Chap­ter 18: Brid­get

WE SPENT FOUR GLORIOUS, PERFECT DAYS IN COSTA RICA.
I woke up late, went to bed late, and spent my days eat­ing, sun­bathing, and read­ing a romance nov­el I’d picked up at the air­port. Buck­et list num­ber two.

On our third day, Rhys drove us two hours to Mon­teverde for zip lin­ing. He said the com­pa­ny was the best in the area and he’d zip-lined with them sev­er­al times him­self. Still, his face was taut with ten­sion as I pre­pared to go down the longest zip line. We’d only done the short­er cables until now, and they were fun, but I was ready for more.

The one I was about to get on stretched high above the cloud for­est, so long I couldn’t see the oth­er end of it. A mix­ture of excite­ment and nerves twist­ed in my stom­ach.

“Check her again,” Rhys said after our guide gave me the thumbs up.

No one both­ered argu­ing. Rhys made the guide triple-check my har­ness before I went down every line, and argu­ing was futile.

“If you get stuck, don’t pan­ic,” Rhys said after the guide okayed me—again. “We’ll come get you.”

“By ‘we’ll,’ he means me,” the guide joked. “But yes, we will come get you. Don’t wor­ry, miss.”

“I hadn’t thought about get­ting stuck until now, so thank you for that,” I said wry­ly.

Rhys’s stern expres­sion didn’t budge, but all thoughts of his grumpi­ness dis­ap­peared when I got into posi­tion. The guide gave me a push, and I final­ly raced down the line. The wind whipped through my hair, and I couldn’t hold back a huge grin. Ziplin­ing looked scary from the ground, but once I was in the air? It was exhil­a­rat­ing.

I closed my eyes, savor­ing the wind and the feel­ing of being away from it all. No wor­ries, no respon­si­bil­i­ties, just me and nature.

When I made it to the next tree­top plat­form, I was still rid­ing high from the zip line, and I couldn’t resist teas­ing Rhys again when he land­ed short­ly after me.

“See? I’m fine,” I said. “You didn’t have to pick up pieces of me from the ground.”

He did not look amused at all, but I didn’t care.
Buck­et list num­ber three, check.

For all his over­pro­tec­tive­ness, Rhys was more relaxed down here. Not ful­ly relaxed, mind you, but he’d ditched his all-black out­fits for shorts and—gasp—white T‑shirts, and he agreed to most of the activ­i­ties I want­ed to do with min­i­mal com­plaint, includ­ing para­sail­ing and an ATV tour.

The one thing he refused to do, how­ev­er, was get in the pool with me, and on our last night, I made a last-ditch effort to change his mind.

“I’ve nev­er heard of a Navy SEAL who doesn’t swim.” I stepped onto the ter­race, where Rhys was draw­ing in his sketch­book. He hadn’t shown me any of his sketch­es yet, and I hadn’t asked. Art was deeply per­son­al, and I didn’t want to force him to show me any­thing if he didn’t want to. “Come on. It’s our last day, and you haven’t tak­en advan­tage of this once.” I swept my arm at the gleam­ing pool.

“It’s a pool, princess.” Rhys didn’t look up from his book. “I’ve been in pools before.”

“Prove it.”

No answer.

“Fine. I guess I’ll swim by myself. Again.” I shrugged off my cov­er-up and let the filmy white mate­r­i­al cas­cade to the floor before I walked past Rhys toward the water.

I may have walked more slow­ly than nor­mal and added an extra sway to my hips.
I may also have worn my skimp­i­est, most scan­dalous biki­ni. I did, after all, have one more buck­et list item to check off.

I’d been drunk when I’d told Rhys about my buck­et list, but I was sober now, and I still want­ed him to help me ful­fill item num­ber four. I was attract­ed to him; he was attract­ed to me. That much was obvi­ous after what hap­pened in my room post-Bor­gia. He wasn’t going to be my body­guard much longer, and no one would know unless we told them.

One wild, pas­sion­ate hookup with my sexy body­guard before I took on the duty of a life­time. Was that too much to ask?

