Protector (A Navy SEAL Military Romance) Read online

  “Get out of here!” Brian boomed, and Dominic turned and took off running toward the quad.

  As I stood there watching him disappear into the darkness, I heard Brian quietly ask, “I’m guessing that was the ex, right? Are you okay?”

  I turned and looked at him for a moment before speaking. “I’m so sorry,” I said quietly as the tears began to well up in my eyes. “I was stubborn and I didn’t believe the threat was real, so I thought I could take care of myself.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Brian interjected as he patted my shoulder. “It’s all good. I’m fully trained in hide and seek, so I knew I could find you.”

  “I know, but I didn’t know he’d be out here following me, too,” I looked up into Brian’s face as I quickly wiped away the few tears that had run down my cheeks. “I feel stupid now.”

  “It’s okay, he’s gone and you’re safe,” Brian reassured me. “Do you want to go back to the dorm?”

  I considered the question more seriously than I would have a few hours ago, and then said, “No, I don’t feel safe going back to the dorm. At least not until he’s chilled out a bit. He knows where I live, and the last time he showed up there it was ugly.”

  “Then let me take you somewhere safe tonight,” he suggested. “We’ll make sure he can’t find you, and then we’ll figure out a plan for how to take care of the threat.”

  “Yes, sir, General!” I laughed weakly as I saluted.

  “It’s Admiral, and your salute is sloppy,” he deadpanned. “Now, let’s get moving, I’ve got a place in mind, but you’ll probably need to stop and pick up a few things before we head out, right?”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said softly. “I know how to travel light.”

  “Well, once we get you situated, I can always come back and pick up your things later,” he said as he gently guided me toward the lot where he’d parked his black SUV.

  *****

  I sat quietly staring out the passenger side window as Brian drove. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what Dominic would do next. Would he actually hurt me? Was he capable of such a thing? I wasn’t sure anymore.

  “I’m taking you to a hotel that I know has solid security,” Brian’s voice interrupted my racing thoughts. “I’ve arranged for a suite where I can monitor what’s going on while still giving you some privacy, okay?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” I replied; my thoughts still on what Dominic might do.

  “What’s his deal, anyway?” Brian asked. “The guy seems more than a bit obsessed. What happened between the two of you?”

  “He was never like this before,” I was annoyed by the question because I couldn’t answer it. “I mean, he’s written notes and called asking me to come back, but he’s never approached me since the breakup and he’s certainly never attacked me. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  “There has to be some reason that things have changed,” he mused. “Has something in his life changed recently?”

  “How would I know?” I shot back defensively. “I broke up with the guy and we’re not BFFs!”

  “I know, but something had to have changed if he’s getting more obsessed with you,” he continued.

  “Look, I have no clue what’s going in with Dominic, and if I did, I’d tell you,” I lied. I knew I was dangerously close to spilling the whole story, but I also knew that if I did, Brian would go running back to my father and tell him everything. It wasn’t that I cared so much about whether my father knew or not, it was the fact that I knew if the whole story came out there would be hell to pay, and it would become another way for my father to manipulate people and make it all about himself. I just wanted to put it all behind me and move on with my life.

  “You’re sure about that?” he said as he turned into the drive of the hotel and pulled up to the front door. He put the SUV in park, but left the engine running. He opened the door, got out, but before he shut the door, he quietly said, “Because I’m not.”

  It didn’t take long for Brian to register and since I didn’t have any luggage, we were soon on the elevator headed up to a large suite on the top floor of the hotel. I watched Brian out of the corner of my eye as the elevator ascended. Although he seemed calm on the outside, I could see him scanning the interior of the small space the same way he’d done down in the lobby and on the track and everywhere else.

  “What’s up with the scanning?” I blurted out.

  “Huh?” he seemed genuinely confused by the question.

  “I’ve noticed that you are constantly in scan mode” I said cautiously. “Even when it’s not really necessary, like now.”

  “Oh,” he dropped his eyes to the floor and didn’t look up.

  “I’m not judging or anything,” I offered. “I’m just asking why you’re constantly doing it.”

  “Dunno,” he shrugged as he stared at the floor.

  I could see that a wall had gone up, but I had no idea how to scale it, so I stopped asking and went back to analyzing my own situation. Figuring out what Dominic was going to do next wasn’t going to be easy, he’d become less predictable since I’d left and it scared me to know that he had tracked me down on campus. How else would he have known where to find me? And as I thought about it more, I realized that the only way he could have found me would have been if he had been following me. The thought made me shudder.

  “You cold?’ Brian asked as the elevator doors slid open. He stepped out into the hall and scanned the corridor before motioning me forward.

  “No, just thinking,” I replied as I stepped in behind him and followed him down the hall to the suite. He unlocked the door, held up a hand indicating I should stay in the hall, then quickly made his way through the rooms turning on lights as he went. Thirty seconds later he was back at the door motioning me to come in and shut the door behind me. It all felt very covert and I looked at him skeptically as he moved toward the windows and pulled the curtains closed.

  “Your room is over here,” he opened the door connecting one of the bedrooms to the main area and waved me over. “You’re probably pretty tired, so I’ll let you get some sleep.”

  “Okay,” I said as I headed toward my room. Once inside, I turned and called out, “Brian?”

  “Yes?” came his immediate response.

  “I don’t think I can…I mean, I’m not…Would you just stay?” I stammered.

