I’m coming up short.
Usually, I wouldn’t be that aggravated. I’m useful to security, to the team, to people—to Sulli. They need me. But I’m starting to feel more second-rate than ever before.
Ryke asks to speak alone with me and Akara.
His daughter was about to take a secret trip out west and rock climb without a fucking harness. Most parents would want to pack their kids up and ship their ass back home.
I get his fear.
But I’ve been on Sulli’s detail while she’s climbed, and she’s careful. Is out west different? I don’t know. Taller cliffs, a greater ascent, a worse fall—but danger isn’t something anyone should look to me for an opinion.
I served in the Marine Corps. I’ve been in firefights and screamed in frustrated rage when my NVGs busted and thought I’d lose a buddy more than one night. Danger was a constant, living thing, and the only way to mitigate it was to come home.
While Ryke, Akara, and I leave for the bathroom, Sulli stays back at the tents with her mom and Alpha bodyguards.
Swiftly, Akara and I check the toilet stalls—all clear—and then we face Sulli’s intimidating dad. No other way to describe him than intense.
His stare is hardened with history and grief. He reminds me a little of my twin brother. Stoic, stone-faced, an expert on hell but a lover of heaven.
Ryke adjusts a Patagonia backpack across his shoulder. “I’m going to make this as short and fucking sweet as I can because I don’t know how else to do it.” His nose flares for a second and he grinds on his jaw. “I have to let her go.”
He looks physically pained by those words.
I imagine my own dad saying them. I have to let you go.
But there’s no pain. No heartbreak. My dad walked away when I was twelve and never cared enough to create a bridge back.
Ryke is a good father, someone I respect.
Someone Akara respects. Hell, someone every man in security respects.
He takes a breath. “I made a fucking promise to myself…” He pauses, the words stuck in his throat like normally he wouldn’t say them out loud, not to us, but he’s forcing himself to speak. “I promised that I’d give my daughters what Daisy’s mom never gave her. That I’d never fucking control them.” He smears a hand over his mouth. “Sully—Adam Sully would’ve hated if…” He shakes his head at himself. “Fuck, he would’ve hated if I quit climbing after his death and he would’ve hated if I kept my daughters from climbing because of him.” He wipes angrily at his eyes. “We live for the ascent, and if Sulli needs this, she has my blessing.” His eyes darken on me more than on Akara. “But I have to make this painfully fucking clear—I was on that mountain when my best friend died. It wasn’t a free-solo. We were roped in. Tied together.” His voice tightens in pain. “I held him in my arms as he was dying. So understand that she can be the best climber in the fucking world, but when it’s time for her to go, she’s going to go. Just like him. Just like me.”
He takes an agonizing breath.
My chest hurts. Burns. Most people I love keep dying or sitting on the brink of death, so his declaration is like seven-tons of lead in my body.
Just don’t fall in love with her.
Maybe then she won’t die.
What a dumbass thought.
I keep picturing Thatcher. He’s gone through something like what Ryke described. My twin brother held the dead body of our oldest brother. Life isn’t everlasting. I’ve felt that since I was a kid and asked God why He had to take Skylar.
I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t there when he died.
A part of me hates that Thatcher has to carry those memories alone. We’re twins. I’m supposed to carry half the weight. Half the burden. But he’s shouldering it all.
Akara steps forward. “Ryke, we won’t let anything happen to her.”
“She’s going to be up on that fucking mountain, Akara. You can’t promise me her safety. So this is where I’m at.” He swings his head from me to my best friend. “If I lose her while you’re with her, every time I look at you two, you’ll remind me of the daughter I fucking lost—so I want nothing to do with you two after that. I don’t want to ever see your faces again. You’ll be dead to me.”
Dead to Ryke Meadows.
None of that will really matter—because if Sulli died on our watch…it’d kill me in the end. My duty is to protect her, and I wouldn’t…I’d never go back to security.
I couldn’t.
I’d be done.
A withdrawn fucking hermit fixing beat-up Hondas for a living.
Akara can barely keep his head upright; his eyes are bloodshot. Chest collapses, but he fixes his gaze on her dad.
Ryke looks to Akara. “I love you like a son, but I love her more.” He pauses. “So now’s your chance. You can give her another two bodyguards for this trip.”
The risk has always been clear to me.
To Akara too. Strongly, he says, “I’m not giving this to someone else, Ryke.”
Her dad turns to me.
“Respectfully, sir, I’d rather be there for Sulli.”
We’re all living on the edge of death. And Ryke nods in acceptance of the road we’re driving down with his daughter.
If only he knew about the funhouse. My brain is trying to crack a joke, and it lands flatter than a fucking pancake.
6
AKARA KITSUWON
I love you like a son, but I love her more.
Ryke’s words stay with me as we exit one state and enter another. Miles and miles away from the REI, from Philly, they still sit inside my head. Even as we stop at a gas station in the Ohio, Midwest countryside.
Fathers.
I used to have one. He was the kind of father that would watch morning cartoons with me. That would pick out all the oat pieces in the Lucky Charms, leaving me with a bowl of colorful marshmallows. I’d see him in the early mornings before school and then in the late evenings after long hours at his office.
He was the kind of father that demanded he’d be the one to teach me how to drive, even though he barely had the time. So I learned in the dead of night, and he was right by my side. I rammed the Mercedes straight into a trashcan on my first try. He laughed.
After his death, relatives would come up to me and tell me that I was lucky. He passed away when I was seventeen. I made memories with him that I’ll remember forever. But it was a load of shit. In those memories he’s faded. Like a blurred image that I can’t quite make out.
What good is remembering, if I can’t even have the full picture?
I’m twenty-seven now.
No one can replace my dad.
But I can’t deny how much Ryke’s words have crashed into me. I’ve been on Sulli’s detail since I was twenty-two. I’ve traveled the world with the Meadows family. They don’t have legions of children like the Cobalts. They’re not rooted to Philly like the Hales. I was the youngest bodyguard to be on a Meadows detail.
Ever.
In a way, I always felt like a part of the family. Ryke would tell me over and over and over how he sees me as Sulli’s big brother. How I’m that protector in her life.