Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

I knew I’d have to tell her eventually, but I was hoping I could make it longer than a week before relaying the most embarrassing morning of my life to my best friend. Though I should have known better. She’d noticed right away that something was wrong. And there were only so many times I could delay the inevitable by saying I was too busy writing to talk. Especially since I wasn’t writing, and she was my self-proclaimed head beta reader. Coincidentally, she was also my editor, my cover designer, my formatter, and my agent. Again, all self-proclaimed. In reality, she was just my best friend who loved romance novels and insisted I send them to her chapter by chapter as I wrote. It worked for us. Except for in situations like this when I needed to lie to her in order to avoid the aforementioned most embarrassing morning of my entire life.

I sighed and set my coffee mug on the counter.



Me: Seriously? Smoking-hot flesh? Come on! But, yeah, Jude was here.

Brianna: Okay. I’m going to need you to call me for this. This is too good for a text.

Me: It’s really not. He was a sweet drunk. Not so sweet sober. Said I ruined his life.



At the memory, my throat thickened. I did my best to tamp it down. I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t cry over Jude again. Six days of wallowing were enough. This was confirmed as I stared back at hollow cheeks and dark bags under my eyes in the mirror that morning. I was a dab hand at makeup, but it’d taken me at least an hour to transform myself into a human rather than an extra on The Walking Dead.



Brianna: HE SAID WHAT!?!?!

Me: It’s no big deal.



The phone started ringing in my hand, her name flashing on the screen. I groaned as I lifted it to my ear—but not too close because I knew what was coming.

“He said you ruined his life?” she shrieked.

I winced. It didn’t matter whose tongue those words rolled off. I still heard them in Jude’s deep, gravelly voice. And it still stung like a swarm of angry bees attacking me from all angles.

I did my best to compose myself and not allow the hurt to seep into my voice. “Good morning to you too, Brianna.”

“Yes, it would be a great morning if you were calling to tell me Jude showed up at your apartment, he stripped you naked, and you were now carrying his child.”

I rolled my eyes. Minus the baby thing, it wasn’t a stretch for what had actually happened, and it definitely would have made it a better morning to be able to tell her that also. But the Jude we were both talking about didn’t exist. And, while it sucked, I had no control over reality.

I’d learned that the day my baby brother had tried to kill me—the first time.

People were nonfiction. Regardless of how often my fingers ached to rewrite them.

And, for a few days, as I had considered crawling into a hole and never showing my face again, my fingers had ached pretty damn badly to rewrite Jude Levitt—or at least the version he’d given me on Saturday morning.

Friday-night-Jude had been nothing short of perfection.

“Anyway, it’s no big deal,” I lied. “Let me tell you about the minor miracle I preformed in order to keep Johnson from finding out about the Jude fiasco.”

“I couldn’t care less about Johnson unless he’s naked and in my bed. We’re talking about Jude right now.”

“Apparently Johnson likes threesomes,” I announced for no other reason than to distract her. And, I mean, if you can’t tell your best friend secrets about your other best friend, what’s the point of having two of them?

Brianna lived in New York, so she hadn’t actually met Johnson. However, she’d seen pictures I’d taken on the sly after she’d asked if he was hot. And, well, since he was, she’d developed a bit of a crush—or obsession, depending on who you asked.

She coughed in my ear then fell completely silent.

“Brianna?”

“Okay, so let me rephrase. First, we are talking about Jude. And then we are discussing Johnson and his predilections in the bedroom. But, as a little teaser of that conversation, are you talking two men? He’s still gay, right?”

I cleared my throat. “I quote, ‘Women are always my thing as long as there is another man on the other side of her.’ Er…something like that.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “Two years of being your best friend and I finally have a shot with him. Please, God, tell me the other man can be Devon.”

One could say I was a pretty amazing friend because, for Brianna’s birthday that year, I’d forced, with threats of withholding Friday breakfast, all the guys of Guardian to take a picture holding a happy birthday sign. And that was how she had fallen in love with Devon.

“I’m not thinking Devon swings that way, but when I get up there this morning, I’ll be sure to ask.”

“You do that,” she replied breathily.

“You’re envisioning this threesome, aren’t you?”

“Shhhh… Don’t interrupt me. Devon just kissed Johnson.”

“Aaaand…now, I feel nauseous.”

“Damn it, Rhion! You’re ruining this!”

It was a joke, but it still stung.

Jude had tarnished the word ruin for me. As an author, I couldn’t afford to sacrifice words from my vocabulary. It had been hard enough when Brianna had banned moist from my books. The loss of ruin was going to…well, ruin me.

“Ruining people’s lives seems to be my forte this week,” I tried to joke, but my traitorous voice broke at the end.

“Shit,” she mumbled. “Let’s get back to that asshole.”

“Look, I need to go. The guys’ breakfast should be here any minute.”

“Don’t you dare try to get out of this. Talk, Rhion.”

Leaning my hip against the counter, I stared blankly across my kitchen to the pantry door.

The pantry door he’d followed me through when I’d tried to hide just before confessing that I’d never stopped thinking about him.

The pantry door he’d pinned me against as his mouth had worked my neck so deliciously that my knees had nearly given out.

The pantry door I’d guided him through when he’d traced his fingers over my peaked nipple and declared that he’d wanted to see all of me—feel all of me.

“He was real,” I whispered. “He didn’t hate me. He said he never did. Yes, he was drunk, Bri, but I swear to you he was real.”

“Rhion—”

I talked over her. “He apologized as if the fire had been his fault. He kept repeating the word ‘mine’ as he traced my scars. Not my tattoos. My scars.” I lazily traced the seams beneath my ink. A chill shook my shoulders at the memory of his fingers there. His warmth. Jude. My Jude. “When I glided a hand up the back of his neck, he flinched like I’d hurt him. He wouldn’t let me touch the scars under his hair. He said those were his too. That I couldn’t have them. The scars. They were all his.”

“Jesus, Rhi.”