You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

6
BRIDGET
TRIAL MONTH ONE
“You’re jok­ing.” I pulled the black vest out of the pack­age, let­ting
it dan­gle from my fin­gers like a dirty piece of laun­dry.
Rhys sipped his cof­fee and didn’t look up from his news­pa­per. “I
don’t joke about safe­ty.”
“This is a bul­let­proof vest.”
“I’m aware. I bought it.”
Inhale. Exhale. “Mr. Larsen, please explain why I need a bul­let-
proof vest. Where am I sup­posed to wear it, class? My next vol­un­teer
shift?”
“To pro­tect you against bul­lets, and sure. If you’d like.”
A mus­cle twitched beneath my eye. It’d been a month since we
agreed to our deal, and I got it. I’d messed up. I nev­er should’ve
snuck out with Ava, but she’d been so down about her rela­tion­ship
trou­bles with Alex and I’d want­ed to cheer her up.
Obvi­ous­ly, it had back­fired, big time.
The kid­nap­ping inci­dent had thrown a buck­et of cold water over
my pre­vi­ous­ly rosy out­look on per­son­al safe­ty, and I was com­mit­ted
to act­ing more respon­si­bly. I hat­ed admit­ting when Rhys was right
because he was such an arro­gant ass about it most of the time, but he
put his life on the line for me every day. How­ev­er, he also seemed
intent on mak­ing me renege on the deal by throw­ing the most out­ra-
geous sug­ges­tions my way.
Like a freakin’ bul­let­proof vest.
“I bought the vest as a just-in-case item,” Rhys said mild­ly. “Now
that you men­tion it, we should take it for a test spin next time you’re
in pub­lic.”
Take out the chip, and I’ll do what you say, when you say it, as long as
it’s secu­ri­ty- relat­ed. I promise.
I grit­ted my teeth. Rhys had tak­en the chip out, and I didn’t
break my promis­es.
“Fine.” A light­bulb flashed in my head, and a slow smile spread
across my face. “I’ll put it on now.”
He final­ly raised his head, his face dark with sus­pi­cion at how
eas­i­ly I’d capit­u­lat­ed. “Where are we going?”
“Shop­ping.”
If there was one thing Rhys hat­ed, it was accom­pa­ny­ing me
shop­ping. It was such a stereo­typ­i­cal male weak­ness, and I ful­ly in-
tend­ed to exploit it.
My smile widened when his face dark­ened fur­ther.
This is going to be fun.
An hour lat­er, we arrived at the Hazel­burg Mall, a four-sto­ry
mec­ca of stores I could tor­ture Rhys with. Luck­i­ly, it was win­ter,
which meant I could hide most of the vest’s bulk beneath a chunky
sweater and coat.
Accord­ing to Rhys, he’d bought a lighter ver­sion for me, but the
vest was still hot, heavy, and awk­ward. I almost regret­ted my shop-
ping revenge plan, but Rhys’s fero­cious scowl made it all worth it…
until cat­a­stro­phe struck.
I was try­ing on clothes in our dozenth bou­tique of the day when I
got stuck in a dress. I’d acci­den­tal­ly grabbed the wrong size, and the
unfor­giv­ing mate­r­i­al dug into my ribcage while trap­ping my arms
above my head. I couldn’t see, and I could bare­ly move.
“Shit.” I rarely cursed, but the sit­u­a­tion called for it. One of my
life­long irra­tional fears was get­ting stuck in cloth­ing in a store.
“What’s wrong?” Rhys demand­ed from out­side the dress­ing
room. “Is every­thing okay?”
“Yes.” I pinched the sides of the dress and tried pulling it up
again, to no avail. “I’m fine.”
Ten min­utes lat­er, I was sweat­ing and pant­i­ng from exer­tion and
the lack of fresh air, and my arms ached from being held up so long.
Shit, shit, shit.
“What the hell is going on in there?” Rhys’s annoy­ance came
through the door, loud and clear. “You’re tak­ing too long.”
I had no choice. I had to ask for help. “Can you call a sales as-
sis­tant over? I need their help with a, uh, cloth­ing issue.”
There was a long pause. “You’re stuck.”
Flames of embar­rass­ment licked my skin. “Just call some­one
over. Please.”
“Can’t. One employ­ee left for lunch, and the oth­er is six peo­ple
deep at the reg­is­ter.” Fig­ured Rhys would be track­ing everyone’s
move­ments while he wait­ed for me. “I’ll help.”
