Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

As much as I wanted to take the words back, I couldn’t. Just like everything else when it came to JJ, I’d fucked things up again.

For one, I never should have dragged him into a place that was so small that there’d be no way to keep my hands off him.

Second, I most definitely shouldn’t have tried to fool myself into believing I could have JJ in my arms again and then just as easily let him go when our desires were momentarily satiated. He’d pretty much given me the green light to do what I wanted by suggesting we ignore the boundary line that was keeping us apart.

Finally, and most of all, I shouldn’t have been anywhere near JJ to begin with. I shouldn’t have been sitting in my rental car night after night watching Sully’s men build a safe perimeter around his home. I hadn’t even been able to physically see JJ on any of those nights and yet I’d kept returning to the same spot simply so I could be near him.

Just like the night he’d been shot, JJ’s disappearance from my life a second time had nearly destroyed me. The fact that he’d voluntarily left me when he’d walked out of the cabin had disintegrated what was left of my heart.

Or so I’d thought.

Obviously, a few shards had been left behind. It was the only explanation for my behavior. I’d wanted to be with JJ from afar, but I wasn’t strong enough to take what he was freely offering. Yet here I was, watching the man who had been and always would be my other half, being ripped apart by my own cruelty and stupidity.

When I’d pulled back from the near kiss, I’d only been thinking about the need to shield myself from another round of crippling despair. Once I’d realized how JJ had interpreted my defection, I’d been desperate to make him understand that my behavior had been out of a need for self-preservation and not because he’d done anything wrong. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it out loud.

I hadn’t given any thought to the humiliation JJ would feel because of my rejection. His over-the-top reaction hadn’t made sense until he’d mentioned being tested. It was only then that I’d realized he believed I’d pulled back from the almost kiss because of the things he’d done at Tank’s.

I’d never once judged JJ for all the things that had happened at Tank’s. How could I? He hadn’t gone there because he’d enjoyed what those men had done to him. He’d gone there because he’d needed to escape and for whatever reason, reckless, degrading sex and copious amounts of alcohol had given him a sense of false peace that had worked long enough to get him through the rest of the hours of each day. If anything, I’d wanted JJ even more because his behavior had been proof that he’d been hurting just like me. But I’d never told him that. Not directly, anyway. In fact, I’d cruelly used it against him during one of our “discussions” at the cabin. I’d talked down to him like he’d been some stupid kid jumping from one guy to another just for the thrill of it.

My raw admission that I couldn’t go through losing him for a third time hadn’t made things better.

The fact that JJ didn’t even try to move when I lifted my weight off of him and stood was proof enough that all I’d done was even more damage. I opened my mouth to try and explain that everything was on me, that he’d done nothing wrong, but I couldn’t speak. My throat had closed up and my eyes stung from the tears I’d helplessly shed as I’d witnessed JJ’s violent reaction to my inadvertent cruelty.

I turned and went to the sink to moisten some of the cheap, thin paper towels that were meant for people to dry their hands with. I moved slowly because I was desperately trying to figure out how to undo what I’d done. The sound of shuffling behind me had me looking in the mirror. The reflection showed JJ now standing. He didn’t go for the door, though. He stood quietly and stared at me. My eyes held his for several beats before I forced myself to look down so I could pretend to focus on what I was doing. Although I’d meant the paper towels for JJ so he could clean his face, the fact that my hands were shaking was proof that at some point those paper towels had become a prop. Something to keep me from having to face him again. The adrenaline that had been pumping through my blood during the struggle was starting to dissipate and all of the emotions I’d tucked away after JJ had walked out of the cabin began to come back in brutal, painful punches.

The military had taught me how to survive under the most extreme and demanding physical conditions as well as how to keep my cool in the most high-pressure situations that would have left most men folding, but I had no control over my feelings when it came to the one man standing behind me. How was that possible?

I flinched when I felt a light touch skim over my back. I should have been able to look up and face JJ like a man, but I was too weak.

“I never should have touched you,” I murmured as I sensed rather than saw JJ move around me so that he was at my side. I shook my head. “That first night when I came back, I never should have touched you. I should have left your house the second I realized…”

I fell silent because what else was there to say? I’d already said and done enough stupid things tonight. Piling on more was pointless.

