Thatcher rubs a rough hand over his face, then he edges closer to help me.
I jerk backwards. I go deadly still, elbow sticking out of my coat.
He stops suddenly.
We both breathe hard. We both stare at each other in binding silence, every inch of space between us slashing at my lungs and heart.
He raises his hands to show me he’s not nearing. “Can you answer me something?”
“Anything.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
I shake my head fiercely, a lump in my throat. “God, no.” I long for Thatcher in ways I’ve never longed for a man. With one more tug, I finally free myself from the fur coat. Cold air barely washes over my burning limbs. “It’s the very opposite.”
He threads his fingers through his wet hair.
I can’t read his hard features. My pulse won’t slow, and I have to ask, “What are you thinking?”
He looks me over. “You keep me on my toes.” He lets out a laugh. “And it’s driving me nuts, and it’s un-fucking-real how much I want you.”
“You have me,” I remind him.
Thatcher nods a short nod, and in a long beat, he looks deeper into me. “When I was your bodyguard and we were fucking, you’d let me help you no hesitation, and now that I’m your boyfriend, you’re frozen.”
My eyes flit down.
Thatcher shifts uneasily. “You’re confusing the hell out of me, and I want to walk with you through this, honey. But I don’t know where you’re going.”
“I want you to hold me so badly,” I admit. I want you to swallow me whole. Fear pinpricks me, and I hate that I’m unwilling to drown in his comfort right now and yet I hate that I want to be completely and wholly consumed by him. “But I feel like I have to stand on my own first.” I cling onto my autonomy by my fingertips, and he’s there, reaching a hand out and asking me to grab hold, to pull me up.
And I won’t let him.
Not entirely.
I glance out the window. “And I feel so guilty.”
“Why?”
“You sacrificed everything to be with me, and I can’t even let you help me take off my coat.”
His gaze narrows in severity, and he shakes his head over and over. “You owe me nothing for what I did. If you’d rather not be touched, I’d rather not touch you, Jane.”
I love him.
It chokes me. It throttles me. I don’t want it but I want it, and that is my tragedy.
He adds, “I’m going to match whatever pace you set.”
I breathe in. “What if I pull you at a million different speeds? What if I slow and speed and stop and speed and slow? Are you prepared to grow exhausted of me?” My eyes burn.
Thatcher doesn’t recoil. “I’m prepared to be with you at every speed, and there’s no way you’ll exhaust me.”
I arch my brows. “How can you be so sure?”
He is all confidence and man. “Because I don’t tire that easily.”
I exhale, face flushed, and I rest my shoulders on the limo door. We hold each other’s gaze for some time, and I try to squash some of my insecurities. I smooth my lips together, and then I say, “You keep me on my toes too, you know. Quite literally.”
He almost smiles. With his forearm, he wipes a droplet of rainwater that glides down his temple. “About Tony—you don’t need to mediate any shit between him and me.”
I nod. “I’m glad not to play that part,” I admit.
Maybe there is good in sharing the bad with Thatcher. Nothing strengthens a bond like a common enemy, and we both dislike Tony very much.
“What I say will just fuel your hatred,” I warn him. “It has little to do with me and more to do with you.” If it were about me, I could run to the Tri-Force and have Tony fired, but mostly, he’s been a decent bodyguard. I haven’t feared for my life in crowds, and he’s deescalated more than one rowdy fan interaction.
This is just bad blood between them. What they’d consider security in-fighting.
“I want to hear it,” Thatcher confirms.
I lace my fingers. “I, um…” I unlace and reach for an expensive champagne bottle in an ice bucket. “Maybe we should drink first.”
He grips his knees. “I can’t.”
I remember and shake the cobwebs out of my head. “Right. The break-in.” He’s wanted to stay clear-headed and focused. “I probably shouldn’t drink either. It’s a bad distraction tactic, drinking alcohol. That can go awry quickly.” My eyes grow. “Not that I’m trying to distract myself from you, from this—I mean, I am, but…”
Merde.
Thatcher brushes a hand along his unshaven jaw and nods to me. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” I wince. “I’m being unfair to you.”
“Because you can’t get the words out? Welcome to the fucking club.”
I want to smile, but everything I need to say weighs on me. I put the champagne bottle back in the ice bucket. “It’s been hard this past week hearing Tony say things about you, and the more aggressively I defended you, the more he’d smirk like he got a rise out of me.”
Thatcher glowers out the rear window, and when he looks back at me, he says, “He’s a piece of shit.”
“Je suis d'accord.” I agree.
The corner of his mouth lifts a fraction. He leans his side more into the seat, already fully turned towards me. “What else?”
I rehash the past week to my boyfriend. All the little biting comments. Tony restrained a heckler from approaching me, and afterward, he said, “Bet Thatcher would’ve struggled with that. Probably would’ve broken a sweat.”
I snapped back, “He never has.”
Tony had that grating conceited smile and haughty swagger.
Every day, I heard:
Moretti can’t do this.
Moretti has half a brain.
You realize no girlfriend has ever wanted to be with him. That’s why he’s been cheated on a hundred times.
I tell Thatcher, “If there’d been a ‘shut up’ button on Tony, I would’ve risked touching him and pressed it a thousand times by now.”
“I would’ve decked him,” Thatcher says plainly.
I scrutinize his left hand that clutches his knee, tiny scars mar his knuckles and his ring finger is crooked like the bone shattered and healed poorly. “Is that how you fractured your finger?” I wonder. “Hitting Tony?”
He opens his hand and rubs his knuckles. “I’ve punched him before. But this is from bar fights and protecting Xander.”
I scoot nearer, the air winding around us as I do, and he looks down at me and I look up at him. Our breath coming heavier.
He holds out his hand, knowing why I moved. Gently, I take his palm in mine and inspect the healed wounds. Thatcher has been through grief and war. His hands have carried the body of his brother and my badly beaten cousin, and if he could, I’m sure he’d carry more.
“What he’s said, it gets worse,” I murmur.
His jaw hardens and he nods me onward. “I’m ready.”
I explain how I overheard Tony talking when he was on a break. I had stopped by my dad’s office in Center City, which is a secure location. Bodyguards aren’t required to enter.