Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

I gave him a hard shove that shifted him back a step, but he still didn’t acknowledge me.

“Yeah, Rhion. ‘Oh shit,’ is right,” he replied.

I threw my arm out to stop her as she moved toward him, but she ducked under it and got right between us. “I’m so sorry. I…I didn’t—”

He gritted his teeth and shook his head. And then, all at once, his shoulders rolled forward as relief rained down over him. It was quite possibly the most peculiar transformation I’d ever witnessed. One minute, there was no mistaking him as anything but a threat. The next, he was a man on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

“For fuck’s sake, sweetheart. Use your goddamn phone,” he said, hooking her at the back of the neck and dragging her into his chest. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good. I was with Jude,” she said, her words muffled by his shirt.

His gaze finally lifted to mine, and his lips split in a cocky grin. “I’m not gonna hurt her. You can quit glaring at me, asshole.”

“I’ll quit glaring when you let her the fuck go,” I shot back.

He harrumphed but released her.

Rhion didn’t delay in moving back to my side, and Johnson watched her closely as I slid an arm around her shoulders.

“Jesus Christ,” he cursed to himself. “Get her upstairs. Then meet me in Leo’s office. We have a client briefing starting in five minutes.” And then he was gone, jogging up the stairs rather than taking the elevator.

I looked down at Rhion and asked the rhetorical question, “What the fuck was that about?” It was only rhetorical because I knew I wouldn’t get an answer.

So I nearly stroked out when I got one.

“He sometimes pops in and hangs out with me in the mornings. He probably freaked when I wasn’t there.”

Dipping down, I kissed the top of her head. “I do not understand your relationship with that man.”

She laughed and—not surprisingly—didn’t bother to reply.

When we got to her door, I kissed her indecently and for too long, so when I finally broke it, I was forced to take the stairs two by two to get up to Guardian without being late—or later, as it turned out.

“How’s it going, Levitt?” Leo asked as I entered his office.

He was leaning back, his booted feet propped up on the desk. Johnson sat across from him, his arms crossed over his chest, but a genuine smile curved at his lips.

“Sorry I’m late,” I told Leo.

“You’re welcome for last night,” he stated matter-of-factly. “If it weren’t for me, this guy would have been beating down your door at midnight.”

Swinging my head between them, I asked, “What the hell for?”

“Shut the door,” Johnson grumbled.

I gave it a shove and then mimicked Johnson’s posture by crossing my arms over my chest, refusing to move to the empty chair next to him. That unease I felt in the garage slammed into my gut once again.

Leo dug through a pile of papers on his messy desk and said, “Before we get started, I wanted to let you know I got great feedback on you from Senator White’s family. They had nothing but incredible things to say about you, so I’ve decided to assign you a more permanent position.”

A huge smile split my face. I’d been hoping for something steady rather than the revolving door of odds-and-ends security jobs. Read: the shit work none of the other guys wanted.

“That’s good fucking news,” I stated.

“You and Johnson will be splitting duty. You two can work out your own schedule based on when he’s needed with Slate and Erica in Indy. This is not going to be a nine-to-five position, Levitt. And sometimes you’re gonna have to be on shift for well over forty hours a week. But I’m not thinking you’ll mind, considering your new assignment is with Rhion Park.”

My spine shot straight. “Come again?”

Leo looked to Johnson and grinned. “You’re up, my man.”

I took a step deeper into the room. “I’m sorry. Did you say my new assignment is with Rhion?”

“Don’t get excited. It doesn’t pay overtime,” Johnson said, grabbing a thick file folder off the corner of Leo’s desk. Then he offered it my way. “Last night was the first time Rhion has willingly left her apartment without me in two years.”

I blinked, and that familiar unease didn’t just wash over me—it flooded me like a tidal wave. “What?”

He shifted lower in his chair and kicked his legs out in front of him.

Cool. Calm. Composed.

Everything I was not.

“She has her groceries delivered,” he said. “A lady who does her clothes shopping. A stylist who comes and does her hair. Hell, her tattoo guy even does house calls after she set him up a station in one of the bedrooms.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

There’s no way…

Flashes of her freaking out on the way to my house the night before crashed into me.

“You’re lying,” I accused.

But, in my gut, I knew he wasn’t.

My mind was reeling. I was finally getting the answers I so desperately wanted about Rhion.

But these were wrong. All fucking wrong. My Butterfly wasn’t supposed to be broken anymore. She was supposed to have been flying free over the last few years, basking in the fact that she’d survived. She absolutely was not supposed to be locked up in an apartment, hiding from the world.

“Explain,” I ordered.

“We’ve been working on it recently,” Johnson said. “Actually, just the other night, before we ran into you at the bar, it was the first time she’d been able to walk across the street alone. Though it took her two hours to build up the courage, and that’s saying something, considering she knew Devon was stationed at the front of the bar and Alex and Lark were at the front of our building.”

My mouth fell open. I shot Leo a questioning look, silently pleading for him to tell me that Johnson was full of shit.

But his short nod confirmed it.

“Why?” I asked. “What happened two years ago?”

“Apollo happened,” Johnson sighed. “He got out of jail, cornered her at a charity event. Rhion’s been convinced ever since that he set the fire.”

My head snapped to the side as if he’d hit me. No one knew who had started that fire. Arson was clear, but they’d never been able to pin it on anyone.

“Wait. Wasn’t he in jail?”

“Yep,” Johnson replied.

“Then why would she think that?”

“Um…because Apollo told her he set the fire.”

I sank down into the chair next to him and scoffed. “That’s crazy. She can’t possibly believe…”

The air in the room suddenly chilled. I looked to Johnson and found an ice storm radiating off his shoulders.

“She is not fucking crazy,” he seethed.

I cocked my head to the side, my confusion flashing to a whole lot of pissed off. “I didn’t say she was. I’m not sure if your eyes failed you this morning or what, but Rhion and I are together now. She’s got issues—those issues just became mine.”

Johnson and I glared at each other until Leo waded in.