58. Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Anna

" Y 'know, Jon, it's been months."

The bodyguard who was assigned to follow me just shrugs, a single calloused finger holding back the gauzy curtains I just got hung up. "I'm contracted for at least five, ma'am."

"Ew." My nose crinkles. "Don't call me that."

Jonathon nods and turns his attention back out to the fire escape attached to the side of the building and just so happens to have a little terrace right outside my third-story window.

"I hate this thing," he grumbles for the hundredth time since I found this place.

"It does look like a tetanus shot waiting to happen, doesn't it?" I snicker when he leans closer to the glass and assesses the alleyway beneath, his breath fogging up the glass.

"I'm going to put both sensors on this one."

I shrug and pull more items from the box accompanying me on the hardwood floor. "If that'll get you out of my house, then fine."

"You'll need to remember to arm it when you're not present."

"Thanks for that," I mutter and roll my eyes.

"I'm serious, Anna." Jonathon turns to me on booted feet I try not to stare at because they remind me of the person I've managed to avoid for the last three freaking months, and narrows his eyes at me. "I only have a few weeks to make sure this is a safe place. That is, if you don't move again ."

I point a finger in his direction. "It's not my fault that the job fell through and the housing with it. Those hotels were not ideal for me either."

Jonathon's hands go to his hips like he doesn't believe me. "The job you had was perfectly fine."

I shake my head and swipe a hand through the air between us, dismissing the sentiment. "That's done with and not for me anymore. So stop ."

"Uh-huh. Sure," he mumbles, and I swear I catch his eyes roll before he goes back to his security duties.

Like attaching sensors to each of the windows and doors inside this place.

It wasn't my idea. I've never had them before.

But this side of the coast is a completely different animal that terrifies me at times. A place I've only visited a few times.

Yet it's the capital for artists, labels, and people who need people like me.

It just happens to be on the other side of the country from the man I refuse to think about.

It hurts less that way.

So the sensors and security systems Leo demanded I put in, go in, and I get to rest in peace from the outside world when I'm home.

Sounds like a win to me .

"Have you called him back yet?" Jonathon calls from the guest bedroom I'm planning to make my in-home office.

"Wh—"

"Leo would not let me off the damn phone," Jonathon continues as he swaggers back into the living room with needle nose plyers in one hand and cut wires in the other. "Not until I swore I would get you to return his calls."

I slump back into a completely unladylike, cross-legged heap on the floor. I sigh out and flip through the picture frames in my lap. "No. And I'm not going to any time soon."

"Why?" He stops beside me, his looming presence requiring me to lean all the way back to catch his eyes.

"Because noneya . I'll call him when I'm good and ready to." I huff, narrowing my sight on him.

Jonathon holds his full hands up in surrender. "Just the messenger, ma'am ."

He's already moving when I growl at him, halfway down the hall when I dart after the couch and find a throw pillow to lob in his direction. The soft material plops against the door he slams closed, his laugh echoing from inside the room.

"You're as bad as the rest of them!"

Sighing when Jonathon doesn't emerge from his fortress, I let my attention drop back to the photos discarded on the floor in front of my open cardboard box. It's the last one to unpack, all of my furniture and knick-knacks in their rightful places, leaving this box.

The one I didn't want to have company for when I opened.

The one I'd rather have left in the storage unit, all on its own.

But apparently Jonathon's not leaving anytime soon and paying for a unit that houses only one box seemed ridiculous. Plus, leaving a singular box unpacked in my apartment was unacceptable to my quirky brain.

I force my feet to move back to the box, dropping to my knees.

I drag in a deep breath and shove my hands inside, grasping at the contents and pulling it all out at once.

Photo albums hold the stack steady from the bottom as I pull it from its cardboard prison and lay it all out on the hardwood beside me.

The albums are old school, probably purchased in the nineties when my mother used to think photographing everything was her life's work, and could use replacements.

But it's not the books themselves that have me questioning my sanity and desperation to keep the pain in my chest at bay.

It's what's housed between the covers, attached to a spine that crinkles when I open the first page.

My fingers feather over the glossy surface, touching a face I haven't seen in nearly twenty years. A face too young and precious for a world that she entered, completely unprepared for what she'd find when she got there.

Slamming the book closed, I toss it back to the floor and push to my feet, swiping at my teary eyes as I go.

"Anna," Jonathon calls out, and I sniffle back the emotions.

"Yeah?" It's weak and waterlogged, but enough to get a response from the oblivious bodyguard.

"I'm starving. You mind if I order something?"

I tiptoe over the pile of devastation laid out on my floor and approach the closed bedroom. Swiping at my face one last time, I try my best to suck in a modicum of steadiness before pushing the door out of my way.

"Egg rolls good?"

"Nah," Jonathon says, his face still trained on the device he's tweaking in his grip. "I was thinking chili dogs."

I freeze.

"Burgers, maybe," he continues. "Something to hold me over."

"O-okay, I think I saw a place nearby. I'll look it up."

Eventually things won't remind me of him, right?

"Aw, thanks," the man answers with a small smile, his attention never wavering from his task. "I was going to do it."

I wave him off even though he's not paying any attention to me and head back to the kitchen where I left my phone.

"If I don't let you get distracted, then you can get out of my house."

He snickers. "Cuz across the hallway is so much different."

"It very much is."

After several more hours, a disappearing sun, and another meal delivered for the clearly starved bodyguard, I finally sit on my couch alone for the first time.

I didn't eat. The takeout containers mock me from their perch on my countertop, the smell of grease permeates the air enough that I consider opening the infamous window Jonathon ensured was locked before he stalked his giant butt across the hallway.

My hand is in my hair, my legs curled beneath me in the soft glow from the lamp, and my apartment is put together. All except for the pile of memories laid out on the hardwood floor that I abandoned.

For now, I plan to keep it that way.

At least until the chaos of an untamed mess drives me madder than the thought of looking through them.

Knowing all this, I should be settling into my seat, pulling up my favorite sitcom, and calling it a night.

So why do I keep staring at my phone and hoping it rings?