Student Bodyguard for Hire

by Callie James

  “No.”

  Just me overheating then. “Is this your dad with you?” I pointed to the wall behind me to change the subject.

  His eyes shifted to the picture. “Yeah. How did you know that was me?”

  I turned to the picture. “I could recognize your eyes anywhere. Besides, you’re the image of him now. How old were you in this?”

  “Nine.”

  How impressive that he’d won matches even then. “I can’t believe how lean you were. Muscles like that on a … what would you have been? A fourth grader? You looked so happy.”

  “I was.”

  My heart squeezed to hear the distant sadness in his voice, but I was determined not to get emotional. “You were cute,” I said, clearing my throat. “If I’d been a third grader at your school, I would have been completely smitten. You know…assuming you didn’t want to arm wrestle or punch me.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I turned to see a wariness in him I hadn’t seen in weeks. “Peyton, you didn’t drive all the way out here for small talk,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Um,” I bit my lip, waiting for my courage to kick in. “I came to talk to you. But Bobby mentioned you planned to go to a party tonight. If you can show me out, I’ll talk to you later. School maybe. Or somewhere. Another time. Never mind, I’ll just text you.”

  “You’re already here. Just say whatever you came to say.” He put his overnight bag on Jonas’ desk and leaned back against the metal slab, bracing his hands along the edges.

  I’d never known anyone else who could look tense in a relaxed position like Sam could, and after no eye contact for two weeks, having his full, intense attention again made saying this more difficult. “I wanted to apologize.”

  Genuine surprise rounded his eyes. “For what?”

  “Getting upset with you. About fighting in the cage. That you lied about it. Or didn’t mention it. Whatever. It was hypocritical of me, considering.”

  He looked confused. After that horrible, fragmented apology, I felt confused, too. “If this is about your dad, Peyton, I already know.”

  “My dad?”

  “Ryan said your dad has been after you to stop seeing me since the first night. Looks like something good came out of our breakup. You won’t have to deal with that hassle anymore.”

  I couldn’t believe Ryan had told him that. “Seems he’s just full of information lately.”

  “I’m glad at least someone told me.”

  I frowned at the deserved and pointed jab. “I don’t talk to Daddy about you. He doesn’t know about us …not seeing each other.”

  “I’d think you would have said something. You know, to get him off your case.”

  I shook my head. “With my dad… it’s complicated.”

  “You don’t have to explain. Believe me, I get that family can screw with your life,” he said, practically saying Savanna’s name. “What I don’t get is why you didn’t tell me. You’d always been so … forthcoming, I guess. It threw me to find out you’d kept so many secrets from me.”

  “Secrets?”

  “Yeah. Your dad was one thing, but threats, Peyton? You can’t compromise your safety by keeping everyone in the dark about what you’re going through. It’s not brave. It’s stupid.”

  “Stupid?” Well, that stung. “I can’t believe he said something to you about that. He promised me weeks ago that he wouldn’t.”

  “He didn’t. I saw the interview today.”

  I stiffened. “Oh.”

  He looked smug that I didn’t have a comeback. “I called your brother after. I guess when it comes to your safety, his word to keep a promise means jack because he told me the threats have gotten so detailed, so …graphic, that your parents went to the police last week and then to the school. How could you keep something so important from me?”

  He sounded angry. “Wait, are you mad at me?”

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “You have no right to be mad at me. You and I weren’t even talking.”

  “You were getting threats when we dated.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Go ahead and deny it. I dare you.”

  Ryan must have told him everything. “You’d have demanded I take down the website like everyone else has,” I said. “Even my mother caved after the last threat, and she doesn’t cave for anyone.”

  “She obviously made you an exception.”

  I stared at him. “I didn’t want to fight with you about it. You know that we would have.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “And then I’d remember how important the website is to you. How much you want to make a difference in people’s lives. How much you love what you’re doing. I would have backed off. Eventually.”

  The liar. He was way too overprotective. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  That half-smile appeared. “Well…I didn’t say I’d let you out of my sight after that. But I’d have been cool about the website.”

  “Sam—” My voice came out a whisper, clogged with emotion, and I looked down so he couldn’t see. “I just …I can’t be expected to check in with everybody whenever a person threatens or punches me.”

  “Punches you? What? When the hell—”

  “Can we please not fight?” I scrubbed my face, exhausted. “It’s not why I came.”

  “We’re not fighting.” He stood as if I meant to leave. “We’re talking.”

  “Then let’s talk about something else.”

  “Like what?” He shrugged. “You said you came to apologize. You did that.”

  “My dad and the threats … it’s not why I’m here. I wanted to apologize for something else. Something so much worse.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking braced. “What?”

  “You were right. What you told me. I thought I could handle it and I couldn’t. Or I didn’t. At least not very well. I should have stayed. I should have talked to you. I’m sorry for the way I reacted.”

  He shook his head once. “I have no clue what you just said.”

