Page 8 of Breakaway
"You're right," she says with a sigh, her shoulders slumping momentarily before she straightens, nods to herself, and then holds out her hand for me to shake. "Can we start again? Without me crying this time, maybe?"
I fight the smile that wants to tug at my lips. I'm attempting to remain professional about all of this, but it's a sight to behold the woman going from timid and scared to sure of herself in the blink of an eye.
"Of course." I grab her hand, forcing my shadows to fall back down to the floor as they attempted to snake upward to link us together even more. "I'm ZillHerman, your Sombran bodyguard for the next few months."
"Reese Martin," she says, not hiding her smile, and it's so infectious I can't force mine down much longer. "Is Herman a normal Sombran name?"
I snort, releasing Reese's hand as I move to sit back in my chair, hoping to keep the same lighthearted conversation going until we have to move on to the more serious matters. "Herman was Mauve's last name. In Sombran culture, we don't have family names in the same way you do, but it was important to my mother that she kept her name and that her offspring shared it with her."
"And your father?" Reese asks. She's back in her seat, leaning closer to me as if she's genuinely interested in my family.
I'm curious how much Mauve's told her over the years. Reese seemed surprised to find out I was Mauve's son, but that could be because she didn't know of my existence at all or because she didn't know I was half human, half Sombran.
"My father would do anything for her," I answer easily. "A soulbond is a special thing for Sombrans. There isn't anything we won't do for ours once we've found them." I clear my throat, not wanting to go down the path of soulbonds right now, especially when mine is looking at me with wide, intrigued eyes. "But a name is an easy thing. My mother got her way, and it kept them from having to come up with a paired name for my siblings and me."
"A paired name?" Reese asks, and since it isn't about soulbonds, I'm more than happy to explain it.
"The second half of our name. It's shared between siblings. I'm ZillHerman, and my brothers are YryffHerman and WynHerman. Though we all just go by the first half."
"What about last names?" Reese asks with clear interest and not just feigning it for small talk. It makes me want to tell her everything about anything she wants to know.
"Don't have them, though if you inserted a space between my first names, I'm sure they would work the same." I shrug.
"What's a more common Sombran name?" Reese asks, and then seems to think I might take offense to it, "Not that Herman isn't Sombran enough or something. I mean, I don't know about all of this and…" Her voice trails off as I smile, shaking my head gently.
"The others I work with all have more common Sombran names. IshaNara and SkiaNara have both Sombran parentage, and KolosOthros has a human father, but his parents went with a Sombran name."
"Interesting," Reese says in a breathy way before something outside the conference room catches her attention. She sits straighter and clears her throat. "We should talk about this arrangement Mauve is all but forcing us into."
My stomach twists, and my shadows begin to panic. "If you feel forced into this at all, we don't have to do it."
"No, no, it's fine. Mauve has always looked out for me. I doubt this time is any different. Plus, you already know I find you attractive, so it's not like I'm going to embarrass myself any more than that."
My cheeks flame at the same time my shadows wrap around my body, swirling and twirling around as they all begin to celebrate that our soulbond finds us attractive. As much as I'd love to remind them she called me attractive, not them, I'm more concerned with the realization dawning on Reese's features as she figures out I had no idea she found me attractive.
Her face brightens as red as mine feels as her eyes widen into saucers, and one of her hands moves up to cover her face as if she could disappear just from the action. "Please tell me you already knew that. You're supposed to already know that."
"I, well." I stop talking, trying to take my time to come up with a good excuse. One that doesn't make her feel uncomfortable.
The worst thing that could happen right now is for me to tell her that she's the other half of my soul, and she rejects it. Sure, the rejection itself will be hard enough to deal with, but even worse will be that she'll send me away. If she does that, I won't be able to ensure she's safe until all of this that she's going through has run its course.
I take a deep breath while Reese is still hiding herself in embarrassment. "Sometimes there are others who can block our abilities." There. That sounds like a perfectly good reason. Except that might also lead her to believe I can't protect her, soI quickly amend it. "It's extremely rare. I'm as surprised as you about this since I haven't met someone I couldn't slip inside the mind of once."
Reese spreads her fingers a little, one of her dark eyes peering at me before she snaps her fingers closed again. I chuckle, I can't help it. She's adorable, and maybe I shouldn't be thinking that about a client, but she is the other half of my soul, so a few liberties can be taken so long as they all remain in my mind.
I want to tell her that I find her as attractive as she finds me, but telling her that is all but admitting that I have feelings for her. Seeing as Sombrans have feelings for one person and one person only, well, it goes back around to Kolos being down here pretending to be her boyfriend, and that just won't do. For his sake and for mine.
"I'm just messing all of this up," Reese says with a little pout before she lets her hand flop back into her lap, where her fingers immediately tangle with one another. "Okay, whatever. It's actually kind of nice you can't read my mind because after all of this has happened, it feels like there's not a piece of me that hasn't been laid bare. At least I can still keep my thoughts to myself."
"Even if I could hear them, we're taught how to act so you wouldn't know," I tell her. It's meant to be reassuring, but based on the way her lips tilt downward, it's clear she likes that even less. "Knowing what you do, are you still interested in continuing with Mauve's plan, or would you prefer this to be a strictly professional arrangement?"
"It's fine," Reese says, her bravado seeming forced, but it isn't something I'm willing to point out. Not when we're barely more than strangers still. "If it's not you, it'll be some other celebrity she's hand-picked for the job, and honestly, I don't want to deal with any of them anymore."
I ignore the curdling in my stomach at the thought of my mother having backup fake boyfriends for Reese, but knowing Mauve, she most certainly does. "Better the devil you know, right?"
Reese looks at me, a tiny glimmer of knowing in her eyes. "If you're going to sound like Mauve, this might not work out."
My shadows, not realizing that Reese is teasing us because they're taking her words a little too literally, begin their panicking anew. They're more than capable of figuring out how she feels about us and whether she's being truthful in her words, much better than I can, since they're the ones blocking us from her mind. And yet, they're the ones having a meltdown right now.
