Page 2 of Charming Like Us

Fuck, I remember Charlie’s past bodyguards and their hysteria over comms.

I lost him. I lost him! Fucking shit, I lost the kid!

He’s just gone. I swear I had eyes on him.

I can’t…I can’t find him anywhere.

Fuck this, I quit.

Having to deploy a search and rescue mission for your client is embarrassing. Epsilon is still licking their wounds after losing the girl squad in Anacapri, which was about a week ago. The youngest girls in the famous families are fledgling teenagers, and they might as well be thebabies, the treasured irreplaceable diamonds.

You don’t lose them.

Charlie is different. For one, he’s an adult. For another, he does this all the fucking time. If I asked for a “search and rescue,” I know Akara and Thatcher would help me track him, but there’s not much they can actually do.

They don’t have more or better intel than me.

Anyway, I’ve got it covered.

Halfway down the alleyway, I reach the back door of the department store. I check my watch and then lean a hip against the brick. Waiting. After a second, I pull out my cell to call an Uber Black.

Being the 24/7 bodyguard to a Cobalt, to anyone really, was never my plan, but it also wasn’t a far leap from professional boxing.

I love my job.

There’s really nothing like it in the world. The fact that every day is different, that it’s like being on a drug, adrenaline coursing through my veins, well…the only time I felt like this was in the ring. But it’s different here.

Better.

The backdoor swings open. My client’s normally messy hair looks even more wind-blown. How many strangers’ hands just ran through his hair?

I don’t know.

The sleeve of his white button-down hangs limply off his shoulder, ripped and dangling by a literal thread. Popped buttons expose his bare, lean chest, and fresh pink marks mar his fair, white skin like fingernails raked his body.

His neck is rubbed raw and red. I bet someone grabbed him around the throat. Tugging him closer, maybe.Thiswas the cost. I knew he’d be bombarded and touched.

Guilt doesn’t assault me. I’m not weighed down seeing him hurt. I’m just relieved that I predicted right and he exitedthisbackdoor.

When I first started out on his detail, I got sucker-punched with regret. Thinking I could’ve done a better job. Thinking I should’ve thwarted this and that touch.But this is the best jobanyonehas ever done for him.

Five years later, I understand there’s a bigger picture here.

I have to choose my battles with Charlie.

He meets my gaze, unsurprised by my presence, and casually steps into the alleyway, kicking the door shut behind him.

Charlie lights a cigarette. “I thought maybe you’d take the hint this time,” he says and blows smoke into the warm night air.

“You don’t want me on your detail anymore, then ask for a transfer.” It’s the same reminder I give him daily.

We go round and round on this carousel and it never really ends.

“It’s not just you.” His yellow-green eyes flit to me. “Anyone. I don’t need a constant shadow parading behind me.”

“Bring that up with your parents then.”

He may be twenty-one, but his mom and dad are overprotective, and they’re not going to let any of their children—let alone Charlie, the eldest son of the Cobalt Empire—prance around the city without literal protection.