JJ didn’t respond to my words. Instead, I felt his fingers close over mine but only so he could remove the wet paper towels that were crumpled up in my fist. I let him take them. I didn’t want to look at him so I kept my head down, but when I felt his fingers close around my upper arms so he could turn me, I didn’t stop him.

Instead of wiping the wet towels over his face, he began wiping them over mine. His touch was gentle, and his eyes followed his fingers as if he was afraid of missing a spot. The intimate act made my internal pain both better and worse at the same time.

Upon finishing, I remained where I was as JJ quickly wiped down his own face. At one point, he sent me a small, sheepish smile, like he too couldn’t make sense of how we’d ended up standing in front of a dingy mirror in an even dingier bathroom looking rumpled and tousled like we’d been engaging in a good kind of physical encounter instead of a bad one.

“I have a lot of things I need to say to you, Cass, but I don’t want to do it here. I know that you don’t want to be near me anymore and I accept that and want to respect it, but I don’t want to say goodbye like this,” JJ said as he motioned to the spot where we’d been unleashing our emotions on one another.

Despite all the warning bells going off in my head and the vow I’d taken to stay away from JJ in a last-ditch effort to not have to experience the pain of losing him for a third time, I simply nodded. Truth was that the man standing before me wasn’t the same person who’d told me I needed to let the old JJ go. His doubts and insecurities still consumed him, but he hadn’t been afraid to stand up to me, and now he was asking to do the mature thing and end whatever this thing was between us the right way.

He’d been right about not being the same person that I’d started seeing two years ago, but he’d been wrong about me needing to mourn that JJ. The reality was that I’d only had enough time to get to know bits and pieces of that JJ before he’d been taken from me. I’d seen glimpses of the current JJ in the one who’d nearly died in my arms. He’d had passion two years ago but now I knew he was also passionate. He’d been shy and reserved two years ago, but I saw those same qualities now too. The man he’d been had been forced to adjust to the man he’d become. I might have experienced love at first sight two years earlier, but I now understood what being in love really meant. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that whether it had happened two years ago or yesterday, it was the same thing. I was in love with JJ.

Period.

End of statement.

There were no caveats, no conditions, no concessions.

I would always love JJ, but it was like I’d said. Being around him wasn’t safe for me. It would be too easy to give myself over to the man and whether I lost him to another tragedy, or he walked away when he finally realized he couldn’t build a life with a man he’d pitied, the outcome would be the same.

I ignored the warning bells in my head that were telling me I was about to make yet another terrible mistake that would leave me with even fewer pieces of myself and gave JJ a quick nod. His unmasked relief relit the ember of warmth within me—the one that had been snuffed out the moment JJ had told me to let him go during our last encounter at the cabin. As I remembered how I’d begged him not to leave me, all the warmth fled my body.

Losing that warmth gave me the control I needed to now make it possible for me to function like the soldier I’d been. Confident, distant, efficient.

When JJ slowly took several steps back from me, I knew I was mentally back where I needed to be. I could hold myself together while he said his piece and then he’d walk out of my life for good and I’d start trying to figure out how to put myself back together again.

“Do you have somewhere we can go? Sully’s not really going to be in the best frame of mind right now and chances are that if we don’t go soon, his guys will find us,” JJ asked, his voice stiff.

“My mother’s parents left her a houseboat in Ventura Harbor. That’s where I’ve been staying since we⁠—”

I stopped abruptly when I realized what I’d been about to say. “I’ve been staying there,” I said curtly.

JJ nodded.

My stomach tightened into dozens of painful knots when JJ moved to the door and unlocked it. He pulled the gun he’d stashed in his waistband at the small of his back and turned the safety off. Although it was absolutely the most inopportune moment to be thinking about it, I was both proud and a little turned on by how confidently he held the weapon. I’d already drawn my own gun but didn’t try and move past JJ despite my desperate need to be the first one to clear the area outside the door and around the park.

JJ and I clung to the shadows as he followed me to my rental car. He didn’t question me about where my Mustang was. Instead, he quietly slipped into the passenger seat and scanned our surroundings as I got the car moving.

