Page 72 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
The guards don’t move to stop me. They part like shadows as I walk past, my boots crunching deliberate against the gravel. When I reach the truck, I glance once in the rearview mirror. David is still standing there, drink in hand, smirk gone.
Good.
23
WESLEY
Sean’s been gone an hour.That doesn’t sound like much to anyone else, but for him it’s a lifetime. Sean doesn’t leave us waiting. He doesn’t disappear without an ETA. He’s clockwork—exacting, measured, a man who eats, sleeps, and breathes on schedule. Except tonight. Tonight he walked out the door with nothing more thanpersonal businessand pulled rank on me and Huck like we were recruits instead of his brothers-in-arms.
It’s not like him. Hell, it’s not like any of us. But this custody ruling has wrecked more than just Bailey. It’s thrown all of us off-balance.
I try to stay still, but I can’t. My leg bounces against the floor as I sit on the arm of the couch, and the second I notice it I shove off and start pacing. The den feels too small. The walls too close. My skin hums with restless energy I don’t know where to put.
I glance toward the dining room. Bailey sits at the head of the table, her back straight, her hands cupped around a mug gone cold. She hasn’t taken a sip in at least thirty-four minutes—not that I’m counting—but she keeps her fingers around it like the ceramic is the only thing tethering her to the ground. Her face ispale, eyes locked somewhere I can’t see, and I know—justknow—if I ask her how she’s doing, the thin mental wall she’s holding up will come crashing down.
She looks like a woman on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the earth to crumble under her feet. And I can’t stop staring at her.
The silence stretches between us. I don’t break it. Not when I can see the storm swelling behind her eyes. If I press, if I ask her to name it, she’ll drown, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull her out. So I keep pacing, like movement can burn the tension in my veins.
Huck strides in, shoulders rolling with that restless energy that makes him look too big for doorways. “I’m checking the perimeter,” he mutters. It’s not even aimed at me. It’s a declaration, an excuse to get out, to feel the night air against his skin.
I don’t argue. Huck always feels caged inside. He’s got that outdoorsman’s soul—if the sky isn’t wide and the ground isn’t dirt, he starts to itch. Out there, he doesn’t have to worry about knocking over lamps or splintering furniture when he shifts in his chair. Out there, he’s free.
“Fine,” I tell him. My voice sounds clipped, sharp, but he doesn’t comment. He just grabs a flashlight and goes.
The door shuts behind him, and the house swallows the sound, leaving me alone with Bailey and my own gnawing unease.
I can’t stand this. Sitting here useless while Sean’s off doing God knows what, while Bailey sits breaking apart in silence, while Huck pretends the perimeter needs checking every half hour. I need to do something, anything, before I crawl out of my skin.
The attic.
It’s been nagging at me since we moved in. Those dormer windows give perfect lines of sight over the driveway, the gate, even part of the street beyond. We’ve got good coverage already, but redundancy never hurts. And maybe if I’m up there installing cameras, I can trick myself into feeling useful instead of helpless.
I grab the case of cams and the drill, pop the ladder down, and climb.
The attic air hits me. Dry, heavy with insulation and dust. My flashlight beam cuts across old boxes, trunks, piles of forgotten things. The boards creak under my boots as I move toward the nearest dormer.
It’s easy work. Mount the first camera, angle it down, connect to my phone, check the feed. Clean. Effective. The lens drinks in the driveway, the faint emptiness of Sean’s truck gone missing.
The second dormer is trickier, cramped, but I make it work. Another feed goes live. Another slice of safety secured.
By the time I get to the third, I’m almost calm. The rhythm of the work steadies me—mount, angle, test. Practical steps. Predictable results.
That’s when I see it.
A box, half-collapsed, slumped against the far wall behind a trunk. There are a lot of boxes up here, but most of them are sealed. The tape on top of this one is peeling, edges sagging like it’s been opened and shoved back together more than once. Might be the oldest box in here.
What does someone like Bailey hang on to for this long?
She’s not the sentimental type, but it might be our old high school yearbooks or even an old stuffed animal. Maybe it’ll bring a smile to her face if I bring the contents downstairs. Fuck, anything to make that woman smile again after today’s disaster…
I don’t think. I just pull it toward me, hope biting harder than common sense.
I kneel, set the box on my thigh, and tug the lid open. Photos. Stacks of them. At first glance, I think they’re test photos—they’re glossy, like headshots. They’re her face, mostly, but each one has a different odd mark on her. Bruises, cuts, scrapes. A swollen lip in a few of them. Old makeup tests? She’s been in projects where she needed to look roughed up.
I thumb through the first stack, and slowly my stomach drops.
There aren’t any other kinds of makeup tests here. Just injuries. They don’t look like they’re from that one zombie movie she did, and I can’t think of another role that would have required this extensive…
