Page 40 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Tristan

“Yes, ma’am.”

She sprints toward it like a child who has seen a Christmas present. I don’t bother reprimanding her for breaking protocol for the umpteenth time. Let her be happy for once.

Her fingers run along the sleek purple metal, and her grin couldn’t be any wider.

Pure joy. When was the last time I saw that on Birdie?

She has no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this—to give her something that isn’t just protection, something other than blood and surveillance and suspect lists.

To give her freedom, even if only for an hour.

“She’s beautiful,” she breathes.

“Just beautiful?” I tease. “C’mon, use your words. If that was a scene in one of your books, how would you write it?”

She lowers her sunglasses and cocks a brow at me. “Oh. You sure you can handle it this time?”

I rest my back against the bike and smile at her. “Maybe if you go easy on me.”

“Can’t make any promises.” She circles around the beast and grabs the spare helmet.

“It crouched like a predator in repose—sleek, angular, and unapologetically rare. The body was cloaked in a matte violet-black, a color that shifted with the light: regal in shadow, electric under streetlamps. Every curve of carbon fiber whispered of speed and precision, sculpted not just for aerodynamics but for desire.”

“Wow.”

She lifts a finger in an ‘I’m not done. Don’t you dare interrupt me’ warning.

She’s still circling the bike, taking in every detail she’s just described, memorizing it, like I’m memorizing her.

The way the afternoon light catches in her hair, the effortless grace in her movements, the passion in her voice when she talks about something that moves her.

Then her eyes pin me in place. “Gold glinted from the suspension forks and brake calipers, not garish but deliberate—like armor on a warrior. Even idle, it radiated majesty, as if the road itself were beneath its notice.” She inches closer, and my breath catches when her scent fills my nostrils.

“Bold but refined, like a woman who commands attention without raising her voice. It wasn’t just a motorcycle.

It was a statement—of wealth, of taste, of danger wrapped in elegance. ”

Only Birdie Abel can make poetry out of steel and chrome that somehow gives a man a hard-on. “In other words, it’s you.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

My fingers move of their own accord and caress her cheek. Her skin is impossibly soft beneath my calloused fingertips. “Always,” I whisper, a confession weighted with everything else I can’t say.

Flustered, she pushes her shades up her nose and looks around.

We’re in public, and Abel is in the city.

Even though I’ve secured the hotel parking lot before I let Birdie out of the room, there’s always a chance he’s following from a distance, taking pictures, twisting things around. I should have been more careful.

Pushing off the bike, I clear my throat. “Do you like her?”

She studies the Ducati one more time. “Well, it’s in my favorite colors, and it’s definitely different from your other bike.”

“Different how?”

A small smile plays at her lips, the kind that tells me she’s about to say something that will completely demolish my ego. “Let’s say this one is more sophisticated than your BMW.”

“Do you like it, Birdie?”

“ I love it, Tristan. But if I’m being brutally honest, it doesn’t exactly scream Tristan Morra.”

Perfect. That’s exactly what I was hoping she’d say. “Then it’s yours.”

“What?” she laughs dismissively.

“I’m not a bike fanatic or an adrenaline junkie. I can survive a few weeks without riding. I got her for you.”

Her laughter continues, but she chops it off when she seems to realize I’m serious. She blinks rapidly, her hands open in the air, demanding an explanation.

“Ever since you told me about your car, how Abel chose it for you when you’d have preferred a bike, I wanted to take you on a ride with me, just for fun. But everything was happening so fast. I was hoping to do so when the garage sent my bike back, but we had to leave and come here. Then…”

I trail off to that moment in the dealership. The way the Ducati calls to me, not because I want it, but because I could so clearly picture her on it. Free. Happy. Fearless. Mighty. Herself.

“Then what?” she prompts, her voice softer.

“On my back from Raiford I saw it and thought of you. I thought maybe when this was all over, I could take you to the dealership and if you liked it…”

“What? You’d buy it for me as a surprise gift?”

“Pretty much, yeah. You’ve been cooped inside houses and hotel rooms for weeks. Brandon told me you asked him to get you out of the room for a while. I know how you must feel.”

