Page 53 of The Bodyguard's Fall
So I did the worst move imaginable. Like I was a teenager in a girls’ locker room about to start a fight, I moved in closer and gave him a shove. The moment my hands found his chest, he had me.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice a bit softer now, his eyes on mine. “Where’s your fight?”
I tried to pull away as the hot sting of embarrassment blazed on my skin, but he held me tight.
“Olivia.”
Still nothing.
He shook me gently, his arms around me tight. “Olivia.”
“If I fight you, this all becomes real.”
He pulled back to look at me. “What?”
I still couldn’t look directly at him. I hated the weakness in myself, and I was now sharing it with him.
“Olivia, talk to me.” He started to grab my arm, but I pulled it out of his grip.
“If you teach me to fight, then this all becomes real. This isn’t just for fun on a Friday night or something good to know just in case. He might actually come after me, and I might actually have to defend myself, and that thought terrifies me. I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
As soon as I’d said the words, shame bubbled up inside of me. It was that main-character energy thing. I didn’t have it. I was too scared to be the main character. I was the sidekick who was always questioning the hero and too scared to help. Avoidance and compliance had kept me safe and sane. Letting go of that made me feel like I’d stepped out onto a tightrope without a safety net to catch me.
He was staring at me, tender heat blazing in his blue eyes. His voice was soft when he spoke, and it was all I could do to keep from curling into him.
“Liv, I wish I could take this from you. I want to take it from you. I want to rip this guy limb from limb. And I’m hoping I get to one day soon. But you pretending that it might not come down to a moment like this scares me. We have to account for human error.” A shadow flashed across his face for a moment, so quick I might have missed it if we hadn’t been so close. He cleared his throat. “I might not be there when you face him, and I need you as prepared as you can be if that happens.”
I nodded, resigning myself to my fate, and was about to pull away when he stopped me.
“There’s a fighter inside of you, Rawlins. And she’s been waiting her whole life to punch me. We’ve just got to give her a reason to.”
A corner of my mouth lifted, but I held strong. He went in for more, softer, gentler, and with a sweetness I could wrap myself up in.
“But it's probably hard because I’m always so sweet. A perfect gentleman.”
He succeeded in making me smile, which was what he was after, but he wasn’t quite done with the speech that was slowly giving me strength.
“I understand why you’ve hid from the world,” Tate began softly, a strange mixture of fire and sympathy blazing in his eyes. “You did what you had to do to survive. Self-preservation is a very real thing. But now it’s time to take a stand.”
My eyes slowly lifted to meet his.
“He’s taken so much from you. Let’s take it back.”
Plot Twist Scene change:
Cue the beginning of a cool self-defense training montage.
Will: The pictures Liv posted are disturbing.
Tate: I don’t know what to tell you. I’m cute, and she’s hard to fend off.
Will: She gave her address to her work.
Tate: Good. Do you have any suspects there?
Will: No. We’ve checked everyone out extensively. But the other times Liv let them know her new address, Leroy found her in days. So keep on the lookout, and I’ll keep running background checks on everyone in her company.
Tate was determined to get me out of the house. The annoying part was, I knew he was right. I needed to get out of the house. If we were going with Tate’s plan, it had to be done. I had to be brave. But admitting that to Tate felt a little too much like handing him another victory. So for our first outing, I asked him to take me to the one place in town I knew he'd hate. The one place I’d feel the most comfortable, especially after basically announcing to the world that I was living in Autumn Ridge with Tate Walker and his family.
