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“Before what?!”
He sighed again, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “Before I realized that it just wasn’t possible. My job is too important to keep risking it like this. If I’m distracted, I can’t protect you like I need too. If anything ever happened to either one of you, I would feel personally responsible, all right? I can’t have that on my conscious. I won’t.”
Somewhere in my brain, I knew there was a ring of truth to his words. My heart didn’t want to pay attention to reason though. My heart only knew that Colt was telling me that we couldn’t be together. And that—I just couldn’t accept.
“Colt, we can work things out. You’re doing your job just fine. We’ll work it out. You can’t do this to me…I…I love you.” The words were out before I had any hope of stopping them.
Colt lowered his eyes to the floor and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Natalie. Can’t you see that? It just doesn’t matter. We can’t be together under these circumstances. It’s too risky. From now on, we have to go back to keeping things between us strictly professional. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it has to be.”
I pressed my lips together and tried my best to ignore the stinging I felt in my eyes. Those weren’t the words I wanted to hear. I had just told this man that I loved him, and his response had been to tell me that it didn’t matter.
He couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell me that he loved me too.
He was willing to pretend that I meant nothing more to him than a paycheck.
My blood boiling and my body trembling with fury, I stormed over to him. He tried to turn his head to avoid my gaze, but I wouldn’t let him.
My hand flew back, and I slapped him across the face, wanting him to feel just as much pain as I did.
He stumbled backward. He was such a large man, I doubted I really hurt him. His reaction was more from shock than anything. He rubbed the side of his face and his mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to say something. But I was no longer interested in anything he had to say.
“Stay away from me,” I said. “Don’t come back. I want a new security detail, and I never want to see you again. I’ll be alerting my father that you are not to come back again during another shift change. Stay out of my life forever, Colt.”
Not wanting him to see the tears about to fall from my eyes, I turned around and rushed to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me.
CHAPTER 16
Colt
Back inside of the security headquarters, I moved from the seat in front of the vents, the air-conditioning coming out entirely too cold. Then again, the coldness I felt could have very well been coming from within.
I was more exhausted than I’d ever felt in my life, and to top it all off, my spirit had never felt so broken either.
As I sat in the waiting room, having been called in by Jared again, I felt like a complete idiot. What had I been thinking? How could I have honestly expected Natalie to respond to the way I had behaved last night?
I knew that I had just made one of the biggest mistakes in my life.
I had finally found the woman of my dreams, and there was a chance that I had just caused irreparable damage to our relationship before it had even gotten a chance to fully begin.
I was a fucking idiot.
How would I be able to carry on if I could no longer see her gorgeous face, hear her laugh, smell her skin, or feel her touch? If I couldn’t run my fingers through her long dark hair, or stare into her deep brown eyes? To wrap my hands around her tiny waist or hold her in my arms after a night of mind blowing sex?
I sighed and sat down. Even though the chairs in the office were cushioned, they still felt uncomfortable this morning. More than likely though, it was merely because there wasn’t a single thing that could comfort me at a time like this. I was too worried that I had ruined my chances of happiness. The thought made me feel sick, as I sat, agitatedly bouncing my knee and waiting to speak to my handler.
Last night, after Natalie had slapped me and stormed off to her room, it had taken every ounce of strength I possessed to not go after her and apologize. I had hoped she saw through my charade of indifference to understand that the decision to limit our relationship to professional terms had just about killed me. But she’d been too blinded by emotion and disappointment to notice.
And I knew there was nothing I could do about it until I got my career affairs in order. I couldn’t keep leading her on until I was sure we could have a real future together. In that moment, I just hadn’t been sure and felt that the uncertainty would only do us more harm in the long run. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was cause anyone harm.
Speaker Finley had placed his and Natalie’s lives literally in my hands. If it hadn’t been for him giving me this job in the first place, who knew where I’d be. I owed it to him to give my undivided attention to their safety rather than entertaining my own selfish personal wants and desires.
It made me cringe though, to wonder what Speaker Finley must have undoubtedly been thinking about me at the moment.
After a restless night on the couch, I knew that I did not want to be around for the aftermath when Natalie woke up. I hadn’t had the heart to face her again, so I’d made sure to contact Jones at the crack of dawn, asking that he come back before Natalie woke up. I had been on my way back to Speaker Finley’s place when my phone rang.
“Hello?” I had said, seeing the Speaker’s number pop up on caller ID.
“Hi Colt,” his voice had come over the other line. Immediately, I knew there was something off about his tone.
