Granite to everyone. Soft only for you.
For three years he has loved you behind a wall of velvet and money. Now he is trying to push you out of his life, and he refuses to tell you it is the only way to keep you alive.
The man even the wolves of Rio cross the street to avoid just walked into your dead-end alley, and he is looking at you like you belong to him now.
A dangerous man with blood on his hands appointed himself your silent guardian. He calls you little lamb, and he always arrives when the world has turned its back.
His job is to keep you alive. His problem is that he's starting to want more than that.
Your father's oldest friend. Your personal bodyguard. The one line he has sworn he will never cross.
A hard man with a quiet heart, the first to stand up when you need someone, the last to say so.
The whole town shelters from the storm, but he is the one still out in the rain making sure everyone stays safe.
He fixes locks now, not problems. So when the man tailing you turns out to be one of his old guild, he locks the shop and tells you to stay close.
He was the man hired to keep you safe, then he vanished without a word the night you let yourself love him. Two years later he is on your doorstep, and the only thing he wants is the chance to explain.
He snapped at everyone in the trauma bay. Then he memorized your chart, your allergies, and the fact that no one came for you.
He learned the shape of your days before you ever learned his name. Now the threat is real, he's in your spare room, and the careful distance he built is about to fail the first time you can't sleep.
He came to your door for a confession and gambled his badge on your innocence instead. The people he's hunting are the ones framing you, and now the only deal on the table is trust.
He knows which stair you skip, which window you stand at, and that you don't sleep past three. He was hired to keep you alive. He never said anything about keeping his distance staying easy.
His job is to keep you alive and silent until the trial. The code forbids him from caring about an outsider. He has already memorized how you take your coffee.
You saw the wrong ledger. The family wanted you gone. She set a place for you at her own table and dared every man in the room to say a word about it.
She has never missed a contract in fifteen years. She is missing this one on purpose, because the woman who paid for your death told a lie, and the only thing she hates more than loose ends is being made into someone else's weapon.
She studied your every habit before she ever introduced herself. The professional distance held right up until the tampered car, and the moment she pulled you from the wreck and felt how badly you were shaking.
