Semua Bab The Bodyguard’s Siren: Bab 31 - Bab 40

I should’ve known things were going too smoothly.The interview was easy which should’ve been my first warning sign. Giovanni didn’t roll his eyes once. I didn’t mentally prepare imaginary arguments with Dave. Nobody asked me about rehab or who I was sleeping with this week.A suspiciously good day.So naturally, when the hotel clerk hands us the key and says, “One-bed suite, Miss Sinclair—enjoy your stay,” I actually laugh.I laugh.Giovanni doesn’t.He just stares at the keycard like it personally offended him.“Did he just say—”“One bed,” he confirms, voice flat as dead air.A beat.“We could complain,” I offer.“We could,” he echoes.We stare at each other. We absolutely do not complain.Because we are professional adults, and by professional adults, I mean we are two idiots fake-dating for the press and pretending we’re not in a slow-motion emotional crisis.I take the key.“We’re fake dating,” I remind him lightly. “It would look weird if we asked for separate rooms.”His jaw t

I should never have agreed to this shoot.Scratch that — I should’ve agreed, but I should have been emotionally lobotomized beforehand. Because the universe apparently enjoys humiliating me, I walk into the studio and immediately spot Giovanni across the room.In black boxer-briefs. Not baggy. Not loose. Boxer-briefs that cling to him like they were sewn onto his actual skin. My knees wobble.He’s surrounded by stylists fussing with powder, oil, lighting—like he’s some kind of unbothered Greek god who wandered into a Sephora by accident and the worst part?He looks bored. Like standing half-naked in front of a crew of twenty is just another Tuesday. Meanwhile, I’m over here sweating through my robe like a Victorian woman about to faint.“Cara!” my PR manager chirps, way too cheerful for someone who has clearly sold my soul to Satan. “Wardrobe is ready for you. You and Giovanni are doing the couples concept.”Right.The couples concept.Because apparently the world needs to see the pop

I haven’t slept in two days.Not real sleep, anyway. It’s been those shallow, twitching micro-naps where my body gives out but my mind refuses to follow. Every time I close my eyes, I see Giovanni’s face when I threw him out.I see his confusion, the hurt, and the way he looked back at me like he wanted to fix everything and still walked out the door because I told him to.He didn’t even fight me on it and that—God, that’s what breaks me.Because if he’d yelled back, or denied it harder, or forced me to listen… maybe I wouldn’t feel like something inside me has been hollowed out.Now the house feels too big. It’s too quiet and too cold and all I want, stupidly, is to call him but every time I reach for my phone, the image of those texts flashes in my head.I’d like you to be in the baby’s life if you want to be.It’s ruined me. It’s poisoned every soft moment we’d ever had.So instead of calling him, I find myself parked in a grocery store lot staring at the neon glow of the liquor ai

The ICU room is too white, bright, clean, and too fucking quiet.Machines hum steadily beside her bed, a soft mechanical chorus that feels wrong against how violently everything inside me is shaking. I sit in the stiff plastic chair pulled up to her bedside, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly my wrapped palm throbs.She hasn’t moved in hours. Her skin looks pale against the pillow, lips split, cheek swollen and starting to bruise. There’s dried blood in her hair. A bandage wraps around her head, small but stark, and it is the surgical dressing from where they evacuated the hematoma. The doctor said she’d been lucky. Lucky. I drop my face into my hands. Lucky is not the word I would have used.I keep seeing her on that basement floor. Her hair fanned out like she was sleeping except her body wasn’t breathing right and her pulse was barely there. I remember the cold terror punching through me, something animalistic snapping loose in my ribcage when I thought she was dead. I ha

Fourteen days after the worst night of my life, I walk into my therapist’s office without shaking.That alone feels like a miracle. My therapist gives me the soft, steady smile she always does. It never feels forced, never feels like pity.“Cara,” she says gently, “tell me what’s different this week.”I sit on the couch, draw my knees up, and toy with the cuff of my hoodie. Gio’s hoodie the one he slipped over my shoulders when I finally left the hospital because he said I looked cold.“It’s easier to breathe,” I whisper.She nods. “And why do you think that is?”Because I’m safe. Because he’s here. Because someone finally chose me over themselves but I don’t say all that. Not yet.“Because I’m not pretending anymore,” I say instead. “Not pretending I’m fine. Not pretending it didn’t happen. Not pretending I don’t need… people.”“That’s huge progress.”I swallow. My throat feels tight.“Sometimes,” I say, “I wake up terrified, convinced he’s there. Convinced it’s happening again. But