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CHAPTER13
Penelope
I’m curled up alonein bed. My bags are packed and by the door. Again. We’re not leaving until morning, but the routine is becoming all too familiar. I did this when I left Roman and again when I had to leave the studio. I’ve hugged Mother, but I’m sure I’ll get smothered again tomorrow. Father is in Hong Kong, but he called. He’s worried, but it didn’t escape my notice that he didn’t mention anything about my soon-to-be ex-husband and Hughes Financial. Still, I appreciate his support.
I hate that it’s taken something so awful to bring us all closer. If I could see the end on the horizon, I’d feel better. But I was shot at. The person got away. Security footage showed nothing but a dark figure hiding in the trees and darting through the gate behind the delivery van.
Is that what stalkers do? Is he mad that I’m with my mother or that I have a male bodyguard? Did leaving my career upset him even though he’s the reason I left? Those questions run through my head at night. They’d keep me from getting two seconds of sleep if it weren’t for Cannon.
His quiet footsteps move through the bathroom and into my room.
I curl deeper into my blankets, my back to him. “Thank you.” I hate how tiny I sound, but today wasn’t like any other I’ve experienced.
“You want the light off?”
I nod, my hair rustling against the sheets.
He leans over me, blanketing me in his cedar-and-citrus scent as he clicks off the lamp. I inhale deeply, not caring if he hears. Darkness takes over the room. Mother probably has all the other lights on in the house, but as long as Cannon’s with me, I’m okay.
I can’t even shut my eyes. His breathing is steady, but we’ve done this enough that I know he’s not asleep. “How do you handle getting shot at?”
“By not dwelling on it.”
I wait for more explanation, but he stays quiet. Okay. “Isn’t that the opposite of what a professional would recommend?”
“There aren’t many professionals to stop and talk to when it happens.”
His frank, uninformative answer frustrates me as much as it comforts me. “What about after?”
“In the military there’re chaplains and stuff, but I never felt the need to talk to anyone. When I became a contractor, I signed up knowing the risks.”
“Isn’t that what people would say you did when you joined the military?”
“I walked into a recruiter’s office when I was eighteen and asked to be on the first bus out after all the paperwork was done. I didn’t know shit about shit, but I went into it with my eyes wide open. I figured it was better me than anyone else. My mom had just gone to prison, and I had no one.”
Wait—his mom was in prison? “Cannon, I’m sorry.”
“She’s the one who should be sorry, but I’m sure she thinks she’s the victim,” he says matter-of-factly. “I was in my later twenties when I was a contractor. A bodyguard, basically. I was old enough to know exactly what I was getting into, and I’ve dealt with what happened to me.”
He dealt with it. I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown. A sense of foolishness makes me burrow deeper.
“Training,” he says, and I loosen from my tight coil. “We’re trained, and some scenarios are pretty realistic. They can’t prepare you for the real thing, but like I said, dwelling on it doesn’t help. Some guys…it fucks them up. Some guys…we just get on with life. You don’t know which one you’re going to be until it happens, and neither is wrong.”
“I think I’m going to be in the fucked-up category.”
“When we’re at the safe house, Jacobi can arrange online counseling if you want.”
Since I can’t sleep without him in bed with me and I can’t quit seeing dark figures trying to attack me and Cannon, I might need it. And since he’s mentioning it, he must see signs in me that he’s seen in others who didn’t get on with their lives.
My mind goes back to what he said. He joined when he was eighteen and desperate to leave whatever situation he was in. I know so little about him, but so much. His mother is in jail. His father abandoned him. His childhood must’ve been bad if he used the military to get away as fast as possible. Did that mean he had no other way to support himself? Or was he driven to help people in some way?
I let out a long breath. Cannon is a better subject to dwell on, but I don’t have any more answers about him than I do about my stalker.
“You’re stronger than you think you are,” he says. “Your dad saw it. That’s why he was so hard on you.”
I roll over. I can’t see more than shadows. “How do you know what my dad was like?”
He turns onto his side. We’ve never been closer in this bed. His minty breath wafts over me. “Because I know what parents who don’t give a fuck act like, and they don’t act like your father.”
