He gives me a protective look like I’m about to step on a landmine. “No. I didn’t go to college.” His squared shoulders never budge out of their readiness state of being.
I nod.
Tread carefully.
“I don’t mean to pry—that’s a lie, I do mean to pry.” I smile more at him.
I swear to all that is holy, his lips almost twitch into a tiny, fragment of a smile.
It causes me to carry onward. Like I live in a word vomitorium. “I don’t know where you were between high school and joining security, and if you want me to stop talking, just tell me, because I can—”
“Jane.” He breaks our eye contact, which worries me. He runs a rougher hand across his jaw and dips his head, causing a piece of brown hair to fall in his face. The strand lightly caresses his jaw before he tucks it back behind his ear.
I touch my hot cheek with a few fingers. “Really, you don’t have to answer.” I’m about to transition topics, but I’m stuck watching Thatcher.
He drops his arm to his side with a sort of decisiveness. As though he’s certain about his next action.
I’m feverishly trying to read and understand him from four feet away.
Thatcher nods to me. “You really want to know?”
“Of course I do.” I inhale a sharper breath and then lean my hip on the shelf, a lilac fabric roll poking my side.
Skin between his brows pleats, his confusion like cracking cement. “Why?”
You’ve always fascinated me. I open my mouth, those words trapped for a full second. I end up saying, “…I suppose those years, eighteen to twenty-two, make up who you are, and I’d like to know you better.”
He seizes my gaze in a vice that I’d rather not escape. “Most people don’t get this far. When I tell them I haven’t gone to college, that’s it. Hold on.” He clicks his mic and speaks louder. “Thatcher to Omega, I don’t copy. You’re coming in weak.” He scans the fabric store for threats while he listens.
Sometimes I envy bodyguards and their radios. To be a fly on the wall within the team. Farrow has let Moffy and me listen to comms chatter before. I thought it’d weaken my interest in security, namely Thatcher, but hearing how assertive he is just drastically increased his appeal.
He detaches the radio off his waistband, and his eyes dart to me. “Sorry, I’ve got to unfuck the comms.”
I wave him onward. “Go ahead.” While he handles security, I flag down the storeowner who passes the aisle. She’s elderly and sweet enough to answer several questions I have about fabrics. After which I let her be, and now I’ve gained a morsel more knowledge.
More prepared. I’m veering towards sheer black fabric. Very Calloway Couture. Very not me.
Thatcher clips the radio back to his slacks and adjusts his earpiece.
I peek more over my shoulder. “Finished?”
Without tearing his gaze off me, he checks his holstered gun on his waistband.
In the silence, the word finished lingers oddly. “With comms,” I add, facing him fully. “Not any other sort of finishing.”
Oh my God. I’m on six months without sex, and I wonder if this is a symptom of dick starvation. It better not be because I’ve sworn to never let a man inside of me. Never again. Not after the last time.
Thatcher doesn’t blink. “I know what you meant, Jane.”
“Bien.” I nod.
Good.
Good.
He sweeps the other end of the aisle. “About what you asked me…” His stern eyes return to my face. “If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else, not Maximoff or your brothers or sister.”
Moffy is the hardest to keep a secret from. After coming home from Greece, I gushed to him about Thatcher’s oath with me. I felt immensely better when Thatcher confessed that he told Banks about the oath too.
Out of everyone in my family, I’m closest to Moffy. Thinking of losing him, thinking of life without him by my side clenches my stomach and wells my eyes—because him and me, it’s all I’ve known. Moffy is a part of me. We’ve shared so many experiences together. We grew older together. Only one-month apart in age.
But what Thatcher is willing to share now has nothing to do with me. It’s personal and private information regarding himself, so it’ll be easier to hold this secret hostage from Maximoff.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promise. “Do you want to spit on it?”
Light almost reaches his eyes, but his seriousness never fissures. He shakes his head once. “I trust you.” He takes a long pause and brushes his hand over his mouth. “You’re going to need to tell me how you think I came into security.”
He wants to see what I know first, I assume. I think back. “I heard that another bodyguard referred you and Banks to the Tri-Force, but I’m unsure who you knew from security. Ninety percent of bodyguards are hired off referrals, aren’t they?”
“Most are,” Thatcher says, voice deep.
“I’ve only just started learning more about the team this past year,” I admit. “Not because I haven’t been interested.” I ramble on. “Security has been a fundamental part of my life since birth, but Moffy and I were always told not to worry about the details. Our parents didn’t want us to stress about who’s coming in and out. They’d rather we just trust in the team—and we do,” I say quickly. “I still do. That hasn’t changed.”
Thatcher’s palm pauses over his mouth. Letting very little emotion pass through his stoic features.
