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“We can’t keep this on the down-low indefinitely.” God, I hated having to be the voice of reason. My tone was tired, so very tired. “More people are going to guess like your mom did.”
“Let them.” Ezra met my weary voice with a stubbornness I admired and wanted to run from. “I want you as my boyfriend, not my bodyguard.”
“Ezra.” I rubbed my face, like pinching the bridge of my nose or digging my fingers into my cheeks would distract from how much this hurt.
“Tell me you don’t want that too.” His gaze bore into mine, and I had no doubt that he could see my every truth without me uttering a single word.
“Want isn’t the same as getting. Reality—”
“Fuck reality.” He swung his leg off me, moving to sit next to me and glower, all traces of afterglow gone. “You care for me, and I sure as hell care for you. That’s all that matters.”
“I wish…” My lips trembled around the whisper, and I had to swallow hard, force myself to smear his rosy idea with the gray reality bearing down on us. “We can’t ignore that I have been your bodyguard. You can’t simply start parading me around as your boyfriend without an avalanche of negative press.”
He gave a maddening shrug. “The publicity is overwhelmingly positive right now. People love my big, heroic SEAL bodyguard. It’s a great story. If we add in that we’re now a thing, people will eat that up.”
“I’m so glad you can spin this in a way that benefits you.” Anger replaced the sadness in my voice. And I was far, far too naked for this conversation. I scrambled off the bed and retrieved my pants. The worst thing was that he wasn’t wrong. The press would be way kinder to him. He wasn’t the one who would be seen as unprofessional, a celebrity chaser, someone using Ezra for his own purposes. Whatever they said about me, it wouldn’t be good.
“Hey, it works for you too. Your phone is probably already ringing off the hook with new clients.”
“Curiosity seekers.” I yanked on my shirt. “I want our reputation to earn us business, not headlines.”
“Your reputation can survive us dating.” He arranged the covers in his lap like my concerns were tiresome. “Trust me. It’ll be a temporary story if that.”
He simply wasn’t getting it. I paced in front of the bed. “It’ll be a whisper long after the gossip blogs die down. ‘That’s Ezra’s bodyguard. The one he fucked around with.’ Not to mention the jokes we’re already getting.” Somewhere in the past hallways of my memories, laughter rang, cruel and sharp. I’d tried to outrun it, but I could still hear the teasing about my dad. He’d let me be a punchline and never given a damn what that had done to me. I didn’t believe Ezra could be that callous, but my chest ached nonetheless.
I ground my heel into the floor. “Harley told me there’s been more than one call about our ‘red carpet treatment’ and asking for the hottest security personnel available. That will only get worse if people assume we’re available for…extracurricular work. The rumors would dog my company as long as we are together.”
“So?” Letting the covers pool around his thighs, he shrugged.
“What do you mean so?” I thought he knew me better than almost anyone else ever had, but maybe he didn’t know me at all.
“So, who cares? A few whispers? Some jokes? You’d let that keep us apart?”
I’d lost the ability to answer. Not that I couldn’t get the words past my tight throat, but more that I no longer knew what I wanted to say. I wanted him to be right in the worst way. I wanted to believe that my concerns truly were petty and no big deal, something that would quickly pass and not be a black mark on my character. And more than anything, I hated that word—apart. That was the last thing I wanted, yet it still seemed inevitable, and all I could do was stop and stare helplessly at him.
“You would,” he answered for me. “You care that much about what other people think that you’ll let worries over your stellar reputation steal your happiness, your chance at something truly special.”
“My reputation is all I have. It’s how I respect myself in the morning. I refuse to be a punchline.” The temperature in the room seemed to have raised at least twenty degrees, an oppressive heat that had me sweating. No matter what my father had done, I’d always had my own reputation to fall back on. At least I was respectable. At least I had honor. At least the jokes weren’t about me. But now they were, and I was sweating like I was fourteen again, absorbing stupid taunts about yet another headline.
