15. Beau

Chapter fifteen

Beau

T he police came. And then an ambulance. The whole farmyard was pretty much swarming with vehicles, all flashing their lights, piercing the dark. They could probably be seen for miles over the flat, endless farmyards.

Aiden was taken away. In addition to the evidence we’ve already collected against him, he will now very likely be tried for anything and everything, all the way up to attempted murder.

Also, in addition to the damage the roof wrought on my face and body, I now have a line of thirty-eight stitches along my left thigh, where the bullet grazed me. It wasn’t just luck that the bullet buried itself in the floorboards. I twisted the gun straight down. I had to make sure that, above all, it didn’t go off in Ignacia’s direction. If it had to hit someone, I wanted to take the bullet. It wasn’t just my training kicking in. I wanted her to live. I wanted her to be happy and free. Not because she’s a client or a job or a contract.

But because I care about her.

I failed her, even letting Aiden get into the house. I still don’t know how I didn’t hear him coming. I let myself get too exhausted, too beat up, too tired. I didn’t let my guard down, but he slipped past what should have been flawless defenses. The first warning I had that he was in the house was the instant the gun jammed up against my temple. It never should have been allowed to happen.

I failed Ignacia. I failed Sam. I failed every version of her.

Now, I’m sitting across the table from her in the kitchen in the early morning, two cold, untouched mugs of chai in front of us. Even after being questioned by the police for hours, after witnessing everything she did, and after attempting to clean up the blood on the floorboards in her bedroom , she’s holding it together remarkably well.

She’s dressed in one of her dresses, and she has her hair swept into a messy bun. She looks sunny and clear-eyed, as though nothing bad has ever happened in her life.

But the shadows in her eyes say otherwise. I needed to sit her down, so I asked her to sit. We’ve been perched this way, facing each other silently for what feels like hours. Forever. An eternity. All the time I’m never going to get to spend with her after I tell her how badly I’ve messed things up. How badly I’ve failed her all around. How badly I’ve lied to her.

I need to just do it already, but I know this is the end, and it’s so much harder than I ever thought it would be.

I dig my hands into my eye sockets as regret surges through me. I haven’t hit bottom yet, and I don’t know when it’ll come for me. Maybe I’ll just keep plummeting and falling forever. Time is something everyone wants more of. It’s the most valuable, unreachable commodity in the world, and mine is up.

“The FTC has been investigating you for two years now,” I tell her.

“I’m sorry, what the… what ? The FTC? Oh my god. Oh my god. How do you—you know that because your team…the people who fixed all this. They found out. Right? Beau? Right ?”

I barely trust myself to hold it together, but hold it together, I must. “Nearly since the start and since you went cold. It was the strangest case. They had enough complaints to spark real interest and start an investigation.”

“Oh my god,” she whispers again. Her face isn’t just pale now. It’s bloodless. Lifeless. “If the FTC was involved, then the FBI—”

“No. They hadn’t elevated it to that yet. They knew where you were the whole time.”

“They know who I am now?”

“Yes. You had a career on the rise. You were an up-and-coming designer, and you were scamming people out of what amounted to quite a large sum at the same time, all while getting huge breaks and making good money. It didn’t make much sense. But it was your disappearance out of nowhere that truly sparked interest.”

Her lips wobble, and I want so badly to take her face in my hands. But I can’t. It isn’t right. Not until I confess what I’ve done. I was picked for this job—approached by a friend who works for the Federal Trade Commission. I might be a bodyguard, but they thought I’d be perfect for an insider job. I had the training and the skills. I also had the kind of life that could give me an in. They needed a particular person, and they couldn’t just ask any rich guy out there. Not when I had to practically be a cop myself to make it work.

They also picked me because they knew I wouldn’t fuck it up. I wouldn’t let my judgment be clouded by emotions I didn’t have. Everyone knows I barely have a heart, and my soul is questionable at best. I may or may not be cursed, and emotions? Yeah, not happening.

Except they did.

They are.

They’re going to keep happening long after this is done, and I’m nothing but a bad memory for this woman. She’s had enough trauma in her life, and I have zero right to ask her to forgive me.

“Beau?” Her lip trembles again, and her eyes fill up with moisture. Goddamn it, I can’t just stand here. I’m not as tough as I thought I was. If I was heartless before, then I’ve grown something now. A conscience, maybe.