If I could see my reflec­tion, I was sure I’d see a mask of hor­ror
star­ing back at me. “No. You can’t come in here!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m…” Half-naked. Exposed. “Inde­cent.”
“I’ve seen half-naked women before, princess. Either let me in so
I can get you out of what­ev­er jam you’re in, or sit tight for the next
hour because that’s how long it’s gonna take the cashier to get
through the week­end crowd. They’re mov­ing slow­er than a tur­tle on
mor­phine.”
The uni­verse hat­ed me. I was sure of it.
“Fine.” I forced the word out, the flames of embar­rass­ment burn-
ing hot­ter. “Come in.”
The dress­ing room doors didn’t have locks, and a sec­ond lat­er,
Rhys’s pres­ence filled the tiny space. Even if I hadn’t heard him en-
ter, I would’ve felt him. He exud­ed an intense ener­gy that charged
every mol­e­cule of air until it vibrat­ed with him.
Raw. Mas­cu­line. Pow­er­ful.
I held my breath as he approached, his boots soft on the linoleum
floor. For some­one so large, he moved with the grace of a pan­ther.
The dress cov­ered my chest, but my lace panties were on full dis-
play, and I tried not to think about how much skin I was show­ing as
Rhys stopped in front of me. He was close enough I could feel the
heat radi­at­ing from his body and smell his clean, soapy scent.
Ten­sion and silence hummed in equal mea­sure when he gripped
the hem of the dress above my head and pulled. It slid up half a cen-
time­ter before it stopped again, and I winced when the fab­ric dug
into a fresh sec­tion of flesh.
“I’m going to try from the bot­tom up,” Rhys said, his voice de-
tached and con­trolled.
Bot­tom up. Mean­ing he had to put his hands on my bare skin.
“Okay.” It came out squeaki­er than I would’ve liked.
Every mus­cle tensed when he rest­ed his palms on the top of my
ribcage. He smoothed his thumbs briefly over the chafed area where
the dress had dug into my skin before he hooked his fin­gers beneath
the mate­r­i­al as much as he could and inched it up.
I couldn’t hold my breath any­more.
I final­ly exhaled, my chest heav­ing like it was try­ing to push it-
self deep­er into Rhys’s rough, warm touch. The breaths sound­ed em-
bar­rass­ing­ly loud in the silence.
Rhys paused. The dress was halfway up my shoul­ders now,
enough to bare my bra-clad chest.
“Calm your breath­ing, princess, or this ain’t gonna work,” he
said, sound­ing a touch more strained than he had a minute ago.
Heat scorched my skin, but I wres­tled my breath­ing under con-
trol, and he resumed his work.
Anoth­er inch…another…and I was free.
Fresh air assault­ed my nos­trils, and I blinked to adjust to the light
after being trapped in the dress for the past twen­ty min­utes.
I clutched the mate­r­i­al in front of me, my face hot with embar-
rass­ment and relief.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Rhys stepped back, his jaw like gran­ite. Instead of respond­ing, he
picked up the bul­let­proof vest and T‑shirt I’d worn beneath it and
crooked his fin­ger. “Come here.”
“I can put it on myself.”
Again, no response.
I sighed and walked to where he stood. I was too tired to fight,
and I didn’t resist when he slipped the T‑shirt over my head, fol-
lowed by the vest. I watched him in the mir­ror while he worked, ad-
just­ing the vest and straps until it sat com­fort­ably on my tor­so. I still
held my dress in front of me, angling it so it cov­ered my under­wear.
I didn’t know why I both­ered. Rhys showed as much inter­est in
my half-naked form as he would in a foam man­nequin.
A strange nee­dle of irri­ta­tion pricked at me.
Rhys fin­ished fix­ing the vest, but before I could step away, his
hands closed around my biceps in an iron grip. They were so large
they eas­i­ly encir­cled my arms.
He locked eyes with me in the mir­ror and low­ered his head until
his mouth hov­ered next to my ear.
My heart skipped a fran­tic beat, and I clutched the dress tighter
in front of me.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing all day.”