I’m much older now and some of the bodyguards around our age have become as close as friends. Farrow is about to become family now that he’s newly-engaged to Moffy.
It’s natural that I’d want to understand their world in security as much as they understand the famous parts of mine.
I keep talking. “Most bodyguards have martial arts backgrounds, from what I’ve seen.” I motion to his chest. “Like how you’re trained in boxing, and then you all met bodyguards at Akara’s gym who then referred you to security.”
Studio 9 Boxing & MMA Gym has even become a sort of headquarters for the security team.
Thatcher lowers his hand from his mouth. “That’s only the recent wave of bodyguards.”
The recent wave. “How recent?” I prop my elbow on a fabric roll, enthralled in the clearer picture. “How many waves are there?” I’m not even sure who referred him yet, and I already have a million more inquiries.
I wonder if he can tell how badly I want to explore all of him.
Thatcher touches his earpiece. “It’s—sorry.” He expels a rougher breath, apologizing for having to deal with malfunctioning comms. While he fiddles with the radio, he continues talking. “Guys come in and out if it’s not the right fit, but I’d say there’ve only been about three waves. First, when you and your siblings and cousins were born.” His eyes flit up to me. “Hold on.”
I watch him click his mic.
“Thatcher to SFO, am I coming in clear?” He pauses for a full two seconds. “Is no one rogering up on the fucking comms?” Another pause. He spies movement down the aisle and turns his head an inch.
A stocky gray-haired man peeks sheepishly at us and then drifts toward the register.
With my elbow perched on a fabric roll, I rest my chin on my knuckles. “I’m guessing the second wave of bodyguards were the ones who spent my preteen and teenage years with me?”
Thatcher nods. “Back then, all the new hires were military, so the background of security became nearly one-hundred percent military. ”
My lips part. “No martial arts at all?” I thought there’d be some at least. It seems like most bodyguards are martial arts now.
“Not until Akara.” Thatcher studies our surroundings before eyeing me. “The makeup of security today is about half military, half martial arts.” He messes with a knob on his radio but keeps sight of everything, even me. “Akara drew in the most recent wave of men. Boxers, MMA fighters. You’ve been around a lot of them just on SFO. There’s the Oliveira brothers, Farrow, Donnelly.
”
“You?” I question because he hasn’t lumped himself in that category.
He’s quiet.
“I’m confused.” I tilt my head and frown. “I thought Akara joined the security team before you and Banks. So he’d have to usher you two in like the other boxers. I assume…” I’m wrong. I can see clearly that I’m wrong.
His brown eyes are narrowed at me like he’s staring straight at the blazing sun and refuses to look away from the scorching heat. “Akara did join security first. About a year and a half before Banks and me. But he didn’t give us a referral. No one at the gym did.”
My mind races, and I make sense of his words quickly. “You must’ve known an older bodyguard. From the first or second wave?”
“Second,” he says. “Bruno Bandoni recommended us to the Tri-Force.”
Uncle Loren’s current bodyguard. Moffy even had Bruno on his detail for a short period this year.
“We’d known Bruno since we were kids,” Thatcher explains. “He served with our dad.”
Of course. “Bruno was in the Navy too.”
Thatcher leaves his radio alone to focus entirely on me. “All the current military bodyguards are Navy…” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Except two bodyguards. But no one has a fucking clue that we served.”
My mouth keeps dropping. “Wait…are you saying you and Banks are…” I frown deeper. “Your background isn’t in martial arts?”
“I box.” He nods to me. “But Banks and I learned to box in the military. You asked what I was doing when I was eighteen to twenty-two. I was in the Marines, Jane.”
I shift my weight in shock and whack a fabric roll with my elbow. “Fuck,” I curse and hold my throbbing funny bone.
I freeze as the old wooden shelf lets out a long, threatening creak and sways unnaturally. “Do not fall.” I brace my hands at the shelf.
Thatcher is suddenly a foot away. Right beside me.
I look up as he stabilizes the shelf high above my head, his large hand on top of the dusty surface. Just like that, the creaking wood goes silent, and now we’re much, much closer.
His arm nearly brushes my shoulder, and his utility boot is only six or so inches from my ballet flat. He’s a size 15 shoe. An unhelpful fact that I learned after my big mouth asked.
Thatcher stares down at me, and I can hear my shallow breath in the quiet.
He’s a Marine.
I sweep him like I’m seeing more. “Why…?” I breathe. “Why keep your military service a secret from other bodyguards?”
Thatcher rubs his tense jawline. “If we told the whole team, they’d start asking why we chose the Marine Corps over the fucking Navy when our dad is a SEAL.” He pauses. “And I can’t get into it.” His jaw muscle contracts, his eyes brutally narrowed like he’s seared them looking into the sun. He turns his head from me, more so to fix his radio again.