I don’t go up to people I first meet and ask, “Are you funny?”
So after a while, I just stopped listing out our personalities, but now that we’re older, we’ve become easier to tell apart from our features.
Banks has a fraction less muscle mass because I lift more, and my jaw is subtly more square to his narrow.
On the beach, I look at my brother, and I’m less tense. He’s familiarity and comfort during rough days. No matter how bad I fuck it, he’ll always be here.
I check over my shoulder, a routine sweep. “Which men need to rack out?” I ask him.
The past few days have been long and drawn out for the team with little to no sleep. Bodyguards will attempt to stay with their clients past exhaustion.
“Epsilon should be good,” Banks says. “For SFO, Oscar is probably pushing twenty-hours. Farrow could be going into thirty.”
Gut reaction, I glance down the shoreline and spot the bleach-white haired bodyguard, covered in skull and dagger tattoos. Farrow Redford Keene looks between a swashbuckling pirate and a fucking guitarist in a rock band.
He’s neither.
In actuality, he’s a doctor. Now a bodyguard again. Assigned to both the med team and security team, and he’s out of earshot while talking to Akara. The Omega lead is catching Farrow up on what he’s missed in security.
Farrow turns his head slightly.
I scout the other side of the beach to avoid our eyes meeting. Muscles flexed, I suck in a strained breath.
Banks plants his gaze on me. “I thought you said you were snapped to?”
We always say that to one another: you need to snap to. Can’t live in the past. He’s referring to Farrow. My past mistake. My fuck-up.
What I haven’t been able to mentally drop.
What I need to fix.
These men on the team are my responsibility.
My client is my life.
It’s what I live by.
And you fucked it, Thatcher.
I rake my hand across my jaw. “I shouldn’t have punched Farrow.” I haven’t said it out loud to my brother. Not until now. He’s just known I’ve been neck-deep in regret.
He’s been seeing and feeling my fucking torment the same way I can tell he’s in physical pain. It’s not some “psychic” connection. You just live with someone for twenty-eight years, and they’re a part of you like that.
“Yeah,” Banks agrees in a deep whisper. “But you’re not the first guy to hit someone else on the team, and you’ve already paid a three-fucking-grand fine.”
Doesn’t matter. I rub my mouth roughly and then drop my hand.
I knew Banks would try to release me from my sins, but I don’t deserve that kind of absolution.
Jane runs on loyalty and trust—like I do—and in one instant, I broke both. I compromised my ability to effectively communicate with her. Because I fucking punched Farrow: her best friend’s boyfriend.
And it goes far beyond ruining the good thing I had working with Jane. I would’ve never wanted my men to do what I did.
I’m ashamed.
I don’t care if I’m the third or fourth or hundredth fucking bodyguard to hit another bodyguard. I let my anger and frustration get the best of me.
I should’ve cooled off and kept my mouth shut.
But I was fucking fuming that day. Farrow told Omega that he decided to quit security—so he could finish his residency and become a concierge doctor—and I lost it.
I’ve always wanted him to choose this team first, and hearing him pick the hospital felt like a betrayal that I feared come to fruition. A betrayal not only to security but to his client.
And I reached a point where I wanted to sock Farrow hard. To provoke him, I took a personal shot and implied something about Maximoff Hale that I knew would set him off. Something I don’t even fucking believe.
I insinuated Maximoff would sleep with any bodyguard that joined his detail.
Farrow charged. I swung.
“Thatcher.” Banks bites his toothpick and sends a hard look at me that says, don’t do this to yourself. My brother can’t stare at me for more than half a second.
We’re on-duty.
We need to scout our AO, and our area of operations tonight happens to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
I study the darkened sand fifty meters away.
Silence passes.
Until I break it.
“What I said—I can never take back,” I tell my brother.
He cocks his head slightly. “Everyone knows the straight shot to Farrow is to go after his boyfriend.”
I glare at the horizon. “And I’m the shitbag who took it, Banks.”