Rhys’s breath whis­pered across my skin in a dark warn­ing. “I in-
dulged you this time, princess, but I don’t like games. Lucky for you,
you passed the test.” He slid his hands up my arms until they rest­ed
on my vest-clad shoul­ders, leav­ing a trail of fire in their wake. “You
need to learn how to fol­low instruc­tions with­out argu­ing. I don’t
care if you think I’m being ridicu­lous. A second’s delay can mean the
dif­fer­ence between life and death. I say duck, you duck. I say wear a
bul­let­proof vest to the fuck­ing beach, you wear the vest.
Under­stand?”
My grip stran­gled the dress. “The vest was a test to see if I would
wear it? That is so…underhanded.” An entire day wast­ed on a stu­pid
test. Indig­na­tion unfurled in my stom­ach. “I hate when you do stuff
like this.”
A grim half-smile touched Rhys’s lips. “I’d rather you hate me
alive than love me dead.” He released my shoul­ders. “Get dressed.
We’re leav­ing.”
The door shut behind him.
I could final­ly breathe easy again, but I couldn’t stop his words
from echo­ing in my mind.
I’d rather you hate me alive than love me dead.
The prob­lem was, I didn’t hate him. I hat­ed his rules and restric-
tions, but I didn’t hate him.
I wished I did.
It would make my life a lot sim­pler.
TRIAL MONTH THREE
“I can’t go.”
“What do you mean you can’t go?” Jules’s dis­be­lief oozed over
the line. “We’ve been talk­ing about the fes­ti­val since sopho­more
year. We have coor­di­nat­ed out­fits. Stel­la rent­ed a car! We might die
on the road because she’s a ter­ri­ble dri­ver—”
“I heard that!” Stel­la yelled in the back­ground.
“—but she’s the only one with a license.”
“I know.” I glared at Rhys, who sat on the couch pol­ish­ing a knife
like a psy­cho. “A cer­tain body­guard deemed it unsafe.”
My friends and I had planned on attend­ing the Rokbury music
fes­ti­val for years, and now, I had to sit it out.
“So? Come any­way. He works for you, not the oth­er way
around.”
I wished I could, but we were still in the tri­al peri­od of our deal,
and Rhys’s con­cerns weren’t total­ly off base. Rokbury took place at a
camp­ground an hour and a half out­side New York City, and while it
looked like a blast, some­thing inevitably went wrong every year—a
fes­ti­val goer’s tent catch­ing fire, a drunk­en group fight lead­ing to
sev­er­al hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, a pan­ic-induced stam­pede. It was also sup-
posed to storm the week­end of this year’s fes­ti­val, which meant the
camp­ground would prob­a­bly turn into a giant mud pit, but my
friends were risk­ing it, any­way.
“Sor­ry, J. Next time.”
Jules sighed. “Tell your man he’s hot as hell but a total buz­zkill.”
“He’s not my man. He’s my body­guard.” I low­ered my voice, but
I thought I saw Rhys pause for a mil­lisec­ond before he resumed pol-
ish­ing his knife.
“Even worse. He’s run­ning your life and you’re not get­ting any
dick from it.”
“Jules.”
“You know it’s true.” Anoth­er sigh. “Fine, I get it. We’ll miss you,
but we’ll catch up when we’re back.”
“Sounds good.”
I hung up and sank into the arm­chair, FOMO—Fear of Miss­ing
Out—hitting me hard. I’d bought the fes­ti­val tick­ets months ago, be-
fore Rhys start­ed work­ing for me, and I’d had to sell them to a ran-
dom junior in my polit­i­cal the­o­ry class.
“I hope you’re hap­py,” I said point­ed­ly.
He didn’t respond.
Rhys and I had set­tled into a more func­tion­al dynam­ic over the
past three months, but there were still times I want­ed to chuck a text-
book at him. Like now.
When the day of the fes­ti­val rolled around the fol­low­ing week-
end, how­ev­er, I woke up to the shock of my life.
I walked into the liv­ing room, bleary-eyed, only to find it trans-
formed. The fur­ni­ture had been pushed to the side, replaced with a
pile of boho-print­ed pil­lows and cush­ions on the floor. The cof­fee ta-
ble groaned beneath var­i­ous snacks and drinks, and the Rokbury
fes­ti­val played out in real time on-screen. The pièce de résis­tance,
how­ev­er, was the indoor tent dec­o­rat­ed with string lights, which
looked exact­ly like the ones peo­ple set up on the fes­ti­val grounds.