  “Your scars, Sam. On your chest. Your stomach.” I took a shaky breath. “You asked Ryan not to tell me about what he saw that day, and he would have kept his promise, except that he had already told me weeks ago. I knew about the marks before our first date.”

  A tiny, deep line formed between his eyebrows. The only change in an otherwise chiseled expression.

  I forced myself to keep talking. “I didn’t want you to think less of my brother, which meant I couldn’t tell you I knew. I couldn’t ask you how or why. I blamed the fighting. It’s why I reacted the way I did to your black eye. Then you told me about your uncle and now I think I may have been wrong. That it wasn’t someone who used a broken bottle on you during a street fight. That maybe your uncle did that to you. But you never talk about your life after your dad passed away. You stare at me whenever I’ve asked questions, expressionless ….like you are now.”

  As if to prove me wrong, his mouth clamped tight. After another long pause, he turned and walked to the office door, bracing a hand against the doorframe to stare into the dark corridor.

  The air suddenly felt thinner to breathe. “Please don’t be mad at him,” I said, taking a step forward. “Ryan knows me better than anyone. Better than Adam. Better than you. He knew I was genuinely interested in you. Between your reputation for violence, and the scars, the idea of me dating you completely freaked him out. He thought telling me about what he saw would scare me off from wanting to know you. But I didn’t care. I still don’t.”

  He leaned against the doorframe as though he needed a building to keep him standing.

  “A while ago,” I rambled on, “you said you understood why Ryan didn’t want me to see you. You said if you and I had been friends, even you would have told me to stay away. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  He still didn’t turn to look at me.

  “You’ll never stop going to the mat for him, will you?” he said.

>   I looked to the floor. “No, I guess not.”

  He finally turned but I didn’t have the nerve to look at him. “I envy him.”

  “My brother?” My gaze lifted and met his. “Does that mean you’re not mad at him?”

  He shook his head. “I’m someone’s brother, Peyton. I get what he did.”

  The tension in my shoulders drained, leaving me shaking with relief. “He’s actually the one who pushed me to tell you tonight instead of waiting. I wanted to tell you weeks ago, but … anyway. It no longer matters why I didn’t. I should probably go. Ryan is outside waiting for me.”

  “He’s outside? Right now?”

  I nodded. “He thought I should talk to you sooner than later. He came with to help me avoid a reporter camped out down the street from our house. Jon and Cindy helped, too. It took three cars to give him the slip.”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “Can you stay? A while longer, I mean. You can tell your brother I’ll take you home.”

  “What about your party?”

  “My friends aren’t going anywhere.”

  I debated the wisdom of staying another minute. He seemed restless and uneasy, which was so unlike him. But I wanted to stay. To spend more time with him. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent Ryan the text. “Are you certain you don’t mind taking me home?” I asked as my phone vibrated with Ryan’s instant answer of, “good,” along with a smiley face. “Because in thirty seconds, I won’t have a ride,” I said.

  His wary gaze slid over me. “I don’t mind.”

  “All right.” I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets, having no idea what to say. He once said we couldn’t be friends. What were we now?

  He glanced past me to the picture taken with his dad, smiling briefly. “That was the first belt I’d won outside of local competition.”

  I turned to study the picture, unable to hide my affection for the way he talked about his childhood. He and his dad looked adorable. So close. The perfect picture. “Your dad didn’t worry about you competing at that age?”

  “No. They modify the rules for kids. Three one-minute rounds. They can stop the match if a fighter takes too hard a hit, and you can always throw in the towel. My dad never would have let a fight continue if it looked like I’d seriously injured another kid, or vice versa.”

  I looked at him. “You said local. Did you travel out of state?”

  “Constantly. At that age, the better a fighter, the more difficult it is to get a sparring partner. We had to travel just to train seriously. When I turned nine, we started competing in different states. It was fairly exciting to a nine-year-old.”

  “For him, too.” I examined the picture again. Their smiles. “It’s an amazing picture, Sam. Captures perfectly how you’ve described him to me. How I imagined your relationship to be. I’ve never seen a parent look prouder.”

  “My mother said he was proud.” The catch in his voice made me turn to him. “I hope he was.”

  We stared at each other. No one had ever affected me the way Sam had. He was so deeply sensitive about his dad’s memory that I reached the verge of tears every time we discussed the man. Like now.

  I blinked and looked away, focusing on anything else. “Why does Jonas have a bed back here?”

  “Uh, that’s actually—”

  “For the injured?” I turned, giving him a teasing grin. “The poor souls who don’t walk out of the cage? Perhaps Javier had to crash here a few hours after your fight?”

  “The bed is mine.” He jammed his hands into his pocket and cleared his throat. Looked to the floor. “I stay here several days a week. This is where I lived when Tanner expelled me senior year for fighting. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “You lived here last year? The gym?” There went the juvie theory. “Is that even legal?”

  “On paper I stayed with my Aunt Rosa. Everyone worked together to make it happen. Jonas basically became my surrogate father after my dad died, and when I had to find another school, it made sense to come back. I’d spent most of my life here. I still had friends here, partied here, and I spent most of my time at the gym anyway.”

