
Applause. Not polite applause---the genuine, full-bodied kind that comes from a room full of people who believe in love stories.
Tara is openly crying. Diana Hartwell is nodding with the satisfied expression of a woman who saw this coming.
And I'm standing at the back of a community center in Tidehaven with my heart in my throat, wondering how a babysitting assignment turned into the most important thing that's ever happened to me.
The signing line wraps around the building.
Kassidy sits behind the table for two hours, signing books, taking photos, connecting with readers who tell her that her stories changed their lives.
She's radiant---not performing, not pretending.
Just herself, in the fullness of who she is, and watching her is like watching the sun come up after a very long night.
Afterward, when the crowd has thinned and the volunteers are stacking chairs, I find her in the back room. She's sitting on a folding chair with her heels kicked off, champagne in hand, the dress slightly rumpled.
"How do you feel?"
"Like I just ran a marathon and won and also might throw up."
"All positive signs."
"Tucker." She sets down the champagne. "Take me home."
Home. She says it like she means Tidehaven. Like the word has shifted its definition in the last three months, expanding to include a small coastal town and a man who carries her books and reads Ishiguro.
Her place---a rental cottage she's been using as a writing retreat, the excuse she gave for spending most weekends in Tidehaven---is ten minutes from the community center.
It's small and perfect, with a desk overlooking the harbor and bookshelves built into the walls and a bed that we've broken in thoroughly over the last two months.
Inside, she kicks off her shoes and turns to me with an expression that's half triumph and half desire and entirely devastating.
"You were proud of me," she says. Not a question.
"I'm always proud of you."
"You were standing there looking at me like I'd just---"
"Like you'd done the bravest thing I've ever seen? Yeah."
She crosses the room. Her hands find my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders.
Her fingers find my earpiece, pull it free.
The radio goes on the nightstand. Then the jacket, the holster, the professional distance I wear like a second skin---all of it, gone.
Just Tucker. Just her. Just the cottage and the harbor and the sound of us breathing.
"I want to show you something," she says.
She opens her laptop. A new document, untitled. The first page reads:
Chapter 1
The gravel crunches beneath my rental car's tires like a countdown...