Neither of us spoke during the two-hour ride to Ventura Harbor. I’d already learned the schedule of the nighttime security guard who monitored the gate that kept strangers away from the dock that led to several houseboats. Like clockwork, the guard took his break five minutes after JJ and I reached the marina.

The cover of darkness made it easy to get to my grandparents’ houseboat. Once we’d boarded the vessel, I led JJ to the innermost part of the house, which happened to be the living room, and turned on a single light that had a dimmer attached. Even at the lowest setting, I had no trouble seeing JJ’s face as he settled into the single oversized chair in the room.

“I’ll get us something to drink,” I said clumsily. “I’ve got beer or water.”

“Water’s fine,” JJ called because I was already heading out of the room. Although the houseboat was larger than most in the harbor, it suddenly felt like the smallest. I fiddled with the bottle of JJ’s water and my own bottle of beer. My hands were still shaking, just like they’d been in the bathroom as well as the car ride. My befuddled brain somehow remembered to grab one of the many burner phones from a drawer before returning to the living room.

“Here,” I said with as much disinterest as I could muster as I handed JJ the water and the phone. “It’s a burner,” I explained. He nodded in understanding. Even if he hadn’t been a cop, Sully would have made damn sure that his little brother knew what a throwaway phone was and what it was used for.

“Call your brother,” I said. “He’s got to be going out of his mind by now.”

I used the moment to return to the kitchen so I could swallow several slugs of the beer before I began rummaging around for some snacks. The cupboards were bare and there was only a half-eaten carton of Chinese food in the fridge.

There was plenty of beer, though.

I grabbed a second longneck bottle as I finished off the first one. I nearly choked when I heard a voice behind me.

“Where do you want this?” JJ asked as he held out the burner phone. His eyes were on my beer instead of me.

Well, they were on both beers. I grabbed the phone from him and then turned my back so I wouldn’t have to see the disappointment in his eyes. I tossed the phone into a large bucket filled with water that already held at least a dozen other now dead burner phones. Since I’d missed the evolution of technology, I wasn’t sure what kind of resources JJ’s brother and his men had access to when it came to tracing the phones, so I’d been paying for them in cash and destroying them after a single use.

“I left my phone at my house,” JJ said as he settled onto one of the barstools that took up one side of the kitchen counter.

I nodded and took a long swallow of beer.

“When did you start drinking?” JJ asked. The question held no judgment, but I could tell he was surprised. He’d known from the time I’d been a teenager that I didn’t drink. I’d left that to my father, grandfather, and endless assortment of stepmothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins. I’d had the occasional beer here and there, but I’d always steered clear of the hard stuff. Even when I did have a beer, I rarely finished the bottle because I’d never wanted to lose control of myself to something that had the power to do so much damage.

“Does it matter?” I asked crisply. I wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. A single touch from the man sitting before me had more power over me than every last beer in the entire world.

Despite the space between JJ and me being considerably greater than it had been in that dingy public bathroom, he might as well have had his body pressed right up against mine. The knowledge that I finally had him alone, truly alone, was making all the blood rush south. Thankfully, the darkened interior of the boat made it easy to hide my predicament.

I was surprised when JJ suddenly jumped up so he could open a sliding door that let in the ocean breeze and the sound of waves that I’d come to love in the short time I’d been staying on the houseboat.

Just like the public bathroom, I hadn’t given the closed door any thought because I’d been too focused on JJ. It was the same now, but fortunately he didn’t know that.

Unfortunately, I did. His thoughtfulness put another dent in the concrete I’d been trying to encase my heart in ever since he had left the cabin.

“It doesn’t,” JJ said. It took me a second to realize he was responding to my question about whether or not it mattered if I was drinking. “I just thought⁠—”

“Things change, JJ,” I interrupted. “What did you need to say to me?” I continued, ignoring the startled look on his face. The last thing he needed to know was that he was only one of the reasons I’d taken up drinking in the last few days.

“Um, yeah, right,” JJ said softly as he looked down at the bottle of water in his hands. He kept fiddling with the edge of the label with one of his fingernails.

