Page 61 of The Forbidden Bodyguard

I am.

I’m aware of everything. For example, everyday Victor Voss rings and spends a good ten minutes on the phone with his daughter. I hear his loud voice as he gives her instructions and how her brightness seems to shrivel up.

The same light that is like a supernova when I’m deep inside her.

I order Thai food, and when it arrives, I carry it into the living room where Stella is tucked up on the sofa. The TV hums quietly in the background, which we don’t pay much attention to.

I haven’t apologized for being angry, and she hasn’t left. There is something going on that we haven’t discussed. I don’t mean this shitshow of a wedding. I mean us.

Her.

Me.

Us.

I’m thirty-fucking-six. I’ve slept with my share of women and even thought a few of them might be long-term partners. It’s never worked out. One I almost fell in love with, but in the end, she found life with me in the teams too hard, and I found her too needy.

I get it. A lot of women like the idea of a SEAL, until shit gets real. Until we’re out on a date, at a function, or I’m climbing out of bed in the middle of the night because my phone has gone off.

There’s no time to say goodbye; we can’t say where we are going or for how long.

And we can’t promise we’ll come home.

It’s a mind fuck.

I watched my SEAL buddies marry and have kids and wondered how much fucking harder it must be for them.

Much harder.

After Dad died, I only had Mom to concern myself with, and she never wanted me to opt out. All my friends are in the military, so they got it.

As I grab chopsticks and hand Stella a pair, feeling her softness beside me, I can’t imagine the phone pinging right now and having to leave her. Can’t imagine her big blue eyes looking at me as if it could be the last time she sees me. Or hanging onto the edge of a Black Hawk in the dark as we fly into enemy territory and wondering if I’ll ever get home and make love to her.

Jesus.

I’m falling hard for this woman.

“Stell,” I say, and she turns.

I grab her face and kiss her, lingering as I soak up all her goodness and beauty.

“Did we just make up?” She smiles.

“Eat,” I smirk, because there’s no way I’m saying yes to that. She’ll think I’m okay with her agreeing to cancel her bodyguard service.

It’s a moot point.

I’m not letting her out of my sight.

She just doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s about to.

“Oh, yum,” Stella says, assuming my smile was a yes, as she opens the first box. “Can we share?”

“Sure.”

I let her eat, playing it cool, as she hasn’t had much of an appetite for the past few days, and things are about to get crazy.

Stella thinks her fate is sealed.