Page 32 of The Bodyguard

Inside the shower, she stood under the water until it went hot enough to sting. The ache in her shoulders didn't ease. Her knees felt hollow. Her chest, too. Like everything inside her was fraying—starting at the edges and working its way in.

She didn’t cry, but God, she wanted to.

The moment passed, but just barely. When she stepped out, she dried off in silence, wrapped herself in the robe, and rubbed her hands over her arms as if that might warm the places the steam couldn’t reach.

She opened the bathroom door and stopped. There he was again, a mug of hot tea in hand. He held it out without a word. She stared at him for a moment. Took it with both hands. Chamomile. Her favorite.

Her throat tightened again, but she didn’t let the tears come. She just stood there, robe tied too tight around her waist, the man who’d invaded her life now somehow anchoring it, and she realized he didn’t just protect her body. He protected the space around her pain.

No judgment. No questions. Just presence.

“Thanks,” she said softly, voice thick.

He gave a small nod. “You don’t have to hold it together all the time,” he said, not looking at her.

“I do.”

“You really don’t.”

She sipped the tea and closed her eyes for a second. “You always this stubborn?”

“Only when it counts.”

She opened her eyes. “This counts?”

His eyes finally met hers.

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

Andi didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just held the tea in her hands like it was the only thing keeping her upright. And Mitch… Mitch walked away, his boots silent against the hardwood, giving her space.

But the warmth of him stayed behind, and that scared her more than anything else. Because it wasn’t just the comfort she craved now. It was him—his voice in her brain, his hands on her skin, his rules pressed into her bones like protection and promise.

And the worst part? She was wondering how much of herself she’d give up just to keep him close.

7

MITCH

The breach didn’t come from the outside. That was the first thing Mitch confirmed when the Cerberus data sync finished uploading.

He stood at the edge of Andi’s loft, shoulders squared, eyes on the encrypted tablet as the logs scrolled across the screen. Clean entry points. No system flags. Surveillance cameras untouched. Nothing unusual in the access feed except for what wasn’t there.

The cameras had caught no sign of the drop, just a uniformed courier standing outside the building’s front entrance, holding a standard white envelope with a red stripe across the seal.

He swiped to the next screen, pulling up the communications metadata Cerberus had flagged for secondary review. Internal file access from a spoofed credential tied to a junior staffer’s workstation. On paper, it looked like an accident. Until you tracked the timestamps. The logins matched the nights Andi’s schedule had changed at the last minute.

Someone had eyes. And someone was feeding that information to whoever wanted Andi vulnerable.

Mitch shut the tablet with a snap and locked it.

The sun had barely broken the skyline. The city outside the loft glowed gray-blue with dawn. Andi was still asleep—he’d checked ten minutes ago. She curled into her pillow like she hadn’t watched her life splinter piece by piece. And despite everything, he was still watching her chest rise and fall like it was the only rhythm in the room that mattered.

She hadn’t told him she was unraveling—at least not in so many words. She didn’t have to. He’d seen the way she disappeared into that shower last night and how she’d come back out wrapped so tight in that funky chenille robe that she might’ve snapped if he’d touched her wrong.

So he hadn’t touched her. He’d waited, given her a mug with her favorite tea and then given her the one thing she couldn’t ask for—space without distance.

But space had limits. So did patience. And he was fast approaching the end of both.

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