I have to bracket her face with my hands. Those honest, lovely, huge blue eyes search mine. “You know all this because the guy on your team…”

One deep breath. One second before I confess and ruin what she thinks of me forever. One last breath in and out before I ruin this so irrevocably that she never wants to see me again, and I become a curse for real. Her curse.

I know.

I know I acted like I didn’t know.

But all this time, I did.

That question I asked myself about her having a fake ID? I would have spotted it anyway, but I already knew it was fake. I knew she had bugged out. I knew what her old name was. When I asked myself why, it really meant, are you guilty? I didn’t assume she was. Sometimes, there is another explanation. And often, it’s the innocent that runs. That’s why we have a thing called witness protection, to take care of people who have done nothing wrong half the time except be in the worst place at the worst time.

It probably all makes sense now. I didn’t put in my age wrong. I made that profile, knowing full well who would be on the other end. I have to admit I didn’t know what hot bedding was, and when I looked it up, it did send a shooting pang of loneliness through me, but it wasn’t the first time. People like me don’t deserve a mate. We deserve to be alone. The part about my family and me believing I’m cursed? That’s all real. I never lied about that, but I also didn’t mean to just tell her everything. It spilled out.

My urgency and absolute insistence the night of her bath? Yeah, it wasn’t a proud moment for me. It hurt monstrously to ask her if she was certain she was innocent when I already believed she was, but I had to be sure beyond the shadow of a doubt. I would have known if she was lying.

“Beau?”

“No.” There, it’s out. It’s happening.

This is the start of the end. I lean down until we’re so close that our lips can touch. I thought my heart would never race like this. Never hammer itself out of my chest. Never hurt this way.

“W—what? What do you mean no?”

It’s simple. I tell her everything. I hold her face and turn into the man who doesn’t have feelings or emotions. I give it to her straight and toneless and expressionless. I force my heart to slow way the hell down by breathing normally, but it hardly works. It’s still charging way too fast. Something inside me hurts far too much. I felt like this when my parents died. But not since. I haven’t allowed myself to get close to another person, not when it inevitably always ends up this way in some form or other.

Disappointment. Betrayal. Heartache. Hurt. Grief. Anger. Resentment.

So I start by telling her how my friend approached me and why, and I tell her what I do for a living, which she already knows because I never lied to her about that. I gave her as much truth as I could because that’s the way you build a believable persona. That’s the way you earn someone’s trust. And trust gives you an in. Trust and respect give you the ability to find out a person’s secrets, and it’s the secrets that are key to breaking someone.

Except this isn’t just someone. This woman trusted you with more than just her secrets. She gave you her body. You’re a selfish, manipulative asshole prick. Horrendous. You’re worse than a soggy, moldy, rotten, black, oozing potato that’s been forgotten in the cellar. For, like, three fucking years to the power of a tool bag and a douchebag having a baby.

I give it all to her. How I lied about reversing my age, how I showed up here, and how I was trying to get her to confess all along. The FTC was sure she wasn’t working alone. She might even have been working against her will. I didn’t know it was Aiden all along. He was an unexpected wildcard who handed me what I needed on a silver platter.

But the protection part? That was real. I went from being undercover to being undercover and being me, doubly so. I might still have been playing a part in order to get to the truth, but I was trying to save this woman, even if it meant damning myself in the process.

Oh, and what happened between us in bed?

Yeah, I obviously didn’t plan that.

But I did allow it to happen.

More than allowed even.

Fuck.

My chest is doing strange things. It hurts. It hurts so fucking much, and I can’t make it stop. It’s not just the guilt that makes it feel like I’ve been impaled on something. It’s so much worse than that. It’s the unbearable fact that I’m never going to see Sam after today because she’ll never want to see me again. Sam or Ignacia, her old life or this one, her full freedom back or not, there is no world or lifetime or place in which she’ll ever forgive me for the ultimate sin I committed.

I fell for her.

It might not be love. I really don’t even know what love is or what it looks like, but love isn’t lying to someone. Love isn’t hurting them. But I do care about her. I didn’t want to hurt her, and I didn’t want to lie, even when I had to. I never wanted to comfort her, and I never wanted it to turn into something I had zero control over.

Turns out the person I was lying to most was myself.