He looks right at me, but I’m not turning my head. My narrowed eyes are in a vice that I can’t loosen, and I don’t like glaring at my brother.
That one moment has haunted me for months. I personally attacked Farrow, caused friction in SFO, and I disrespected Maximoff. A guy who’s only shown a high-level of respect for every bodyguard.
Maximoff also just so happens to be Xander Hale’s older brother. Xander is a kid that Banks and I spent over five years protecting together. And what Xander means to me—means to us …there are no words that can even encapsulate how much I feel for that kid.
I swallow a jagged rock in my raw throat. Hurting these families is gut-wrenching. And it contradicts my whole purpose.
I should’ve been fired.
I did try to quit.
Just as I started signing the termination papers, Akara grabbed the pen out of my fucking hand and Banks locked me in a room until I promised I’d stay on. The main reason why I’m still here is… Jane.
I didn’t want to give up on her. I didn’t want to quit on her.
I care too much about her well-being and safety, and she needs real stability. Placing her in the hands of a new bodyguard felt like ripping the rug from underneath her feet.
I couldn’t do it.
And I know, well and fucking good, that dwelling on the past isn’t going to help Jane.
“What happened, happened ,” Banks whispers, still staring at me. “But we’ve all got to push forward together.”
I nod a few times, taking a deeper breath. “Watch the sea. I’m not the objective.” We’ve had issues with paparazzi boating to shore this summer.
He fixes his earpiece. “You’re such a fucking gabbadost’.” You’re such a fucking hardhead. His Philly lilt overpowers the Italian-American word.
I almost smile. After another quiet moment, I tell him, “I’m snapped to.”
His lips slowly rise. “Right on, right on.”
I instinctively pin my sights on my client.
Jane looks up from her spot near the fire, and her blue eyes crash against my brown.
My chest lifts, but I hardly fucking budge.
She tears our gazes apart and checks over her shoulder like the lights to the neighboring town are suddenly of interest.
Goddammit.
Banks scans the bonfires and then briefly glances at Jane. “She’s still not talking to you?”
Affirmative. “I’m fixing it,” I say stiffly.
A beat passes.
“Like now,” Banks says. “You gotta stop tormenting yourself and just go.”
“She’s with her family, Banks.” I raise the volume on my radio, but comms chatter has been nearly silent tonight. Everyone is in the same space. Not much happening.
“She’s always with her family. If you don’t move out, I’ll push your ass in the fucking sand.”
I give him a hard look. “You threw your fucking back out and you want to push me in the sand?”
He makes a move toward me, and I grab his bicep so he doesn’t do anything stupid. Just then, in my peripheral, I spot Maximoff heading towards Farrow.
Leaving Jane alone. She wedges her empty bottle in the sand.
I release my hold on my brother’s bicep. “I got this,” I tell Banks.
He smacks the back of his hand ag
ainst my chest. “Don’t nuke it, man.”
I nod and hike up the beach.
That phrase keeps rushing past me. Our dad would toss a football back and forth, and when Banks fumbled, our dad would just pat his shoulder and say, Don’t nuke it, kid. It was his way of telling us to not overthink it.
Jane doesn’t see me coming yet. She rises to her feet, brushes sand off her ass, and then goes to retrieve another beer. Aimed for the blue cooler near the dunes.
My stride is stringent. I pass the bonfires, heat stinging the back of my neck, and in seconds, I close in on her position.
Jane spots me, just as she crouches at the cooler and collects a beer from the melted ice. She hesitates. Frozen in place. I watch her beautiful blue eyes dart to the bonfire where her whole family congregates.
Don’t use the word “beautiful”.
I’m breathing hard through my nose, and I stop right in front of my client. Towering over Jane while she’s squatting. She stares more curiously at me and then untwists the cap of her beer.
“Jane,” I greet.
She straightens up. “Thatcher.” The top of her head barely reaches my shoulders, but she lifts her chin and looks me right in the eye.
She replied to me.
Which is a good sign.
“Can we talk?” I ask, my voice gutturally deep. All the time.