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“Birdie was your friend once.”
“Once is the key word, Ben.”
“I still don’t get what happened. One-minute you guys were together all the time, the next minute it was like she never existed. If she hadn’t stayed friends with Wren, I wouldn’t be friends with her now either.”
“You know I don’t talk about it.”
“Exactly. You never talk about anything Birdie, and you don’t want to hear anything Birdie, but now you’re going to be in her space all the time. I hope you can get over whatever happened with her all those years ago.”
“I’m going to do my job, Ben. The job that you and Wren blackmailed me into taking.”
His jaw ticks. “We didn’t blackmail you. We just want someone who we trust to take care of Birdie. I was with her last night, Liam. She’s downplaying this whole thing, but I can tell she’s scared out of her mind. I’d go if I could, but I’m not trained like you are. You can keep her safe. Just put your old feelings and whatever the fuck happened behind you.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Ben sighs and runs his hands through his short hair. “Yeah, but since you won’t tell me what happened, that’s the best I’ve got for you.”
“It was nothing, okay. I’m not even sure what happened.”
“That makes no sense.”
I groan. Ben wouldn’t understand. But he’s right about one thing, it was a long time ago. I’m going to have to put my history with Birdie behind me and do my job. I take any and all jobs seriously, and even if Birdie doesn’t want me there, I’m going to keep her safe.
“Did you and Wren even think about Birdie’s feelings in this? She’s going to be pissed when she sees me,” I ask.
“Maybe she won’t even recognize you,” Ben grins.
“I may not be sixteen anymore, but I don’t lookthatdifferent.”
“You’re ripped, dude. All man!”
I shake my head and pray to whatever’s out there for strength. “I hope you and Wren are prepared for her wrath. You can’t blame me if she never talks to either of you again when she finds out who her new bodyguard is.”
“She’d never do that.”
“Sure she wouldn’t,” I say sarcastically.
Ben sits on my bed, taking clothes from my suitcase and fucking folding them before putting them back in. He’s like a mother hen.
“If you really don’t want this job, don’t do it. I’ll find Birdie someone else.”
I stop packing and look at Ben’s concerned face. He really wants me to take this job. When he came to me last night with the idea after seeing Birdie, I laughed in his face. But then he FaceTimed Wren and the guilt tripping began. Before I knew it, I had spoken to not only Eric, Birdie’s tour manager, but met up with her PR person at the buttcrack of dawn this morning. They threw down so much money that my eyes bulged out of my head. My gut reaction was to say no, but I had been out of work for two years prior to working in security, that fat check would dig me out of medical debt.
The deal was sealed when Wren called me again this morning, crying and begging me to take the job and protect her ‘bestie.’ I couldn’t say no to her. And I couldn’t say no to Ben either. He’d done so much for me over the years, saying no felt like slapping him in the face. So, I shoved down my feelings and memories of the last time I spoke to Birdie, and I signed the fucking dotted line. For the next two months I’m Birdie Wilder’s bodyguard. No more running away.
“I think this is good,” Ben mutters, still folding my clothes.
“Why do you say that?”
“This is going to force you and Birdie to put whatever happened behind you. You’ve changed, Birdie’s changed. You’re not the same people you were then.”
He has a point. We aren’t. I don’t know much about Birdie, only what I overhear from Ben when he talks to Wren. I sure as hell have changed in the years since we stopped talking. I’m not the music loving, nerdy, football player anymore. I have baggage… a lot of it. I also like to run from commitment and enjoy lifting weights and sleeping with random women.
Hopefully when Birdie sees me, she doesn’t try to box me into the Liam she remembers. It wouldn’t end well. Not that anything with Birdie Wilder ever ends well for me.
“I gotta jet,” I tell Ben, taking a pair of my boxers from him mid-fold.
“Where are you going?”
