Chapter 4

FOUR

RYAN

Bears may be solitary, but when they care about something—whether a mate, a close companion, or their precious honey—they remain alert to danger, even in sleep. In the wild, when a bear bonds, their loyalty runs as deep as their strength.

—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 25

By the time I got back to Zane’s suite, dripping sweat and jelly-legged from the stair climbing, everything was blessedly quiet. I thanked Lou and released her for the night before making my way into my own room and into the shower.

I let the cold water cool me down before finally turning it warmer to work on my muscles. After brushing my teeth, I set out my clothes for the next day and cleaned my gun before doing another check of the main room of the suite and making sure the door from the suite to the hotel hallway was still secured by the floor wedge alarm. As usual, I left the door from my bedroom to the main room of the suite open in case anything happened. Then, I forced myself to close my eyes.

My brain helpfully provided graphic images of Landry fucking Zane in every single possible position until I felt like I was going to vomit. I gritted my teeth and ran through meditation scripts in an attempt to clear my mind.

Images of the inked target flashed behind my eyes, and the anger of someone daring to presume to touch my principal negated the little bit of work the meditation scripts had done.

I finally fell into a restless sleep over an hour later… only to be awakened sometime after that by Zane’s terrified cries.

I was halfway across my bedroom before I realized I’d woken up. Zane was screaming my name, and my heart rocketed into my throat. As I raced across the suite, I noticed the security wedge was still under the door. How the fuck had someone gotten inside? I knew it couldn’t be Landry, so did that mean someone had come in through a window despite our location on the twentieth floor?

Landry met me at the doorway to Zane’s bedroom. “I can’t calm him down. He keeps screaming about bears! I think he’s having a nightmare. That stupid podcast?—”

I ignored him and shot straight to the bed, where Zane was fighting against tangled sheets, fully dressed in the same pajama bottoms and hoodie he’d put on before his friends had arrived.

“Hey, hey,” I said, reaching for him and holding his upper arms. “I’m here. B… fuck . I’m here, Zane.”

I’d almost fucking called him baby . As if he were mine to comfort. Mine to care for with love instead of a professional close-protection strategy.

“Bear! Bear.” He alternated between frantically crying and whimpering my name. The sound of his terror squeezed my fucking chest until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “I need you. Bear .”

“I’m here.” I pulled him into my arms and held him tightly. “Zane. I’m here. You’re safe. Wake up.”

His eyes, half-opened, looked around without focusing until his gaze landed on me. Then, his entire face crumpled as he began to cry in earnest. He lunged into my arms more fully, wrapping his arms around my neck and burying his face in my neck.

He smelled sleepy and warm. The faded scent of his shampoo mixed with faint traces of minty toothpaste. I held the back of his head and murmured soothing words into his ear.

“You’re okay. It was just a bad dream. You’re safe.”

His lithe body hitched as he struggled to catch his breath, and I felt the warm damp of his tears against the skin of my neck. Movement out of the corner of my eye reminded me Landry was there.

Suddenly, I felt very awkward. “Landry’s here,” I murmured to Zane. “Do you want?—”

His arms squeezed around me tighter. “No.” It was barely audible. Only I could hear the word. But when he added, “Just you,” Landry must have picked up on it.

“Should I go?” he asked hesitantly. I could see the worry in his eyes from the lamp he’d turned on in the corner of the room.

I shot him a look that hopefully expressed my own confusion over the situation, the eyeball version of a perplexed shrug. Landry nodded and tilted his head toward the outer room of the suite before exiting and closing the bedroom door behind him.

Leaving me alone with Zane.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked after a few more minutes.

I tried to pull away, but Zane wouldn’t let me go. Instead, I moved over to lean back against the headboard and let Zane relax against my front.

This had happened before. Once. And neither one of us had ever spoken of it again.

We’d been in New Orleans for a show. Zane had wanted to walk around Bourbon Street late at night just to get a feel for the sights and sounds. We’d shoved his hair up in a ball cap, thrown some dummy eyeglasses on him, and headed out of the hotel. There’d been several suspicious people down a nearby alley, and it was obvious at least a couple of them were high on something. I hadn’t paid particularly close attention to them, other than ensuring Zane’s safety, but I discovered later, when Zane woke up screaming for me hours later, that seeing the junkies on the street had brought back terrible childhood memories from when he’d still been with his mom.

That night, I’d held him in my arms as he’d filled in some details about the way he’d grown up, with parents who cared more about their next fix than his next meal and being left alone in dark, empty buildings while they tried to score. Or worse, left him with people they shouldn’t have.

Zane had admitted between sniffles that when he’d found himself in those situations, he’d closed his eyes, clapped his hands over his ears, and started singing to block out the fear.

“If Garth Brooks could stand outside the fire, then I could, too,” he’d said, letting out a little laugh. “Any song I knew about being brave, I sang it. Pat Benatar’s ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot,’ Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,’ and ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’ by Fleetwood Mac. You name it, I sang it to myself. Gran had this little plastic radio out on her porch, and it was always tuned to the same station that said they played hits ‘from the seventies, eighties, and now!’ Those songs were like my security blanket.”

