My Alpha, My Bodyguard

6.2 Marcus

Chuckling to himself, Marcus reached for his own meal—a plate of smoky barbecue ribs. The meat glistened with a glaze of sweet and tangy barbecue sauce, each rib practically falling off the bone with tenderness. His fingers found purchase on the first rib, and he took a large bite, tearing the tender flesh from the bone.

The barbecue sauce was thick, with sweet notes of molasses and hickory from the grill and marinade, it clung to the smoked meat like a velvety embrace. Pork practically melted in his mouth, a testament to the hours of slow cooking that had transformed it into a culinary masterpiece. Soul food might not have been the healthiest thing, but by god was it satisfying.

While the two of them savored their respective dishes, Marcus couldn't help but feel a sense of contentment wash over him. Vivienne reached for the bottle of iced tea and poured him a glass, and Marcus was struck with the awareness of how domestic this was. His sweet little wife, pretty and well-fed, smiling and pouring him a beverage. This should be his. It could have been his.

“Were you being serious?” Vivienne’s voice jolted Marcus from the dark turn of his thoughts, and he blinked at her with incomprehension. “About eating everything you ordered. Were you being serious about that? Because I don’t know if we have enough space in the fridge-freezer for all of this.”

Marcus blinked, and then glanced around the table at the sheer amount of food. Right, to a human this amount of food would be enough to feed an entire family for days or even weeks. “Oh, yeah of course,” he patted his belly demonstratively. “Shifter genetics. We eat a lot.”

“Really?” Vivienne asked, sounding fascinated. A girl like her ought to have been in college, getting her degree and expanding her horizons. She leaned closer, propping her round chin on her bent wrist. “That’s crazy. I never knew. Well, I knew a little, but I thought some of it was just exaggeration.”

“Depends on what you’ve heard about us,” Marcus drawled, humouring her curiosity. “Probably not about this though. You should have seen me when I was still a cub. Teenage Marcus would have eaten you out of house and home. I was lucky my parents were shifters too, so they already knew what to expect.”

“Aw,” Vivienne cooed, giggling over a bite of her crab. “I bet you were the cutest, chubbiest little boy back then.”

Marcus barked out a laugh, nearly toppling off his seat with the force of it. “Not likely,” he snorted. “I was a clumsy, pimply little tyke. A girl like you wouldn’t have given me a second look.”

“What do you mean by ‘a girl like me’?” Vivienne puffed out her cheeks intimidatingly, though the smear of cheesy bechamel sauce on her cheek severely tanked any sort of threat. “I don’t come off as that shallow, do I?”

"No, of course not,” he waved the last rib bone and moved onto another takeout container, this one filled with spiced collard greens, thick golden-yellow cornbread, and fried fish. “I just mean that I used to look very different. You wouldn’t have paid a drop of attention to me, let alone recognized me."

Vivienne looked up from her plate, her curiosity piqued by such a surprising revelation. "Really?" she asked, a playful smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "I find that hard to believe. I think you’d be very memorable."

Marcus chuckled softly, his green eyes meeting hers with a genuine warmth. "Well, believe it or not, it's true," he admitted. "I mean it, and I don’t mean to be shallow here."

“That’s what I still don’t get!” Pouting playfully, Vivienne leaned in closer, her curiosity getting the better of her. "What do you mean by that? It’s not like you had different coloured hair, or piercings all over your face, did you?" She asked, her tone teasing.

“Not for lack of trying,” Marcus replied, wincing as he was reminded of his delayed period of embarrassing teenage rebellion during his own late teens. Luckily for him, piercings healed too quickly on shifters, and the only shifter tattooist he’d ever met was working for the Romaniello family. Marcus wouldn’t have let that man anywhere near his body with a blunt pencil, let alone a tattoo gun.

“So, explain!” Vivienne pressed, waving her fork menacingly in front of his face. She then pressed the back of her palm to her forehead and leaned back in a theatrical depiction of a maiden about to faint. “Come on! I’m practically dying of curiosity here! Don’t leave me hanging lest I spontaneously cease all bodily functions and perish from the sheer anticipation!”

Rolling his eyes at her dramatics, Marcus opened his mouth to respond, ready to explain what he meant: that Vivienne was so breathtakingly beautiful. That she must have been one of the popular girls during high school. Back then, with his matted hair, dull eyes, and hand-me-down clothes that smelled perpetually of cheap soap and cigarette smoke, a girl like her would have been considered way out of his league in his younger years. Teen Marcus had looked like bad news, had been bad news. The kind of grimy punk that mothers warned their daughters about and fathers loaded up shotguns to meet at the door. Teen Marcus would have ruined a good little girl like her and relished it.

However, before the words could escape his lips, the man bit his tongue, a sudden self-consciousness washing over him. That was too much, too improper. It would only scare her off. “Just…trust me, alright?” he murmured, and crammed his mouth full of cornbread so that he wouldn’t be tempted to say anything else incriminating.

Vivienne noticed the pause, her cheeks warming with a red blush and she lowered her gaze, a shy smile tugging at her soft, tulip-pink lips. Self-consciously, she swept a strand of dark hair behind a soft, seashell-pink ear.

Marcus swallowed, cleared his throat with a little cough, and attempted to change the subject. "Look, all I'm saying is that I've come a long way from those awkward years."

