Page 12 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

He wouldn't go on the record for me the first week I arrived. Now he hands me his whole life unprompted, and the only thing that changed is a photograph of my face on a bar top in the Rusty Anchor.

"Why are they showing my photo?"

"Because they put you here. And now they can't reach you."

I don't understand that. My editor at Pacific Northwest Monthly assigned this story. David Harlow, who I've worked with for two years, who bought me coffee in Portland and walked me through the pitch. Normal channels. Normal assignment. Nothing about Heckland or the CIA or whatever Bruiser is telling me connects to the freelance integration piece sitting half-written in my notebook.

I file the questions. They're the wrong ones for right now.

Because his hands are shaking.

His voice held through every word. His body didn't. He sets the radio down and his left hand opens and closes against his thigh, the shake in his fingers running on fury, not fear.

"CIA agents are in my town showing your photograph around. You want to explain that?"

"You think I'd be sitting here confused if I had an explanation? I followed an assignment. My editor gave me a story and I drove here."

"You walked in here with an assignment about the monsters here and the club I was sent to infiltrate. Your editor handed you a story that put you inside my compound. Now Heckland can't find you and he's asking locals." His jaw works. "That's not a coincidence, Ava."

"David Harlow is a magazine editor. I've worked with him for two years. He is not CIA. I don't work for the fucking CIA, I think I wouldn't know if I did."

"Then somebody is using you and you didn't bother to ask questions."

That hit me and it hurts because it might be true, and because the way he says it sounds less like an accusation and more like a man furious at himself for not seeing it coming.

But underneath the sting, the questions start stacking. David Harlow pitched me this story. If someone else put it in his hands first, I need to know who.

He turns back to the monitors but he's not seeing them. His hands grip the edge of the desk and the wood groans under his fingers. The muscles across his shoulders lock tight, his breathing goes shallow and fast, and something behind his eyes leaves the room. Leaves me. Goes somewhere older than this argument, older than this compound, and whatever lives there has his whole body vibrating. A low, grinding tension that makes the air around him feel like it could crack.

He's seven feet tall, three hundred pounds and every ounce of it has gone rigid. I should step back. The animal part of my brain that understands what a minotaur looks like when the leash slips—that part is screaming at me to give him the room.

But instead I cross the room. Take his left hand. Then his right.

"What's your real name?"

The question catches him mid-breath. His fingers tighten around mine and I see his eyes refocus on me.

"What?"

"Your mother didn't name you Bruiser. If you can accuse me of being CIA, you can tell me your real name."

"Benjamin." His voice drops. "Benjamin Walker."

I hold his fingers tighter. The tremor runs from his knuckles into my palms.

"Just breathe with me, Benjamin."

His breathing catches, and his fingers tighten around mine before he can stop them.

Then he's kissing me.

His mouth finds mine like he ran out of reasons not to. His grip pulls free, one fist catching the back of my neck, the other my hip, and the momentum takes us both backward until my shoulders hit the corkboard on the wall behind us.

Pushpins scatter. A length of red string snaps. Photo printouts shift and crinkle against my back and I don't care because his mouth opens mine and the sound he makes vibrates against my lips. Low, broken, dragged up from somewhere he's kept sealed for years.

I fist his shirt and pull him closer. The height difference makes this impossible standing, and he solves it without breaking the kiss. His palms drop to my thighs, he lifts me off the ground one-armed, and my back presses flat against the corkboard while he braces his free hand on the wall. The plaster cracks under his palm.

I wrap my legs around his waist.