“Then take me in your car to get some coffee or just for a spin around the block.” Stunned, she gazes at the Ducati. “But this… A six-figure gift … It’s too much.”

Too much. As if I wouldn’t mortgage my soul to see that look of pure joy cross her face again. “Nothing is too much for you.”

“Tristan, it’s extravagant, insane.”

“There’s nothing too extravagant or insane when it comes to you.

” The words come out more intense than I intended.

I’m scaring her. I can see it. The tension in her arms. The parting of her lips.

The way she takes an imperceptible step back.

But it’s true. I’d give her anything, everything, if she’d let me.

“Stop. What are you doing? This is not how you make you love you.”

The accusation lands like a rusty bullet in the bone.

As if I’m no different from every other man who’s tried to manipulate her.

“You think I don’t know that? I’m not buying your love, Birdie.

I just saw her, the colors, the design, and thought she was made for you.

I found something beautiful and wanted to give it to someone who deserves beauty in her life.

You deserve to have someone give you something nice with no strings attached for once. ”

“There’s no such thing, Tristan.”

My chest clenches at the resignation in her voice.

She rejects the idea despite the evidence.

This is what years of abuse and control do to you.

You reject kindness. You suspect good. You only accept malice and evil because they’re the only things that make sense.

“That’s what the likes of Abel and Shane made you believe, but that’s not true.

Not with me. All I ask, all you gotta do, is let me be that someone. ”

“Tristan,” she murmurs. Her chin wobbles, and her cheeks and nose redden. Is she crying? She looks away, before I can find the answer, and presses the back of her finger to the tip of her nose. “The idea of someone caring for me without an agenda is so foreign it scares her.”

“I know.” No one knows that better than me.

A nervous chuckle escapes her. “You said you were going to wait until this was over before taking me to buy it. Why didn’t you?”

The real reasons flash in my head, but the truth is more vulnerable than I want to admit. “Because…life is too short.”

“In other words, because you pulled me out of a tub half-dead.” Her voice is flat, matter-of-fact, with a touch of humor for fuck’s sake. “So this is what, a congratulations you survived a maybe suicide please don’t do it again gift?”

“Don’t do that. It’s not funny. It’ll never be funny.”

“I know. But you know me. I say weird, unfiltered shit when I…feel. I hadn’t been allowed to express emotions without heavy repercussions for a long time. It’s a defense mechanism.”

The raw explanation stabs deeper than the dark joke.

She was robbed of her simplest of rights, the right to feel.

Years of walking on eggshells, of having every emotion policed and punished, have taught her to hide behind sarcasm when things get too real.

I wish I could tell her she never had to hide her feelings from me, that she was entitled to show every emotion without fear of consequences.

I wish my words could be enough for her to believe it.

But we both know words here mean nothing, only patience, actions of unconditional love and time would.

“If it’s anything, it’s an I’m sorry gift,” I mutter, my voice hushed and thick, “not that anything could make up for what you had to go through.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For wasting so much time.” It tears out of me. Every regret, every what-if, every night I’ve lain awake thinking about how different things might have been. “For not being strong enough or old enough back when I first met you. If I’d been, none of those terrible things would have happened to you.”

“Oh, Tristan.” She stares at me with tenderness I don’t deserve. “You were a nineteen-year-old student of mine living in a hell of your own. There’s nothing you could have done.”

“There’s plenty I could have done.” I could have been braver. I could have fought harder. I could have not ignored the signs or pretended everything was going to be okay. I could have…

“No. Do you not remember what you taught me on your first day as my bodyguard? You can’t possibly blame yourself for other people’s choices.

I chose to marry Blake. Blake chose to treat his wife as a slave, cheat on her, beat her almost to death and blackmail her to spend her money on his drug addiction.

But you,” she reaches out to touch my arm so carefully, so gently, and it steals my breath away, “you chose to come back for me. You chose to be here now, doing everything you could to protect and save me. That’s all that matters. ”

The sincerity in her touch, the way she’s trying to offer me the same comfort I’ve been trying to give her, swirls inside me with an unexpected force. She sees my being here, after leaving her to rot for eight years, as enough.