Vivienne's laughter rang out like a melodious chime, her eyes meeting his once more as they once again shoved away the subtle, ambiguous air between them. "Haven't we all?" she replied, the warmth of their shared moment lingering in the air between them. “Thank goodness for the passage of time. You’d be totally wrong about me by the way. I was a complete introvert in high school. You were definitely one of those super-hot bad-boy loner guys that all the girls crushed on but never spoke to because they didn’t want to get rejected. You probably wouldn’t have looked at me.”

At that, Marcus snorted. The idea was so patently ludicrous that he couldn’t help it.

"No, I mean it!” Vivienne insisted stubbornly, swallowing down her food so that she could speak clearly and then gesturing to her face. “I only became...well…this after coming to the city. When I got here, it was like there were so many people with their own opinions of what would sell on the screens. What was attractive. They said I was wasn’t good enough for the auditions unless I changed a little, so what else did I have to lose? After I met Liam and he signed me on, I went through so many diets and beauty regimens at his insistence. It was like I had to fit some tiny mould he had in mind of not just the perfect wife, but the perfect actress."

The sadness in her eyes was unmistakable, and Marcus's heart bled to know that she had endured such pressure and manipulation from someone who was supposed to love her. To know that someone had been lucky enough to claim this gorgeous, talented woman and then treat her like garbage. It made him want to curl around her, tuck her into his chest and keep her safe from anyone who had ever made her doubt herself and her appearance.

Perhaps sensing that she had brought down the mood, Vivienne quickly straightened her back and flashed a bright smile. "It’s better now. He’s barely home long enough to care what I do, and as long as I can still fit in my nice dresses then there are no problems. He'd probably kill me if he saw all this food though," she added with a forced chuckle, trying to drag the mood up from the absolute abyss it had plummeted to at her words.

It was an admirable attempt, but Marcus couldn't ignore the gravity of her words. He leaned in closer, his voice tender and concerned. "Vivienne," he said, "you know that's not healthy, right?" His gaze held hers, a silent plea for her to recognize the problem. “That’s not good or normal.”

Vivienne's breath hitched at Marcus's words, and for a moment, he thought that she might break down in tears in his arms. His instincts compelled him to reach out, to draw the soft contours of her body against his chest and offer her comfort. But then, her expression hardened, and the flicker of vulnerability he had glimpsed was replaced by a fierce anger.

"Of course it's not f*****g normal," she hissed, her fork stabbing into the macaroni and cheese with a force that it tore straight through the Styrofoam container and into the tablemat underneath it. "You think I don't know that? Do you think I’m stupid or delusional? Did you honestly think that I was just 100% a-okay with my husband hitting me while he beds every barely legal starlet and underpaid secretary across the country and beyond? But what would you have me do about it, hm? Divorce him?"

Marcus was left momentarily tongue-tied, the weight of her anger and frustration heavy in the air between them. He had no answer to her question, no easy solution to offer, and the few ones that he could come up with were shot down by her next words.

"He would ruin me, Marcus," Vivienne continued, her voice laced with galling bitterness, "his family would ruin me. Not just financially, but socially as well. You know I don’t have a college degree. If I can't sing or act, then I really have nothing. No job prospects, no family, absolutely nothing to support myself. Hell, we signed a pre-nuptial agreement when we got married. This whole house and everything in it are in his name, and so is my goddamn car.”

Heartbreakingly, her voice cracked on the last word. The helplessness in her words struck a chord deep within Marcus, and he understood the depth of her predicament. Foolishly, he had wanted to be her knight in shining armour, to protect her from the tyranny of her marriage, but he was beginning to realize that it wasn't that simple.

"So, unless you have some sort of bulletproof bright idea," she concluded, her tone filled with cutting defiance, "stay the f**k out of my marriage, Marcus."

The room seemed to close in around them, the tension palpable. Inside his chest, his inner beast whined at the knowledge that she was upset, that he had made her upset. Marcus was torn between his desire to help Vivienne and the realization that he couldn't simply sweep in and fix everything the way he had hoped.

With those cutting words, Vivienne forcefully shoved the last few bites of macaroni into her mouth, her jaw working mechanically to chew the food so quickly that Marcus doubted she had even tasted it. Rising to her feet, she pushed the chair back with a scrape against the floor and turned to face Marcus.

"Thank you for the food. I'll be in my room for the rest of the day," she declared with an icy politeness that cut through the air like a knife. "I have an audition to rehearse for. You’re free to do whatever you want."

Her words hung in the silence that followed, leaving a bitter taste in the room. For the second time that day, Marcus watched her leave, the sound of her footsteps echoing in his ears as she retreated to the privacy of her room. The taste of the meal turned to dust in the back of his throat and stomach, his appetite vanishing as he was left standing alone, his fists clenched at his sides with a tempest of emotions swirling within him. Helpless rage and guilt warred within his chest, a maelstrom of raw frustration and sharp guilt over his inability to fully shield Vivienne from the threat that loomed much closer to home.

The rustle of nylon bags and squeak of Styrofoam boxes were the only sounds as he packed away the rest of the food and arranged them in the mostly empty fridge. The barren shelves and pristine white walls were so miserably impersonal in the way wealthy people’s minimalist sensibilities often were because they could afford to eat out or hire someone else to get their hands dirty for their personal convenience.

The mass of takeout containers barely fit inside, but after a few minutes of intense 3D live action Tetris, he managed to fit the last cardboard bowl of chicken soup on top of the leftover broccoli and popcorn chicken mix. At least neither of them was in danger of having to leave the house to get food for the next few days.