Page 65 of Unguarded

He stands, face solemn as he moves out to give me space to enter. I crouch down beside her, tentatively reaching out to lay my hand over her trembling shoulder. Her toothbrush is on the tiled floor beside her.

“Blue, talk to me. What happened?”

She slowly rises, pushing up on her hands until she’s facing me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“He was here,” she whispers.

The blood drains from my face. I reach out to cup her under her arms and legs, lifting her up off the floor.

“Go find that janitor. I want to talk to him,” I say to Duke.

He turns on his heel and leaves.

Convincingher to cancel the next week of her tour was easier than I’d thought it would be. She’s been silent and unmoving since we flew out of Switzerland. The authorities seemed to take the case very seriously, but the man posing as a janitor had no affiliation with the hotel. They didn’t even know how he was able to access a universal key card to all the rooms. They have camera footage of him entering and exiting through the employee entrance, but nothing was found to help identify him.

I’m studying the blurry screenshot of him in the video on my phone as Monroe’s private plane lands in Texas. I look up at her to see the familiar blank stare she’s had since that stalker made it into her bathroom. She could’ve screamed for help and Duke would’ve heard, but she froze. She told me that she panicked and couldn’t speak. She said all he did was touch her cheek and leave.

Her face is turned toward the window, studying the Texas landscape, stretching as far as the eye can see. She’s dressed in a designer white sweatsuit with her hair up in a messy bun. I haven’t seen her smile in three days.

Guilt has plagued me relentlessly. I have yet to leave her side again. I was gone twenty minutes, but even when I got back to the room, I let the motherfucker walk right past me. Guilt has been gnawing me alive from the inside out.

Duke said he never saw the man go into her room. He came to mop up and take the soiled laundry. Duke was sitting on the couch the whole time. He said the guy must’ve silently gone in her room when his back was turned. Monroe’s soiled pajamas were nowhere to be found, whichmeans the sicko probably stole them. My clothes were left in a heap in the bathroom corner.

I can’t blame my brother. He felt like shit for it, but it wasn’t his fault. I let the fucker go too. He waltzed right in, easily escaping suspicion while pretending to be there to clean up. He must have heard about the call for a cleanup when Ember requested it from the front desk. He silently slipped into Monroe’s room, planning God knows what. Her freezing up instead of screaming was a lucky break for him and the only reason he’s still breathing.

I should never have left her side.

Fighting my feelings and complicated attraction to her has been exhausting, but now, I’m more worried about her mental state than anything. Suggesting Redford Ranch as her hideaway was my first choice—not only for her safety, but because there’s nothing quite as healing for the mind as sitting on our back porch next to a fire with a glass of wine and a view of the wheat fields and grazing cattle.

We land at a private airstrip almost an hour from the ranch. The pilot gives the clear button for us to move about the cabin. I stand, reaching for Monroe’s tote bag. She steps out ahead of me once the stairs are lowered.

My brother’s black dually truck is idling on the tarmac about fifty yards away. He pulls forward when he sees us. I convinced Monroe’s team that for her to truly recover from this traumatizing event, she needed to be alone. Ember was the hardest to convince. Fidel tried to push Monroe to let Danny come with us when we landed in New York and split off from the rest of the team, but she sided with me on thefact that the ranch was safe enough to only need me and my brothers as protection.

At the end of the day, I simply refused to budge on any of it. Due to her concussion and the stalker’s sudden appearance, the record label agreed some time off was necessary. I was ready to burn their shiny LA skyscraper to the ground if they put up a fight.

“You folks need a lift?” Holden calls through the open window of his truck.

“Come help us with the bags, dickhead,” Duke calls as he hauls one of Monroe’s suitcases over his shoulder.

“You look like you can handle it,” Holden says, drumming his fingers on the side of the door. He’s wearing a beat-up straw cowboy hat.

I lead Monroe over to the truck and open the door for her. “You remember my brother Holden.”

“Hello,” she says. Her voice is noticeably flat.

“Howdy, ma’am.”

I resist the urge to go so far as to buckle her into the back seat. She places her hands in her lap and leans her head back against the headrest.

“I’m going to help Duke get the bags.”

She nods, not meeting my eyes. I turn and close her door to help my brother. Breathing is a little easier now that we’re back in familiar territory. Trying to keep someone like her safe in a foreign country, where everyone was screaming her name, was the most stressful thing I’d ever lived through. Now that we’re with my family, I feel a sense of peace with my brothers’ presence and the arsenal of firearms we have stocked up at home.

Holden is ruthless. He’s already murdered men for hurting his fiancée and our little sister, Dolly. He’s not the kind of man anyone fucks with.

We finish with the bags and load up in the truck. I climb into the back seat with Monroe, leaving the middle seat between us.

Duke hops into the passenger seat and claps Holden’s shoulder. “I’m ready for a brewski.”

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