Page 54 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Birdie

Home feels foreign when I open the door. Blake is gone. Gia is gone, and today, Tristan and his crew will leave, too. I’ve already said my goodbyes to Marcus, Brandon, Dixon, Riley and even Morrison.

All except for Tristan.

I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, to feel his arms around me one last time, to let his scent wreck me and say to hell with it. There’s a part of me that will always long for getting lost into his hazel eyes. That part has to stay buried and forgotten.

Through the window, I watch Tristan outside with the other bodyguards and their equipment. His gaze lifts and finds mine. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. A million words. One silent goodbye.

As he closes the gate to the house, another cracks open in my soul, setting all the tears I’ve locked up for years free. Everyone who has ever hurt me is gone. No one is here to stop me from feeling everything I’m allowed to feel, from being my true self.

My phone rings. It’s the detective. I sniffle and wipe my face. “Hi Jacob, or should I call you Reid from now on?”

“You can call me RJ.” I can hear the smile in his voice.

“I like the sound of that.”

“How are you, Birdie?”

I wish I could tell him to start calling me Reagan, but I haven’t let him in on all parts of my past yet. He’d asked about Aaron and Miami, but had I answered, it would have led to Jacksonville, too. Those stories don’t belong between us. Some secrets should stay buried no matter what.

“All over the place is one way to say it. Happy, sad, relieved, scared…alone. That’s the scariest part. I’m thirty-four, and I’ve never been alone before.”

“Are your bodyguards still in the house?”

“No,” I sigh. “They finished their job. On to the next gig.”

“It’s a big house you have there in the middle of nowhere. Are you sure it’s safe to stay there all by yourself?”

“I still have the alarm system, not that I’ve ever needed it. There was no vigilante stalker, taking down the people who have wronged me. It was just my psychopath husband scaring me into taking all my money.”

He pauses, like he doesn’t know how to respond.

“Did I make you uncomfortable? It takes some time to get used to my classic, nonhumorous verbal vomit humor.” Tristan picked it up easily.

“It’ll be my honor if you make me more uncomfortable tonight…at dinner. You pick the place this time, and I won’t bring flowers or books with NSFW drawings.”

I chuckle, but then reality hits. “Are you sure you still want to do this, RJ? You almost died because of me.” Blake still got the blame for Miami. I haven’t told RJ about Tristan. I owe my former bodyguard that much.

“I’ve never been sure of anything more in my life.”

Something warm and fuzzy blankets me. “Dancing. I want to go dancing tonight.”

“Then it’s a date.”

I hang up and start writing. The words pour out of me.

I haven’t felt inspired like that in a while.

Later, I shower and get ready for dinner.

In the dressing room, I slide hangers one by one, inspecting every dress I’d hidden away years ago.

Blake never let me wear bold designs unless it was for him—his private little theater where my body was the costume.

Eventually, I’d given up on wearing them in public, so I tossed them far in the back.

My fingers pause on one I’d nearly forgotten. Hot pink, plunge neckline, a high slit that leaves nothing to the imagination. My favorite.

I tug it forward, but the fabric catches on something at the back panel of the wardrobe. Frowning, I push the other dresses aside and reach in. My hand presses against the wood, and instead of the solid resistance, it shifts. Gives.

“What the fuck?”

Heart pounding, I push it open and cross over. The narrow passage leads into the room next door. Blake’s room. Tristan’s after him.

Have I just walked out of a secret door in my own closet?

I turn on the lamp next to the bed and stand in the middle of the room, dumbfounded.

Did Blake build this? A way to spy on me?

To sneak into my room when he was no longer allowed into my bed?

Is that how he got in there the night he violated me with his own gun?

“You sick bastard.” I try to breathe, but the air is stale, as if it’s been locked for years, yet a chill crawls up my spine. Suddenly, the feeling of being watched is back.

A draft stirs the air, brushing against my skin. I spin on my heels, searching the room for ghosts. “Is someone here?”

Of course, silence answers me.

I run my hands through my wet hair. “Blake is dead, Reagan. What the hell are you doing?” That’s when I see it.

On the meticulously made bed, placed like an offering on an altar, lies a piece of paper.

My pulse skitters as I take a step closer, every nerve in me screaming not to.

I slap a hand over my mouth when a butterfly flies out of the piece of paper. “No. No.”

This isn’t real. I fell asleep when I was writing, and I’m having a nightmare. But when my quivering fingers unfold the dark note, I realize what I see is so very real.

Nothing is what it seems

XOXO, little butterfly

Under it, there’s a pasted photo that shows Blake and RJ together, laughing like old friends. They both have their Miami PD shields on.

The room spins. The note falls on the bed. Blake and RJ knew each other. They worked together.

Changing last names for security reasons is more common in our field than you think. For me, I had to change it because of what happened with my partner here in Miami. There was an incident. He got involved in something dirty and left the force. I had to transfer under an alias until it’s resolved.

I gulp. RJ and Blake didn’t just work together. Blake was his partner. The dirty cop who left the force.

I’ve figured out who the stalker is. He’s not working alone.

What if Tristan was right? What if… My date with RJ flashes in my head.

There was this girl that I met so many years ago.

She…stole my heart without so much of a word.

But I didn’t let myself believe my feelings for her were true.

This kind of love couldn’t be real. So I let her go, just like that.

Watched her fall for someone else, and I didn’t lift a finger to earn her love.

After years of pain, despair and loneliness, I learned my lesson and decided that if I ever came across something remotely close to how I felt about that girl, I wouldn’t let her go, no matter what it takes.

“Oh no, no, no, please no.” Did I get this right? Is RJ—

A sound behind me curdles the blood in my veins. I don’t turn, terrified, not of the unknown, but of what I know I’ll see.

“Missed me, little butterfly?”

I run for the door, but a force hurls me and knocks me flat on my back. The butterfly mask catches the lamplight, that horrible beautiful face that has haunted my dreams.

The last thing I see before everything goes black.

To be continued…

Thanks for reading book 2 in The Storyteller’s Bodyguard series