  “Your mother didn’t care?”

  “Yes and no. Jonas approached her first. Convinced her I needed the space. He’d been looking for someone he could trust to close. He’d also been busting my chops to get out of the party scene. To train seriously. I told him I would if he’d give me a job and let me stay here. He didn’t want me sleeping fulltime on his office couch, so that’s when he bought the bed and the other things.”

  “You went to school though.”

  He nodded.

  “Your Aunt Rosa didn’t mind you staying here?”

  “Well, at eighteen I could technically stay where I wanted. And my Aunt Rosa is my dad’s sister. She wanted me to stay here if that’s what I wanted.” He looked to the picture. “But as much as I needed the space, my mother’s health deteriorated after I left, which is why I returned to Ridgeview to finish my last credits. I stay at the house several nights now to keep an eye on her and my sister. Vanna doesn’t do well by herself, especially at night, and my mom’s gone three nights or more a week.”

  It was difficult to fathom living in this place. “How can you take the quiet here?”

  “I need it, actually. The job takes a toll on me,” he said, “and not why you might think. It’s very …social. After four hours of putting myself out there every night, I need the quiet to center. I’m used to being alone. I prefer it.”

  Perhaps that was my cue. “I don’t think the storm’s going to let up any time soon. Maybe you should take me home before it gets any worse,” I said, rubbing my arms. The relentless wind and rain still slammed the gym’s walls. “We can talk on the way. I hate that I make you late for everything whenever we’re together.”

  He didn’t say anything as he nodded and walked past me to gather a few things from his room, along with his jacket and keys. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Peyton

  He led me through two corridors, navigating the dark like a bat until we approached the glowing exit sign that helped me see him better. Stopping by the door, he turned and opened what looked like an alarm panel.

  “What did your uncle do?” I asked, finding my courage in the half-light. His hand stopped on the panel as his dark gaze slid to mine. “I mean, what did he do that made you want to hospitalize him?”

  Silence stretched between us until I wished I hadn’t asked. “He hurt my family and I couldn’t let it go. Why? Still wondering if I’m that psychotic you saw fighting in the cage?”

  “I never said you’re psychotic.”

  “You didn’t have to. Your expression that night …” He swallowed. “It was enough.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d wished I could rewind back to that night. “I was …surprised,” I whispered. “I’d never seen that side of you. I don’t know who that is. Then to picture you like that outside of the cage. In a life situation. I guess it’s difficult for me to imagine you angry enough to hurt someone like that.”

  He stared at me, still suspicious. “Why do you want to know?”

  I hadn’t been sure until he asked. “I …I want to know that side of you.”

  He sighed, looking suddenly tired. “I guess if I were to tell someone about it,” he said, “it should be you. You’ve taken more crap from your family and friends about my past than anyone else. I probably owe you an explanation.”

  “We’re friends, Sam. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Friends?” He shut the panel door and turned to lean his shoulder against it. “Okay, friend. How real do you want to get?”

  “I want the truth.” I wasn’t at all sure of that statement. “I know …that he hurt you. You said as much.”

  “Right.”

  “But you said he also hurt your family. Was it your mother?”

  “No. He was in love with my mother.”

  I was so stunned, my mouth fe
ll open as an unexpected protectiveness for his dad swelled in me. It must have shown on my face because he almost smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She has tunnel vision where my father is concerned. It would never occur to her, even now, that his brother saw her romantically. But in hindsight I remember signs I didn’t understand at the time.”

  “Well, yuck. Just …yuck.” It was all I could think to say.

  This time he smiled. “He may have been sincere in the beginning. To help, I mean. His presence did help my mother, I think. For a while, she got better. But after a short time, her health took another nosedive and so did our finances. Then my uncle lost his job and tried to sell the Impala. That’s when things got worse. My mother found out about the Impala and had a meltdown. She told my uncle he wasn’t to touch it again. That my dad wanted me to have the car and that’s how it was going to be.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Yeah, except he looked at me differently after that. Then ultimately blamed me when they had to sell the house.”

  “That’s when you moved to Ridgeview?”

  “His idea, not my mother’s. He’d been trying to move her away from the family. Her friends. The gym. Anything that reminded her of my dad. Claimed it was best. I hated Ridgeview from the first. The school. The house. Where we lived. The first kid in my neighborhood who challenged me got his ass handed to him. After that, they came several at a time. Never fewer than three. Sometimes I did okay. Other times I didn’t.”

  “Were you still boxing?”

  He nodded. “Jonas continued training me, even after my mother could no longer pay for it. He’d drive all the way from Beaverton to pick me up, at least three days a week. Sometimes more. On the days he didn’t, I had to deal with the neighborhood kids. Petty gangbangers trying to prove themselves. I’d come home messed up, which only stressed out my mother more. She got sicker. Times got tougher. When my uncle could no longer find small jobs to help get us by, he used it as an excuse to fall off the wagon. That’s when he started belting me around.”