I wad­ed into the pool and bit back a smile when I felt the heat of Rhys’s gaze on my skin, but I didn’t turn around until I’d reached the far edge of the water. By the time I looked at him, Rhys’s head was bent over his sketch­book again, but his shoul­ders held a ten­sion that hadn’t been there before.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join me?” I cajoled. “The water feels amaz­ing.”

“I’m good,” he said curt­ly.

I sighed and let it go… for now.
While he sketched, I swam laps around the pool, rev­el­ing in the water against my skin and the sun­shine on my back.

When I final­ly came up for a break, it was near sun­set, and the warmth of gold­en hour cast a hazy, dream­like glow over the sur­round­ings.

“Last chance, Mr. Larsen.” I slicked my hair back and blinked the water out of my eyes. “Swim now or for­ev­er hold your peace.”

It was cheesy, but it made Rhys’s lips curve before they flat­tened into a stern line again. “You gonna stop bug­ging me if I say no?”

I grinned. “Prob­a­bly not.”

My heart jumped when he closed his book, set it on the table, and stood.
I hadn’t expect­ed him to give in.

Rhys walked to the pool, pulling his shirt over his head as he did so, and I lost the abil­i­ty to breathe.
Broad shoul­ders, per­fect­ly sculpt­ed mus­cles, abs one could grate cheese on. Absolute mas­cu­line per­fec­tion.

My core pulsed as my eyes ate him up. Tat­toos swirled across his chest, both biceps, and one side of his ribcage, and a deep V cut arrowed toward what—based on what I’d felt when he’d bent me over my dresser—was a very impres­sive pack­age.

Rhys entered the water and swam toward me, his big, pow­er­ful body slic­ing through the liq­uid blue as grace­ful­ly as a dol­phin.

“There. I’m in the pool.” He came up beside me, a lock of damp dark hair falling over his eye, and I resist­ed the urge to push it out of his face. “Hap­py?”

“Yes. You should go shirt­less more often.”

Rhys’s eye­brows shot up, and my cheeks flamed before I quick­ly amend­ed, “You seem more relaxed that way. Less intim­i­dat­ing.”

“Princess, it’s my job to be intim­i­dat­ing.”

If I nev­er heard the words it’s my job again, it would be too soon.

“You know what I mean,” I grum­bled. “You’re always so on edge in the city.”

He shrugged. “That’s what hap­pens when you have C‑PTSD.”

Com­plex PTSD. I’d looked it up after he told me he had it. Symp­toms includ­ed hyper-vig­i­lance, or being con­stant­ly on guard for threats. Unlike reg­u­lar PTSD, which was caused by a sin­gu­lar trau­mat­ic event, com­plex PTSD result­ed from long-last­ing trau­ma that con­tin­ued for months or even years.

My heart squeezed at the thought of what he must’ve gone through to be diag­nosed with the con­di­tion. “Does the art help?”

“Kind of.” Rhys’s face was unread­able. “But I haven’t been able to draw any­thing in months.” He jerked his chin toward the table. “I was just mess­ing around. See­ing what I came up with.”

“When you do, I want to see it. I love a good secu­ri­ty alarm sketch,” I joked before I remem­bered we only had one week left togeth­er.

My smile fad­ed.

Rhys watched me close­ly. “If that’s what you want.”

I want­ed a lot of things, but none of them had to do with art.

“Can I tell you some­thing, Mr. Larsen?”

He dipped his head.

“I’m going to miss you.”

He went still, so still I thought he didn’t hear me. Then, in an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, aching­ly soft voice, he said, “I’m going to miss you too, princess.”

So don’t go. There had to be a way he could stay. He wasn’t part of the Roy­al Guard, but he’d been with me for two years. I didn’t see why I had to change guards just because I was mov­ing back to Eldor­ra.

Except for, of course, the fact Rhys would have to move to Eldor­ra with me. He may have lived with me all this time, but there was a dif­fer­ence between live-in pro­tec­tion in the U.S. and mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent coun­try for an inde­ter­mi­nate length of time. Plus, he’d resigned first.

