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“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“I do,” he replies at once. “You have no idea how much I do, my queen.”
“Say it again,” I say.
“My queen.” He leans down and kisses me, his hand trailing a path down my arm.
“Now tell me,” I order him.
“Tell you what, my queen?”
I shiver. I know now why it always made me mad when he called me that: because I love it so much.
“Tell me the truth. Why are you such a horrible bodyguard? I have had guards since I was a baby, and I promise you, it’s not normal guard behavior to take off with your charge and turn off your phone, and hide her phone, and get shot at and drowned and abandon her, and…”
“All right, all right, ok, I’ll tell you.” He swallows. “I just wish that they had killed me first, before I had to tell you the truth. Before…”
“Before what?”
“Before you hate me. I wish I was already dead when you found out the truth.”
“Marco, you’re scaring me.” I sit up. “What truth? What’s so terrible that you are acting this way? Hate you? Come on, you’ve kept so many secrets and I’m still here, melting for you. Just tell me.”
“Well, you know that I… that I…”
“I know that you’re hired as my bodyguard,” I help him out, because he seems to be struggling to breathe. He nods.
“Ok,” he says, “before we go any further, I have to tell you: I think I’m about to fall in love with you.”
“Oh, please,” I say, but my voice shakes, because he can’t mean that, he absolutely can’t, it’s too soon and too strange and this is not the way I was dreaming of having someone say those words to me for the first time and I…
I look at him more closely.
He is looking away from me, his eyes wet. He is sniffling a little. He doesn’t say that it was a joke.
“Marco?”
Now I’m really scared. Is he… Does he mean it? He can’t possibly…
“Are you saying this,” I say slowly, carefully, because I’m about to shatter, “because we are about to die?”
He nods. “I am saying this because it’s true,” he says. “And yes, I am about to die. Just me.”
“Stop saying that,” I hiss, but he’s leaning his head between his bent knees, covering his face with his hands. Wait. He means it. He… What is happening right now? “What are you—what?” I say, and my breath starts coming short again, the walls closing down on me, everything turning—
“Hey hey, it’s ok baby, don’t get scared.” His hands come around me immediately, and he presses me to his chest, buries his lips in my hair. “It’s ok,” he keeps saying.
“Go on,” I say when I calm down. “Tell me.”
I feel his Adam’s apple swallow hard against my cheek. Everything is quiet around us, empty, and I suddenly long for the noise of the storm to cover up all our dark secrets. To cover up the stench of death.
“I need to tell you something, Olivia,” he says in this small, scared voice that breaks me. “And I need you to stay calm.”
I nod.
“You said someone is trying to kill you,” he says quietly.
I wait.
