Singe (Guardian Protection #1)

Horrible, heartbreaking paragraphs.

“And…that shit at the hospital, where I was all gorgeous, strutting in to see you? That never happened! I was laid up in a hospital bed with a broken leg, cops and attorneys swarming around me as they debated if I was going to be arrested or not. And, when I finally did try to see you, they wouldn’t fucking let me! All I got was an eyeful of you pinned to a fucking cross as Peter Higgins’s bodyguards rolled me out in a wheelchair because I couldn’t even walk.”

I flinched because my conscience blazed like a bonfire. Bile crept up my throat, choking me. “I’m sorry.”

Intertwining his fingers, he rested them on the top of his head. “You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry? For what, Rhion? Wishing I were a better man than I actually was? Then I’m fucking sorry too, because I have wished that every damn day for four years.” He stormed past me.

My heart lurched, as I spun to follow him.

“That’s not why I wrote those books! I wasn’t trying to make you a better man,” I informed his back.

He didn’t reply as he marched into my room and began shoving his stuff into his bag.

I snatched a shirt from his hand. “Stop and listen to me.”

He let me have it and moved to his shoes lining the wall on his side of my bed. “I’m not interested in half a story tonight, Rhion, which is basically all you ever give me.”

My chin jerked to the side and I gasped, “Are you calling me a liar?”

He laughed, taking his pajama pants off before pulling a pair of jeans on, “Nope because that would require you to actually tell me things. You just flitter through your life, bullshitting anyone and everyone so they can’t get to know you. You kept this shit a secret for almost two goddamn months.”

And that was when I exploded.

Throwing his shirt at him, I shouted, “I did tell you! And you didn’t fucking remember!”

He stopped the furious packing and snapped his head in my direction.

“Friday night,” I whispered. “When you showed up at my apartment, I told you everything. How I’d spent four years wishing I could thank you. How I’d never stopped thinking about you. How I’d written books about that night because I hated the way everything happened after it. And then I kissed you, but not because I had some obsession with the characters I’d written in those pages, but because you were better.”

He screwed his eyes shut. “Better. Right.”

“Yes. Better! You told me you were sorry. Profusely. You held me as though you were trying to fuse our bodies together. You hugged me tighter than anyone in my entire life. And then we started talking, and yeah, I knew you were drunk, but you made me laugh and it didn’t hurt for the first time in years. You told how much you’d thought about me. How you wished you’d been able to save me. And, moreover, you seemed to really believe it when I told you that you had.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did! If you want to roll in your guilt about that night for the rest of your fucking life, I can’t stop you. We disagree on the night of the fire—wholeheartedly. But you cannot argue with me about what happened after that. The memories of you and those books were the only things that got me through the first year. You gave me hope that heroes were real, Jude. And, back then, when my days were so filled with pain both inside and out, I really needed something to believe in. Make fun of it. Call me crazy. Whatever. I honestly don’t give a damn. But it happened, Jude. That is not fiction. That is real life, and I won’t stand here and let you take that away from me. You. Saved. My life.”

His face pinched together in agony as he whispered, “Do you even know why I call you Butterfly?”

An ugly feeling sprouted in my stomach. I didn’t. It was just something I’d heard him yell the day he’d been removed from the hospital.

And butterflies were beautiful.

Weren’t they?

He hooked his bag over his shoulder and opened his eyes. “Because, when you were up on that ledge, you looked like you were desperately trying to catch the wind before you died.” He pointed at the door—toward the tattoo room. “In…” His voice caught, and it felt deep inside me. “In your books, you wrote that I called you ‘my beautiful Butterfly.’ But, Rhion, there was absolutely nothing beautiful about that moment. It was the most horrifically tragic thing I had ever witnessed.” He took a step toward me, sliding his arm around my waist and dropping his forehead to mine. “It’s not a compliment. And the only reason I call you that now is to remind myself that I’ll always be one blink away from losing you again. Tonight. Reading those books, knowing who you wish I were, and knowing I’ll never be that man, I blinked.”

I swallowed hard as his words washed over me like a million tiny daggers gouging my heart out. “Jude, please,” I whispered, tears pricking the backs of my eyes.

Reaching down, he caught my hand. Then he lifted it up to the back of his neck and then up under his hair to the thick scars on the back of his head.

He groaned in pain as his face crumbled. “I’m not real, Rhion. Not as far as you’re concerned. Because that white knight you wrote so many fucking times. Does. Not. Exist.”

A sob caught in my throat as I tried to jerk my fingers away, but he held them tight, rubbing them up and down the back of his skull.

“Stop,” I begged, knowing that it had to be torturing him because it was destroying me.

He refused to let me go and even forced me closer.

“Stop it.” I shoved at his chest, but he didn’t budge.

And then, all at once, he released me. As I watched him walk out of my room, there wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t have given to be back in his arms.





She didn’t try to follow me as I stormed out of her door—out of her life.

I’d been right the night I’d seen her at the bar. I had no right to be a part of her future.

But, for almost two months, I’d tried.

And, for two fucking months, I’d pretended like there wasn’t a burning house dividing us.

We’d talked about the fire. Not in great detail. After all, we’d both been there that night, and neither one of us was eager to go back, not even in a conversation.

Maybe that had been my first mistake: believing that the past could stay in the past.

The woman I went to bed with each night wasn’t that broken butterfly I couldn’t escape. She was the woman who made forgetting possible.

I’d lied to her when I’d told her that I only called her Butterfly as a reminder that I could lose her with a single blink.

I called her Butterfly because she was mine.

Her scars.

Her pain.

Her smiles.

Her laughs.

Her heart.

Her body.

I owned them all.

And, for two fucking months, I’d wanted to keep it all.