Page 29 of Bodied

Once they were outside, Wesley corralled her toward the back of the courtyard, where they could talk in private. He let her have a moment to cool off before he asked her, “What was that all about?”

She folded her arms and leaned back against a stone wall. “Nothing. Just my mom being my mom. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“It didn’t sound like something I don’t need to worry about.”

She fired a nasty look at him. “You were listening?”

“You were yelling. It was hard not to hear you.” He couldn’t believe he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. He had to make sure. “Did you tell her about us?” Lauren’s expression was all the answer he needed, and Wesley’s heart broke a little. How could this night have gone so wrong so quickly? He felt so betrayed. “I thought we had a pact.”

She glanced up at him, a touch of shame showing in her expression. “What are you talking about?”

“We weren’t going to mess with each other’s professional lives. We were going to keep your mother out of it.”

“She’s not involved,” Lauren protested. “She’s not going to change anything, and I didn’t break our deal. She noticed we were behaving differently. She had guessed it already.”

“But you didn’t have to confirm it!” Wesley narrowed his eyes at her, and she crossed her arms, closing herself off from him immediately.

“You think I should have denied it?”

“No.” He bowed his head, unable to look her in the eye anymore. “But you could have talked to me about it first.”

Though he wasn’t looking at her, her tone of voice told him how upset she was that he was questioning her choices. “She sprang it on me,” she said. “I didn’t have time to be like, ‘Hang on, Mom, I have to ask Wesley whether or not I have permission to acknowledge our relationship.’ How do you think that would have gone over with her, huh? I had to improvise in the moment, and I decided not to lie to her outright. Don’t you think it should be my choice whether or not I lie to my own mom?”

She had a point, but Wesley was a wounded animal. It was his greatest weakness of character, according to his own observations. Once wounded, he always seemed to lash out quickly. And while he was doing his best to rein in his instincts at this point, he wasn’t just angry. He was also scared. How did Lauren not realize how much power her mother had over him? If Anne Bartlett was unhappy with Wesley’s performance, she would get him fired without a second thought. He was kicking himself for even getting into a situation like this. He should have known better.

“I guess it’s over, then,” he said, leaning against the stone wall beside Lauren. “She’s going to make sure of it.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Lauren said. Wesley glanced up to see the doubt in her face. She didn’t really believe what she was saying, even if she had before. She fidgeted with her purse strap while she reconsidered her conclusion. Then she straightened her back and repeated, “No, she wouldn’t do that.”

Wesley shook his head. “Tell yourself that all you want. It doesn’t make it true.” He was feeling hopeless, and it hurt that Lauren couldn’t see what was so very obvious to him. No matter how she talked about her mother, she couldn’t seem to learn that the woman would do whatever it took to make things go the way she wanted them to go. Anne Bartlett would never back down if she had the power to bend things to her will. It was typical of her type — politicians, executives, and the like. Wesley had experienced enough of them in his life that he no longer doubted what principles they’d be willing to sacrifice, as long as they thought the outcome would work in their favor. “I just…” He slouched and bowed his head. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

Lauren tensed. His words had stung her just like he knew they would. It was the only way he could think to throw cold water on her face, to wake her up from this dream world she seemed to be living in. She valued her wits, and he knew that questioning them would not go over well. But that didn’t make it hurt any less when she cursed at him under her breath and finally walked away. “Take me home, please,” she said. “I’m done.”

CHAPTER14

LAUREN

Lauren leapt out of bed the second her alarm went off. It was early, but she didn’t want to start her jog feeling groggy. She had spent too much of the night planning what she was going to say to Wesley on their morning jog, and she was already running on about three hours of sleep. For one, she knew she wanted to apologize without admitting fault, and that would be a delicate balance. Not something to attempt after only being awake for ten minutes.

She went over and over what she wanted to say to him as she did her stretches and warm-up exercises. Just because she didn’t want to outright lie to her mom — and she didn’t feel wrong in having that boundary — it didn’t mean she hadn’t made any mistakes. She should have been more careful at the ball in the way she interacted with Wesley. Her mom wouldn’t have noticed their relationship if Lauren had been more careful and been less friendly or maybe even less flirtatious with Wesley.

She had stressed herself out most of the night, worrying that she had ruined everything, and she needed to talk herself back down before confronting Wesley again. When she’d gotten her hair just the way she wanted it, she picked out her most flattering workout clothes and went looking for her tennis shoes. She wanted to look nice, thinking that might win him over if nothing else did.

By the time she left her apartment, her heart was already beating as hard as it would be after the morning jog. But she pushed herself forward the way she always did. She jogged her normal route, expecting Wesley to come up alongside her any minute now, but he never did. Once or twice she glanced behind herself, thinking maybe he was just keeping a distance because he was still angry. There was definitely someone jogging behind her. It just wasn’t Wesley. Lauren stopped at a park bench to let him pass.

But the man behind her didn’t pass her by. Instead, he stopped, did some stretches of his own, and waited for her to resume the jog. She was about to head into a more secluded offshoot of the trail, and she wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to follow. So she called to him. “Are you following me?”

To her surprise, the man nodded. He was a young man, maybe in his twenties, and clearly in pretty good shape. There was no way she was going to outrun him if he decided to give chase, but the fact that he had answered so clearly and without hesitation made her second-guess her own worries. Then she remembered what her mother had told her the night before. Anne felt Wesley could not adequately protect Lauren if he was in a relationship with her. She felt emotional involvement would only be a distraction. And Wesley had warned Lauren that her mother would likely try to end the relationship.

“Who are you?” she asked the man behind her.

He approached slowly. “I’m Ben Sharp,” he said. “I’m your new security detail.”

“Did my mom send you?”

Ben nodded, and Lauren wanted to scream. Not at Ben. He hadn’t done anything wrong. She wanted to scream because Wesley had been right, and she had been wrong. Her motherwascapable of doing something like this. She’d separated the two of them. And Lauren could almost hear Anne giving Wesleythe talkabout staying away from her daughter or else.

Poor Ben looked confused. “Were you expecting someone else?”

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