Rhys sat on the couch, which was now pressed flush against the
wall beneath the win­dow, frown­ing at his phone.
“What…” I rubbed my eyes. Nope, I wasn’t dream­ing. The tent,
the snacks, they were all there. “What is this?”
“Indoor fes­ti­val,” he grunt­ed.
“You put this togeth­er.” It was a state­ment of dis­be­lief more than
a ques­tion.
“Reluc­tant­ly, and with help.” Rhys glanced up. “Your red­head­ed
friend is a men­ace.”
Of course. That made more sense. My friends must’ve felt bad I
was miss­ing the fes­ti­val, so they put togeth­er a con­so­la­tion par­ty, so
to speak. But some­thing didn’t add up.
“They left last night.”
“They dropped every­thing off before­hand while you were in the
show­er.”
Hmm, plau­si­ble. I took long show­ers.
Appeased and delight­ed, I grabbed an arm­ful of chips, can­dy,
and soda and crawled into the cush­ioned tent, where I watched my
favorite bands per­form their sets on the TV. The sound and pic­ture
qual­i­ty was so good I almost felt like I was there.
Admit­ted­ly, I was more com­fort­able than I would’ve been at the
actu­al fes­ti­val, but I missed hav­ing peo­ple to enjoy it with.
An hour in, I poked my head out from the tent, hes­i­tant. “Mr.
Larsen. Why don’t you join me? There’s plen­ty of food.”
He was still sit­ting on the couch, frown­ing like a bear who’d
wok­en up on the wrong side of the cave.
“No, thanks.”
“Come on.” I waved my hand around. “Don’t make me par­ty
alone. That’s just sad.”
Rhys’s mouth tugged in a small smirk before he unfold­ed him­self
from his seat. “Only because you lis­tened about not attend­ing the
fes­ti­val.”
This time, I was the one who frowned. “You say it like you’re
train­ing a dog.”
“Most things in life are like train­ing a dog.”
“That’s not true.”
“Show up to work, get paid. Woo a girl, get laid. Study, get good
grades. Action and reward. Soci­ety runs on it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he had a point.
“No one uses the word woo any­more,” I mut­tered. I hat­ed when
he was right.
His smirk deep­ened a frac­tion of an inch.
He was too large to fit in the tent with me, so he set­tled on the
floor next to it. Despite my cajol­ing, he refused to touch the food,
leav­ing me to inhale the snacks on my own.
Anoth­er hour lat­er, I’d ingest­ed so much sug­ar and carbs I felt a
lit­tle sick, and Rhys looked bored enough to fall asleep.
“I take it you’re not a fan of elec­tron­ic music.” I stretched and
winced. The last bag of salt and vine­gar chips had been a bad idea.
“It sounds like a Moun­tain Dew com­mer­cial gone wrong.”
I almost choked on my water. “Fair enough.” I wiped my mouth
with a nap­kin, unable to hide my smile. Rhys was so seri­ous I de-
light­ed when­ev­er his stony mask cracked. “So, tell me. If you don’t
like EDM, what do you like?”
“Don’t lis­ten to much music.”
“A hob­by?” I per­sist­ed. “You must have a hob­by.”
He didn’t answer, but the brief flash of wari­ness in his eyes told
me all I need­ed to know.
“You do have one!” I knew so lit­tle about Rhys out­side his job, I
latched onto the morsel of infor­ma­tion like a starved ani­mal. “What
is it? Let me guess, knit­ting. No, bird watch­ing. No, cos­play.”
I picked the most ran­dom, un-Rhys-like hob­bies I could think of.
“No.”
“Stamp col­lect­ing? Yoga? Poké­mon—”
“If I tell you, will you shut up?” he said cranki­ly.
I respond­ed with a beatif­ic smile. “I might.”
Rhys hes­i­tat­ed for a long moment before say­ing, “I draw,
some­times.”
Of all the things I’d expect­ed him to say, that wasn’t even in the
top hun­dred.
“What do you draw?” My tone turned teas­ing. “I imag­ine it’s a
lot of armored vehi­cles and secu­ri­ty alarms. Maybe a Ger­man Shep-
herd when you’re feel­ing warm and fuzzy.”
He snort­ed. “Except for the Shep, you make me sound bor­ing as
shit.”
I opened my mouth, and he held up his hand. “Don’t think about
it.”
I closed my mouth, but my smile remained. “How did you get
into draw­ing?”
