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He knows.
My stomach churns. “Thanks for keeping him safe.” If they hurt Beckett, it’d kill me. Down to the core.
O’Malley stabs the cheesecake. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s my job to take the punch so he doesn’t.”
“You fought them off?”
He nods once. “Yeah.” His eyes flit up to mine, seriousness in them. “They were aimed for him, Donnelly. They weren’t sparing him to avoid a fucking lawsuit. If they got through me, they were going to get to him.”
My mouth dries. Everything whirls around me. And I have to take a seat. The cushioned chair is open, and I slowly sink down.
“What do they want?” O’Malley asks.
“Things I can’t give them.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. Eyes on the ground.
“They didn’t seem like they’d end this here. I almost bashed one in the head with their own bat, but I stopped myself from committing murder tonight. So there’s that.” He takes an angry bite of cheesecake.
On the drive here, I knew this couldn’t be left to fester. I have to do more than I just did. Which was nothing. Guilt chews at me.
“I’m going to fix it.” I know I keep saying it, but this time, I really do mean it.
I have to fix this.
Even if I have to do something I didn’t want to do. Even if I cross lines that I never wanted to cross.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” O’Malley says after swallowing a bite. “About who attacked me—I didn’t tell anyone it was your family.”
I’m sure some people are guessing my family did it, but that stuns me that O’Malley wouldn’t just throw me under. “What?” I frown.
“I didn’t tell anyone it was your family.”
“But why?” I don’t get it. This was his chance to get me fired. The parents would likely say I’m a threat by association and I can no longer uphold my duty to protect anyone. And I wouldn’t blame them.
I’m a bodyguard. All I’ve wanted was to help other people survive. To be trusted upon. Depended upon. I’ve failed somewhere, I know that, but I can’t believe that if I’m gone, my family would just leave the famous ones alone.
They won’t.
“Why?” O’Malley repeats, holding my gaze with his one eye. “Because Beckett loves you, for some fucking reason. I love that guy too, and there’s no way I’m hurting him by hurting you like that. So you’re spared.”
Skating by is a thing I do.
I nod slowly and rise to my feet. I take another look at him, my stomach overturning. It should’ve been me protecting Beckett. It should’ve been me standing against my family, taking the hit.
It’s a running joke that no one knows O’Malley’s first name. Except, I do.
“I’m sorry, Chris.”
We exchange a calmer look and he nods, and then I leave the hospital. Back in the parking deck, I’m inside the car and I call Luna.
After she answers, I just start telling her what O’Malley said and how Beckett’s love for me saved me this time. How Xander’s love for me has kept me on security for years, too. And I don’t totally get it. I start the car as I say, “People can survive without me.”
“I don’t think any of us want to,” Luna says softly.
That stays with me all the way to Philly.
27
LUNA HALE
A purple nebula glides slowly across my bed and ceiling and hands and legs, all while I lie against my soft comforter. Sheer netting with strands of warm lights is nestled around my headboard, my bed tucked against one wall for maximum coziness.
I’m not in space. We have these things on Earth called galaxy projectors that make you feel like you are, and after the sky-high ups and the deep, deep downs of my dad’s birthday party tonight, I thought it’d help ease me to sleep.
It doesn’t really do the job.
And then Tom and Eliot call around 3 a.m.—they can’t sleep either.
“Beckett’s still pretty shaken up,” Tom says over the phone. “He won’t talk to anyone but Charlie and our mom.”
Beckett Joyce Cobalt isn’t one of the closest Cobalt brothers to me, but I’ve always been able to see how much he loves his siblings and even me and the rest of his cousins. The last time I saw him at his Hell’s Kitchen apartment, he asked, “Are you still writing the Thebulan series?”
Beckett remembered the name I use for my longest, ongoing fic. He could’ve easily forgotten. Sometimes I forget what ballet production he’s currently dancing in—and I try not to let the swell of guilt associated with my forgetfulness and his remembrance drag me under.
He shares that with Donnelly, I think. The ability to recall certain things that matter to people, and I wonder if that’s a reason why they bonded in the first place. They both value the simple uniqueness of human beings. What makes one distinct from another.