It had explained why he seemed to disappear onstage when he performed music. He went somewhere completely away in his mind, to a place safer and more welcoming than this cruel world. When he sang, his entire body relaxed into the music, and his face took on this dreamy expression that made me love him even more.

Zane Hendley was a precious treasure. He wasn’t fragile, but fuck if I didn’t want to wrap him up in bubble wrap anyway and protect him from any more cruelty in this life.

“It was a stupid nightmare about a roller coaster,” Zane said now, shifting against my chest until his head rested under my chin. I ran my fingers through his hair, gently pulling out the tangles as I came to them.

“You know things in our dreams represent bigger things in our lives,” I reminded him.

He let out a long breath. “Yeah. It doesn’t take a PhD to interpret this one.”

“I think you need a break, Zane.” It wasn’t the first or even fiftieth time I’d suggested it.

“I’m taking a break. I’m going home to see my family.”

I closed my eyes and reminded myself to stay calm. “Visiting Barlo isn’t a break. Not for you. Not anymore.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t argue this. “I’m supposed to be in New York for those interviews after the Georgia trip,” he said, ignoring what I’d said. “And then we have the next European leg…”

“The interviews can be rescheduled. And I think being in the city right now is a spectacularly bad idea unless we significantly beef up the protection team, which we’re going to have to do anyway before Amsterdam.”

Even with a more robust team, I wouldn’t feel comfortable moving him through Manhattan. There were too many places crowds would be able to push in or unvetted strangers would have easier access to him. What I really wanted was to take him somewhere secluded and take time to regroup while he had some much-needed decompression time.

“What about the Boundary Waters?” I suggested, naming an area in Minnesota he’d read about recently in an article. “You said you wanted to check it out one day. Kenji can probably find us a rental?—”

He huffed out a laugh. “November in northern Minnesota? Have you forgotten I’m a Georgia boy?”

“You like the cold. Sweatshirts and pajama pants are your favorite outfit.”

“I like the chilly. Not the frozen.”

He had a point. Northern Minnesota was harsher than where I’d grown up in Montana. “Fine. We’ll find a private island in the Caribbean?— ”

Zane made a noise of dismissal. “No. I don’t want more time in the sun. Not after the burn I got playing in Miami.”

“I still blame the makeup team,” I muttered, remembering the homicidal rage I’d wanted to go into when I’d realized just how badly an oversight had been made. Poor Zane had been in agony for three nights in the hotel suite, and I’d finally insisted on bringing in medical professionals to treat him.

“What I really want is to do my job,” he said, shifting off me as if he’d made a decision. “And that means going to New York for the interviews.”

Don’t say it , I thought. For fuck’s sake, don’t ? —

“And you don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”

I stared at him while my body began to tremble with the need to spew my opinions all over the fucking place. To tell him he was definitely the fuck not fine.

But… and here was my dirty little secret… I loved him too much to deny him anything.

Zane wanted to go to Barlo to see his family.

So we would go to Barlo.

Zane wanted to go to New York to do his job.

So we would go to New York.

I moved off the bed and tried to get myself under control, tried to keep my hands to myself instead of grabbing him and pulling him back against my body where he fucking belonged.

“Okay,” I forced myself to say.

Zane looked awkward as he stood barefoot on the lush carpet and shifted from foot to foot. For some reason, he looked tiny in his oversized clothes. “Okay?”

I nodded and clenched my jaw. “It’s fine, right? You said it’s fine, so it’ll be fine.”

He frowned. I could tell he wanted to know why I was suddenly agreeing with him instead of arguing with him.

Too bad for him, because I could never tell him that if I stayed in that room with him for even three more seconds, I would do or say something both of us would regret.

So, instead of staying in that bedroom and playing with fire, I moved past him and opened the door to the main room of the suite.

Landry’s head snapped up from where he’d been reading one of the style magazines from the coffee table. “Zane okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I growled. “He’s totally fine . I’m sure he’s waiting for you to get back there and calm him down.”

Landry tilted his head thoughtfully. “I’m not sure he is, but okay. Hey, Ryan? I apologize if I’ve, ah… provoked you at all.”

I scowled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I strode past the supermodel to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, then stepped back to press my ass and shoulders against the cool wooden surface of the door while I focused on not having a stroke.

Breathe in for four… hold it for four… breathe out for four… hold it for four…

Box breathing. Apparently, Navy SEALs used it before missions. It did fuck all for calming me down, though, which left me wondering what the hell the SEALs did when their stupid breathing techniques failed to put them in the right frame of mind for a mission.

“Fuck,” I breathed. “Fucking fuck.”

My sweet principal, the man I loved more than anyone, was scared out of his fucking mind and determined to push through it. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do except be there for him and help keep him safe.

For the first time, I thought I might understand why the Ventdestinians relied so much on their damn winds “whispering fortune.” The fear I felt for Zane—for his safety and for the emotional toll this was taking on him—was so huge I might have actually listened to superstitions if it meant keeping him whole and protecting his heart.

As I lay in bed that night, staring at my darkened ceiling, though, the winds weren’t whispering a goddamn thing. All I knew for sure was that Zane was not fine…

But that I would make sure he was, as soon as possible.

Even if it fucking killed me.