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Oh, the bullshit I am going to have to spin to justify this. But I don’t know how to stop. Not when it comes to Brennan Walker.
Me: I’ll try and think up something else, too. I know we cage you in.
Brennan: This helps.
Me: My pictures of incredible Cajun food and impeccably shot targets?
Brennan: Talking to you.
What the fuck do I say to that?
What would it be like if he weren’t the president and I weren’t his detail lead? If he weren’t the president, would I take a chance on figuring out… whatever this is that’s going on inside me? Would I chase those neon eyes? Find out what it means to be held in real life the way someone—someone maybe him—has been holding me in my dreams?
But how would we have ever met, if not for who we are? Him, a California boy, and me, born and bred in the backwoods bayou. There was never a moment when I would have bumped into him on the foggy streets of San Francisco or he would have run into me down in the muggy heat of New Orleans. DC drew us together, but DC keeps us apart, too.
I take the coward’s way out.
Me: I’m glad, sir.
His response comes almost an hour later, after I’ve brushed my teeth and am tucked into my shitty little dorm bed, holding on to the burner phone and willing it to buzz.
Brennan: Goodnight.
I watch his yoga video another six times before I power off the phone.
In my dreams, I run, chasing a pair of bleu clair eyes and a hidden smile. This time, my hands are doing the exploring. It’s my fingers running over firm legs, granite-hard abs, and defined hips. My lips landing on his collarbone and kissing a path down into the valley of his pecs. Down to a man’s belly button and his happy trail, and then farther, down to the waistband of a pair of leggings and—
I wake stroking myself, and there’s a half second between my dream and full wakefulness, and then my orgasm slams into me. I curl forward, gasping, squeezing my eyes closed, groaning through the aftershocks.
My heart is racing, and there’s a name on my lips that I can’t say. I can’t, because if I do, I’m fucked. I can’t desire him. I can’t crave him.
But, damn it, I do.
It feels like a desecration. Like I am polluting something wonderful, or like I’ve taken something treasured and gifted to me and smashed it on the ground. Like I can’t be trusted with his kindness or his respect, his smiles or his attention, because this is what I’m doing with it.
“Brennan…” I breathe.
* * *
The morning isfull of EMT recert classes, which means our real-world drill later on will be a wounded president.
Everything hits different now, as I slap the bandage on Henry, who’s role-playing my downed president. Gunshot to the chest, above the arc of his vest. We’re supposed to prevent the bullet from being fired in the first place, but if we’ve fucked up so badly our guy gets shot, the next best thing we can do is keep him alive until he gets to the hospital.
Henry and I usually jerk each other around. I had to go in for mouth-to-mouth once, and Henry met me with his lips puckered. A few years back, Henry pulled the emergency birth scenario from the grab bag, and I gave an Oscar-worthy birth performance in the back seat of one our SUVs out on our mock airstrip, pretending to be a Swedish princess. By the time the baby was born, it seemed like all of RTC was gathered around him and me, howling.
I can’t get into the hilarity this time. It’s just Henry beneath these bandages, and these injuries and plunging vital signs aren’t real, and there’s no actual gunshot wound—
But what if there was? What if Brennan does get hurt on my watch? What if something terrible happens, and I can’t save him?
I’m flustered, out of my element, and I barely pass my recert after missing the signs for Cushing’s triad.
Henry knows something is up. His eyes linger on me throughout the rest of the morning.
At lunch, I grab him and we split from Rowley for a dive bar that doubles as a greasy burger joint during the day. We snag a corner table and dig into mushroom-and-swiss burgers, splitting a plate of fries.
If I talk fast, maybe he won’t notice the bullshit. “So, President Walker is going to start running on the South Lawn track in the mornings. I’ll run pace with him. What do you think of staging agents every hundred yards?”
He chews and stares at me. “You wanna run pace for Walker?”