Every second he delayed in continuing was another second I spent in the bowels of hell. I wanted nothing more than to stride to him, take him in my arms and remind him how good we’d been together in that tiny old shower in a cabin that time had forgotten.

“Sully and I have been going through the case. Together,” JJ said awkwardly.

“So we drove two hours for you to tell me you and Sully are finally spending some quality time together?”

“No,” JJ said with a shake of his head. Based on the way he was holding himself, I suspected he was trying to hide his embarrassment… and the sting of pain my barb had caused.

God, what the fuck was wrong with me? I already knew what picking at JJ’s insecurities would do to him and here I was doing it all over again.

All to protect my heart.

If I didn’t allow myself to connect with JJ on either a physical or emotional level, he’d leave me be and I’d once again let my hand take care of my dick as I imagined how tight it would feel to be buried balls-deep inside of him.

“I guess what I really wanted to say was…” JJ began before pausing again.

I took a long drag on the beer in an effort to drown the self-pity that threatened to take control of my mouth so I could beg him not to leave me again. I finished the second beer and grabbed a third from the refrigerator. I opened it but didn’t take a drink from it like I really wanted to. I had to be able to drive JJ home whenever he was done with whatever the hell he was trying to accomplish.

The sudden and unexpected thought of JJ walking through the doorway of Tank’s after I dropped him off instantly made me regret having partaken of the first two beers. They might not have been the hard stuff that my father always indulged in, but they still took a little piece of my brain away from me, albeit a temporary one. They were supposed to have made all of this easier, but they’d only loosened my tongue so I could say things to JJ that I didn’t mean.

Especially about Tank’s.

During my surveillance of his house, I’d never once seen him leave it until tonight. What if my words, my behavior sent him there the second I dropped him off near his house? Would he find a way to return to the men who’d stolen so much from him?

“What? What did you want to say?” I said with pretend irritation as I tipped the beer and let the liquid touch my lips.

I fully expected JJ to clam up and then ask me to take him home, but instead, his sharp eyes settled on me. He didn’t respond to the question other than to climb off the barstool. Unfortunately, he didn’t turn around and walk away like I wanted. Instead, he came directly at me. By the time he stopped, there was less than a foot of space between us. I had my back against the counter, so I had no place to go. When I lifted the bottle of beer to take another pretend sip in hopes of erecting a barrier between us, JJ surprised me once again by simply plucking the bottle from my fingers and placing it on the counter.

“I want a tour,” he said easily.

“A tour of what?” I asked dumbly.

“Your home. Or your home away from home. Whatever you want to call it.” JJ waved his hand in dismissal. “I mean, this is the place you’ve been spending all your time since we last saw each other, right?”

The mere fact that JJ knew the answer to his own question pissed me off.

And turned me on.

He was purposefully turning the tables on me, but no way in hell was I going to let him get me back to the emotional wreck I’d been in that bathroom. He wanted me weak and vulnerable. For what purpose, I didn’t know. I didn’t care, either. I was too busy mentally punching myself for having fallen for his act. I thought about the burner phone. I hadn’t stayed in the room when he’d called his brother, so I had no idea what he’d said to Sully. Five minutes ago, I would have bet my life on knowing JJ wouldn’t betray me by giving up my location to anyone.

Now?

Well, now all bets were off.

JJ might have learned how to play mind games in the time since we’d first been forced back into each other’s worlds, but he was forgetting one very important detail.

I was an Ashby.

And no one knew how to manipulate the strings of a marionette better than an Ashby. I might not have been proud of learning the tactic just by watching my family do it, but JJ didn’t need to know that.

My facade just needed to last longer than his and then I’d be able to get him away from me. JJ might have some powerful weapons in his arsenal, but I had the most important one. Ironically, it was the only weapon he could use to bring me to my knees, but his own refusal to see it would be his downfall, and he’d walk away from it and me with no clue how close he’d come to breaking me for good.

His victory would only happen if he figured out I still loved him. Past, present, future JJ—it didn’t matter. I loved all of them and always would.

All I had to do was keep that one little fact from him and I’d be able to get him to the place where we’d both finally be safe.

Away from me.