And that just makes me a triple rotten potato.

God, I make Aiden the Anus look like a saint.

I’m close enough that when I’m done—when I’ve confessed absolutely everything, including how she’s going to get her life back and Aiden is going to be convicted as she works closely with the FTC in the coming months—we’re still standing so close. I’m still cupping her face like I can protect her from all this. Like I can save her from me with my own body and will. She has an easy shot straight to my nuts, but this woman is a better human than I’ll ever be, and she doesn’t take it.

She just slowly twists away. She doesn’t look hurt or betrayed. Yet. But she does look disappointed, and that’s worse than anything.

She’s lost what little faith she had left in me.

And she might have been the only person in the world to truly have any.

“I tried not to lie to you about what I didn’t have to lie about. I’m sorry.”

“You kissed me, though,” she shoots back, jerking away. Now, the hurt filters in, and her eyes get shiny. “You soulless butt crack! Was that some tactic to get me to tell you the truth because I couldn’t lie to you when I was that vulnerable? When I was literally fucking naked?”

“No! I swear, that’s not what it was.”

“Why would I believe you? I’m so done. I’m not even going to ask you anything else because I can’t trust you to give me a straight answer.” Then, she snaps her fingers and points to the door. “Out. Get out. Now.”

“I can’t. You’re not safe.”

“I’m perfectly safe, especially if they’re going after Aiden. He’s the one who did all this, and thanks to you, he’s going to be convicted. I get my life back. Yay, fucking great. It would have all been fine if you hadn’t decided to kiss me back on top of it. Nice. So classy. Aiden might have been an anus, but you are a complete ass .”

I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t understand how wrong it would be until this moment.

I didn’t mean to use our chemistry to gain anything. I just…it felt right. It was about connecting with a person, truly, on a level I’d never experienced before. How can I tell her what I feel when it’s too late? I can’t. She won’t believe me, and even if she did, it would only hurt her more.

I’m the guy who made her feel something, too.

I’m the guy she made feel.

I’m the one who protected her, let her cry, kept her safe, made her laugh, and laughed with her. I’m the guy who was here when she needed me to be here. I’m the one who shared her bed and saw all of her, more than nakedness. She stripped herself down to the core for me, and I still didn’t tell her the truth.

Somehow, I thought I could make all this right. That I’d find a way. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, and I’ve seen some messed up shit. But I’ve never felt like this, and it has never turned into messed up shit.

“Leave,” she hisses between gritted teeth. I can tell she’s barely holding it together.

I know that from today on, I’m always going to think about this woman. It’s going to crush me, thinking about her being happy, not because I want her to be sad, but because I know she’s going to eventually find someone else and live her life with them, and they’ll give her joy. They’ll make her laugh, and they’ll have her memories, her future, her past.

“Please,” she grinds out, and it kills me. She’s going to kill me with those eyes filling up with tears and her stubborn and utter determination that they will not fall. She’ll never cry for me or over me or with me again. I will never get to have another moment with her, another single one of her emotions.

Hanging my head, I head straight for the door.

I have a few things here, but it doesn’t matter if they get left behind. She can throw out the clothes and shoes. I’m careful with my tech and weapons, so they never go astray, and they’re on me at all times. I have everything I need tucked into my pockets. I’m leaving nothing behind.

How ironic is it that I have nothing I need, and I’m leaving everything behind?

“Sam?” I have the nerve to say her name at the door because I can’t stop myself. I need to. She spins around and slams her hand over her mouth. I know she’s holding in a sob. I watch her shoulders shake as I take in the slender, beautiful arch of her neck, her rigid spine, and the floral print of the dress she made herself.

I once thought it was silly and old-fashioned.

But now I think it’s beautiful.

“You’re going to be okay. I’m so proud of how strong you are. You’re a good woman,” I say.

She’s clearly not going to respond, so I show myself out the door. Before I shut it firmly behind me, I make sure it’s locked on the handle. And then I test it once just to make sure I’ve truly locked myself out.

I don’t wonder until later, much later, when I’m lying in my huge California king bed, where I’ve been lying for hours, unable to sleep, if Sam checked her cameras at the exact moment I turned around from her door. If she’ll check them in the future.

If I was careful enough to hide how my heart didn’t just feel strained and tattered but entirely broken.