Lennox leaned against a doorframe, tucked back, his still figure blending in with the dim room, his lids lowered in a glare.
“You scared the crap out of me.” I sucked in. “How did you even know—”
“Spencer.” He cut me off, his tone low and cool. “You really think you could follow me without me knowing? I’ve been trained to detect the tiniest detail in my surroundings, to notice a tail by the slightest movement. I’d be a shite guard if you got the better of me.”
Placing my hands on my hips, I glowered back at him.
He took a step, his body looming over mine, his heat thumping against my skin. “Especially you.”
“What does that mean?” I heard the breathy hitch in my tone.
“Means I know your smell, your aura, the shape of you, the way you move.” He moved in closer, completely encompassing me. “I’m so in tune with you, I would feel you if you were outside and down the street.”
Huffing through my nose, I swallowed. “Really? You were that aware of everyone in your troop?”
“No.” His breath grazed my cheek, his gaze rolling over me. “Just you.”
He brushed by me, strolling past the nurse’s station. I watched them nod and wave to him as if they knew him well. Like he came here all the time.
“She’s with me.” He flicked his chin back to me but didn’t look at them as he traveled past to a room.
As I followed him, a knot coiled in my throat as my eyes took in a blonde woman in the room he entered. My focus went to the clipboard hanging outside the room door, her name smashing a tsunami of dread into my body.
Gracie Easton.
Oh…god…
“She married some arsehole who didn’t truly love her, made her so depressed, she tried to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills.” Lennox’s voice rushed back to me with a smack.
He’s married…he’s the arsehole who married her.
“Don’t act like you have a problem fucking a married man.” William’s words played back in my head. “Your bodyguard is married.”
Holy shite. My chest clenched, my body shaking, not wanting to accept the truth.
The pads of my feet went in front of the other, taking me into the room, my mind locked in disbelief.
Lennox stared down at the petite woman, lovingly brushing a strand of dull blonde hair off her face. She was hooked up to machines, pumping her heart and forcing air into her lungs in perfect compulsory rhythm. Pallid skin thinly covered her bones, her delicate frame drowning in the bed, her wrists the size of a child’s. Behind the instruments, you could still see a sweet beauty to her sleeping face, the epitome of the cute girl next door—sweet, shy, and kind.
“My mom and dad pretty much stopped living after my sister, Daisy, died. They shut down. They blamed me. Not that I didn’t deserve it. I blamed myself too, but I became nothing more than a ghost in the house they pretended wasn’t there. The only thing saving me from following my sister was Gracie. She saved me from completely diving into the darkness and destruction. It was a full-time job, especially when my mother died two years after Daisy.” He took a jagged breath. “Just another thing my father put on my shoulders.
“Needing to escape, I joined the military. I threw myself into it, all my anger, focus, guilt. It drove me, and I scaled quickly up the ranks, going into the special forces. Gracie wrote me every week. It didn’t matter if she talked about the farm or the weather. The letters were my lifeline. Even when I didn’t think I wanted to know, she’d always mention my father and how he was doing.” His knuckles brushed over her thin arm, the adoration for her piercing, his expression almost in pain.
“She was the one to let me know when he died.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my emotions tumbling around, soaking in the bile in my stomach.
Lennox lifted one shoulder. “What’s sad is I still don’t know how I feel about it. With all the death you see on the front line, you can become accustomed to shutting off your emotions. Death and loss are everyday occurrences. But that’s what made me so good and rise so fast. I had already learned that lesson. I came in empty.”
I cringed, feeling the pain he probably didn’t let himself feel.
“When I came back for his funeral, Gracie was at my side the whole time.” He swallowed. “She was the only one who was there for me, who believed in me, and loved me unconditionally. She spoke of a life we could have together, the farm, children. Her love for me would bring me back. It would be enough.” He stumbled over the last bit. “I owed her everything.”
“You married her.” I wrapped my arms around my middle, the pressure in my chest wanting to crack my ribs.
His head bowed lower, his eyes shutting briefly before he took a huge gulp of air.
“I did.” He nodded, turning his head to me. “Did I know, deep down, I wasn’t truly in love with her?” Sorrow filled his eyes. “I wish I could say I didn’t know…but I did. The more she spoke of this beautiful life together, the more I longed for it as well, hoping her love could make it all come true, and I could find peace and happiness somewhere. I talked myself into believing I wasn’t capable of fully loving someone anyway, and what I felt for Gracie would be enough, that making her happy would bring me the serenity I longed for.”
Tears pricked at my eyes, and I glanced away from him, hating my emotions were on a rollercoaster. I wanted to hear it, but I was scared it would break me into bits.
“Gracie and I were married on the farm. Her father, Arthur, was already talking about how I would take over my father’s land and merge with his, expanding the dairy business, setting a life for Gracie and me and our family that she already wanted to start.” He ran a hand through his hair, his head shaking slightly. “I quickly realized I made a mistake. The serenity I was searching for never came. I actually got worse, angrier and more unsettled. I didn’t want that life. I didn’t want to be a dairy farmer. I could see my life stretched out before me, with kids and a wife, and instead of exciting me, I felt like I was suffocating to death. I would become a shell, getting up and doing what I needed, but far from living. I started to have nightmares again, of the battlefield, of my sister dying. I became short-tempered, miserable, and angry. I destroyed her. So I left. Went back into combat.”
“What do you mean destroyed?” Alarm strangled my throat.
Lennox glanced over at me. “I would never touch a woman if that’s what you mean. But hurt comes in different forms. Gracie was diagnosed as bipolar in her teens. She was on medication, and most of the time was the sweet girl I grew up adoring.” He licked his lips. “I didn’t know, but right before we got married, she stopped taking her meds. She wanted to get pregnant so badly she didn’t care about the consequences, not wanting anything wrong with the baby.”
“When I left…I guess she was pregnant.” He barely said above a whisper. “But she had a miscarriage two months after I was gone.”
My hand went to my mouth. Bloody hell, what this man had gone through.
“The dark depression claimed her quickly. Her mother called me all the time to come home. The few times I did, all we did was fight. She refused to take her medication again, and her unhappiness turned on me. She told me to leave the last time. To get out.” His voice hitched with grief, his hand scouring at his eyes. “And because I’m a selfish bastard, I did.” He inhaled, peering up at the ceiling. “She took a bunch of pills. Her mother found her the next day, lying in her own vomit on the bathroom floor.”