Even if I con­vinced the palace to extend his con­tract, would he be will­ing to accept the offer?

I’d been too afraid to ask in case he said no, but the clock was tick­ing.

A loud pop went off in the dis­tance before I could broach the sub­ject, and Rhys turned sharply to see fire­works explode in the sky.
He relaxed. I didn’t, because I final­ly under­stood why he’d nev­er tak­en his shirt off around me before.

His back—his strong, beau­ti­ful back—was cov­ered with scars. They criss­crossed his skin in angry, near-white slash­es, pep­pered with a few round marks I was pos­i­tive were cig­a­rette burn scars.

Judg­ing by the way Rhys’s shoul­ders tensed, he must’ve real­ized his mis­take, but he didn’t hide them again. There was no point. I’d already seen them, and we both knew it.

“What hap­pened?” I whis­pered.

There was a long silence before he respond­ed. “My moth­er liked her belt,” he said flat­ly.

I sucked in a breath, and my stom­ach lurched with nau­sea. His moth­er did that to him?

“No one said or did any­thing? Teach­ers, neigh­bors?” I couldn’t imag­ine abuse of that lev­el going unno­ticed.

Rhys shrugged. “There were plen­ty of kids in bad home sit­u­a­tions where I came from. Some of them had it a lot worse than me. One kid get­ting ‘dis­ci­plined’ wasn’t going to raise any eye­brows.”

I want­ed to cry at the thought of young Rhys so alone he was noth­ing more than a sta­tis­tic to those who should’ve looked out for him.

I didn’t hate a lot of peo­ple, but I sud­den­ly hat­ed every­one who knew or sus­pect­ed what he’d been going through and didn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Why would she do this?” I brushed my fin­gers over his back, my touch so light it was bare­ly a touch. His mus­cles bunched beneath my fin­gers, but he didn’t pull away.

“Let me tell you a sto­ry,” he said. “It’s about a beau­ti­ful young girl who grew up in a small, shit­ty town she’d always dreamed of escap­ing. One day, she met a man who was in town for a few months for busi­ness. He was hand­some. Charm­ing. He promised he’d take her with him when he left, and she believed him. She fell in love, and they had a pas­sion­ate affair. But then, she got preg­nant. And when she told this man who’d claimed to love her, he grew angry and accused her of try­ing to trap him. The next day, he was gone. Just like that. No trace of where he went, and it turned out even the name he gave her was fake. She was alone, preg­nant, and broke. No friends and par­ents to help her out. She kept the baby, per­haps out of hope the man would return for them one day, but he nev­er did. She turned to drugs and alco­hol for com­fort, and she became a dif­fer­ent per­son. Mean­er. Hard­er. She blamed the kid for ruin­ing her chance at hap­pi­ness, and she took out her anger and frus­tra­tion on him. Usu­al­ly with a belt.”

As he spoke, his voice so low I could bare­ly hear him, the pieces fell into place one by one. Why Rhys refused to drink, why he rarely talked about his fam­i­ly and child­hood, his C‑PTSD… per­haps it was the result of his child­hood as much as it had been his mil­i­tary ser­vice.

A small part of me empathized with his moth­er and the pain she must’ve gone through, but no amount of pain jus­ti­fied tak­ing it out on an inno­cent child.

“It wasn’t the boy’s fault,” I said. A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it. “I hope he knows that.”

“He knows,” Rhys said. He rubbed my tear away with his thumb. “Don’t cry for him, princess. He’s all right.”

For some rea­son, that made me cry hard­er. It was the first time I’d cried in front of any­one since my dad died, and I would’ve been embar­rassed had I not been so heart­bro­ken.

“Shhh.” He wiped away anoth­er tear, his brows drawn into a deep frown. “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s not the best way to end a vaca­tion.”

“No. I’m glad you did.” I reached up and cov­ered his hand with mine before he could pull away. “Thank you for shar­ing it with me. It means a lot.”

It was the most Rhys had opened up to me since we met, and I wasn’t tak­ing it for grant­ed.