My Ex-Love. MY BODYGUARD

CHAPTER FOUR

TEN YEARS AGO

The cigarette tasted like failure.

Adrian Cole crushed it under his boot heel as the school bus wheezed to a stop in front of Sunnyridge High. He'd been here for exactly thirty-seven minutes long enough to grab his schedule from the front office and get directed to English class like some criminal being escorted to his cell. The guidance counselor had looked at him with that specific blend of pity and disdain that adults reserved for kids who came from nothing. Adrian had perfected the art of not giving a s**t about that look.

His mom had cried when they moved again. She'd stood in the driveway of their latest rental in Colorado, a place that somehow managed to look even more temporary than their trailers in Louisiana and Florida and asked him if he thought this job would stick. If his father might actually stay sober long enough to keep this one. Adrian had learned a long time ago not to answer questions like that. The answer was always no anyway.

The high school hallways smelled like industrial cleaner and adolescent desperation. Adrian kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes forward, moving through the stream of students like water around a rock. Nobody tried to talk to him. Nobody ever did, not until he'd been somewhere long enough that his outsider status became almost acceptable. By that time, he was usually already mentally moved on to the next place, the next school, the next restart.

He slid into the empty desk in English class five minutes late, and the teacher barely glanced up. Third row, middle of nowhere, exactly where he'd sit until graduation if he even made it that far. He'd made a deal with his mom that he would graduate from high school before signing up for the Army. One concrete thing to achieve before blowing this entire life to pieces and starting over as someone else.

"Welcome, Mr. Cole," the teacher said without looking at him.

"Adrian," he corrected automatically, letting his New Orleans accent slip back in the one he'd picked up years ago and kept in his back pocket like a weapon he could deploy when the situation called for it. Some of the girls giggled. He didn't even look at them.

But then his eyes caught on something.

Front row, right side. A girl in a white dress and red cowboy boots that looked almost aggressively out of place. Her blonde hair fell in waves past her shoulders, and even from this angle, Adrian could tell she was beautiful in that unselfconscious way that meant she probably didn't know it yet. She was staring at her desk like it contained the secrets to the universe, completely oblivious to his attention.

That annoyed him more than it should have.

The teacher handed back poetry assignments. Adrian watched the girl's face when hers was returned, no name called, just a quiet "very nice, Grace" and a returned paper. She looked uncomfortable at the compliment, like kindness was something she wasn't quite sure how to accept. When the teacher asked if she wanted to share with the class, she said no so quickly it sounded like a reflex.

Something about that response made Adrian want to push. To figure out why someone who could apparently write poetry worth praising would refuse to share it. He spent the rest of class constructing scenarios in his head, maybe her poems were confessions. Maybe they were about something painful. Maybe she had secrets worth keeping.

Maybe she was interesting.

At the end of class, he made his move. Terrible move, objectively. He stuck his foot out as she passed his desk, watching her stumble. She recovered with surprising grace, and when she turned to face him, the expression on her face was pure fury.

"Asshole," she said, loud enough that the teacher heard it.

"Language, Miss Carter," the teacher reprimanded half-heartedly, already packing up to leave.

Adrian expected her to stalk off, but instead she held his gaze for a long moment, and in that moment, he understood that he'd completely misjudged the situation. This girl wasn't going to be impressed by rebel tactics. She was going to be furious with him. And somehow that made it worse or better because at least now she was looking at him like he was a human being instead of invisible.

"Don't do that again," she said quietly.

Then she left, and Adrian spent the rest of the day thinking about her boots and her voice and the fact that she hadn't laughed at his joke or flirted back or done any of the things girls usually did when he wanted their attention.

********

The senior party at Rod Engar's house was exactly what Adrian expected: too loud, too crowded, too full of people who'd known each other their entire lives and weren't particularly interested in making space for the new kid. He wasn't there to make friends anyway. He was there because someone had said there'd be beer, and after the morning his dad had put him through something about a job interview falling through, something about money and blame and his mother's worthlessness Adrian figured he deserved a few hours of not thinking about anything.

He was working his way toward his third drink when he saw her on the porch.

Grace Carter, alone, looking like she was trying to figure out how to make herself disappear. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and even from a distance, Adrian could read the body language: she didn't want to be here. She wanted to be anywhere else.

He shouldn't have approached her. Smarter to drink his beer and ignore her, to pretend he hadn't noticed her running away from the party like it was some kind of contagion. But Adrian had never been particularly smart about the things that mattered, and something about the curve of her shoulders, the way she was biting her thumbnail, made him move toward her instead of away.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, not particularly concerned with her comfort level. It was only when she reacted to that small gagging sound, the way she flinched that he registered he was being an asshole.

"Sorry," he said, and didn't really mean it. He flicked the cigarette onto the porch floor anyway, grinding it out with his boot. "Didn't know there was a health inspector out here."