“My ther­a­pist sug­gest­ed it. Said it would help with my con­di-
tion. Turns out, I enjoy it.” He shrugged. “Ther­a­pist is gone, but the
draw­ing stayed.”
Anoth­er bolt of sur­prise dart­ed through me, both at the fact he’d
had a ther­a­pist and that he spoke so freely about it. Most peo­ple
wouldn’t admit to it so eas­i­ly.
It made sense, though. He’d served in the mil­i­tary for a decade. I
imag­ined he’d lived through his fair share of scar­ring expe­ri­ences.
“PTSD?” I asked soft­ly.
Rhys jerked his head in a quick nod. “Com­plex PTSD.” He didn’t
elab­o­rate, and I didn’t press him. It was too per­son­al an issue for me
to pry into.
“I’m dis­ap­point­ed,” I said, chang­ing the sub­ject since I could feel
him clos­ing off again. “I’d real­ly hoped you were into cos­play. You
would make a good Thor, only with dark hair.”
“Sec­ond time you’ve tried to get me to take my shirt off, princess.
Care­ful, or I’ll think you’re try­ing to seduce me.”
Heat con­sumed my face. “I’m not try­ing to get your shirt off.
Thor doesn’t even—” I stopped when Rhys let out a low chuck­le.
“You’re mess­ing with me.”
“When you get riled up, your face looks like a straw­ber­ry.”
Between the indoor fes­ti­val set­up and the words your face looks
like a straw­ber­ry leav­ing Rhys’s mouth, I was con­vinced I’d wok­en up
in an alter­nate dimen­sion.
“I do not look like a straw­ber­ry,” I said with as much dig­ni­ty as I
could muster. “At least I’m not the one who refus­es to get surgery.”
Rhys’s thick, dark brows low­ered.
“For your per­ma­nent scowl,” I clar­i­fied. “A good plas­tic sur­geon
can help you with that.”
My words hung in the air for a sec­ond before Rhys did some-
thing that shocked me to my core. He laughed.
A real laugh, not the half chuck­le he’d let slip in Eldor­ra. His eyes
crin­kled, deep­en­ing the faint, odd­ly sexy lines around them, and his
teeth flashed white against his tanned skin.
The sound slid over me, as rough and tex­tured as I imag­ined his
touch would be.
Not that I had ever imag­ined what his touch would feel like. It
was hypo­thet­i­cal.
“Touché.” The rem­nants of amuse­ment filled the cor­ners of his
mouth, trans­form­ing him from gor­geous to dev­as­tat­ing.
And that was when anoth­er cat­a­stro­phe hap­pened, one far more
dis­turb­ing than get­ting stuck in a too-tight dress in a pub­lic dress­ing
room.
Some­thing light and vel­vety brushed against my heart…and flut-
tered. Just once, but it was enough for me to iden­ti­fy it.
A but­ter­fly.
No, no, no.
I loved ani­mals, I tru­ly did, but I could not have a but­ter­fly liv­ing
in my stom­ach. Not for Rhys Larsen. It need­ed to die imme­di­ate­ly.
“Are you okay?” He gave me a strange look. “You look like
you’re about to be sick.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I refo­cused on the screen, try­ing my best not to
look at him. “I ate too much, too fast. That’s all.”
But I was so flus­tered I couldn’t focus for the rest of the after-
noon, and when it final­ly came time for bed, I couldn’t sleep a wink.
I could not be attract­ed to my body­guard. Not in a way that gave
me but­ter­flies.
They’d only flut­tered when we first met, but they’d died quick­ly
after Rhys opened his mouth. Why were they return­ing now, when I
had a full grasp of how insuf­fer­able he was?
Get your­self togeth­er, Brid­get.
My phone buzzed with an incom­ing call, and I picked it up,
grate­ful for the dis­trac­tion.
“Bridge!” Jules bub­bled, clear­ly tip­sy. “How are you hold­ing up,
babe?”
“I’m in bed.” I laughed. “Hav­ing fun at the fes­ti­val?”
“Yessss, but wish you were here. It’s not as fun with­out you.”
“Wish I was there, too.” I brushed a strand of hair out of my eye.
“At least I had the indoor fes­ti­val. That was a bril­liant idea, by the
way. Thank you.”
“Indoor fes­ti­val?” Jules sound­ed con­fused. “What are you talk­ing
about?”