  “Sure thing,” he smiled as came back into the room. He pulled the curtains apart a bit and checked outside before sitting down in the big chair by the window. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Why do you always do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “You’re always scanning and checking and looking for things,” I said.

  “Well, it’s part of my job. I’m supposed to make sure that any threat is neutralized, and that you’re safe.”

  “But it’s more than that,” I argued. “It’s like you’re never not on.”

  “I guess I always am,” he shrugged. “But that’s not what you want to talk about is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why is Dominic after you? What happened between you two?” his honest question caught me off guard, but I quickly recovered and began telling the story that I’d told everyone who’d ever asked.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not entirely sure what happened aside from the fact that I broke up with him when I caught him cheating on me,” I recited the scrubbed version so many times that it felt like the truth. “We were fine until that happened and then he just kind of lost it. He started writing me and following me around trying to convince me to come back, and when I refused, he started to get more forceful.”

  Brian sat watching me from across the room, his eyes were like lasers and I suddenly felt more exposed than I ever had in my life. I looked away, focusing my gaze on the couch in the other room as I talked. I told him about how Dominic had shown up in my dorm one evening, pleading and begging.

  “He’d wanted me to come home
with him, but something felt off and when I said no, he became enraged. My suite mates had finally called the police and they’d hauled him out the dorm, but didn’t arrest him because his father had even more money and power than mine, and was a big university donor.” I rolled my eyes dramatically to show him how little respect I had for all the money and power. “The next day, I went down to the court and filed a personal protection order, but I knew that it was just a piece of paper and that if he really wanted to get to me, it wouldn’t stop him. And then Dominic disappeared. I had no idea what had happened to him, but when my father got wind of the incident and asked about what had happened, I told him. He didn’t say anything more about it, and then he hired you. And that’s my sad tale of woe. Poor little rich girl, eh?”

  “That’s a lovely story,” Brian said.

  “What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly.

  “It’s really nicely constructed and well-rehearsed, I’ll give you that,” he replied.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I yelled.

  “Sure you do,” he countered. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s the story you’ve told your parents and all the nosy people who’ve tried to pry into your personal life, but it’s a lie. You know it, and you know I know it.”

  “I…I…I…” I stuttered as I tried to find a way to cover my vulnerability. He’d seen past my carefully constructed mask and was calling me out.

  “Ava, look, I’m not here to spy on you or rat you out to your parents,” he said with an earnest sincerity. “I’m here to make sure that Dominic doesn’t hurt you, that’s it. My whole job is to protect you, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what kind of enemy I’m up against. You need to come clean if I’m going to be able to do my job.”

  “I…I…I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Yes, you can,” he replied as he moved from the chair to the edge of the bed. Reaching out, he cupped my chin with his large hand and tipped my face up so that I was looking him in the eye. “You can’t escape a nightmare until you tell someone about it, and I’m the person who can help you leave it behind.”

  “How on earth would you know anything about a nightmare!” I yelled. “You know nothing about this!”

  “Maybe not this particular nightmare,” he said quietly as he held my gaze. “But believe me, I know about nightmares. So, tell me. Let me help you escape. Please, Ava?”

  *****

  I stared silently at Brian as my brain frantically searched for a way to explain my way out of the spotlight he’d just shone on my story. It wasn’t that I’d lied to anyone, it was more that I’d committed the sin of omission and in doing so, thought that I’d fooled everyone into believing that things weren’t nearly as bad as they’d actually been. Everyone around me had wanted to believe my story, and I knew that the reality of the situation was more than they could handle, so I told them only small details and left out the big scary parts. My parents didn’t ask at all, so I didn’t even have to omit anything. We just didn’t speak.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted even as the tears began to leak from the corners of my eyes. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine!”

  “Ava,” Brian’s voice was soft as he continued cupping my chin refusing to let me look away. “It’s okay. It’s safe to talk about it here with me. I promise.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I whispered.

  “Try me.”

  I looked up into his steely blue eyes and saw something so familiar there that I had to look away. When I looked back up at him, the steel had been replaced by a softer expression and something in me broke. I took a deep breath and began to tell the whole story; the real one.

  “Dominic and I met during Rush Week,” I began. “He was trying to get into the Fiji house and I thought the entire week was a joke. We both come from families with enormous wealth, and so we bonded over our rich kid isolation. I know, pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not going to judge you, Ava,” he said softly. “I’m just listening.”

  “I didn’t have to explain things to him about my family—all the weird things that no one else understands—so it felt good to be with him, and after a few weeks, it just felt like we were supposed to be together,” I had never admitted that to anyone, not even to myself. “But I knew there was something off about him. In the first couple of weeks we’d been seeing each other, he’d gotten arrested for fighting with another guy at a frat party and once he was released from jail, he’d disappeared for a few days. When he came back, he just said he’d been ‘summoned home by the big guy,’ which was our code for when one of our fathers wanted to have a word with us. We lived in a cocoon; buffered by money and our shared isolation, but I liked him because he paid attention to me—close attention—and he was nothing like my father.”

  As I’d begun telling my story, Brian had backed up and given me some space. He now sat with his back against the headboard, his arm resting on his bent knee while his other leg hung off the side of the bed. It was a constructed pose that was designed to look very casual and relaxed, but the tension in his jaw told me otherwise.

  “It started small, he’d joke about summoning me home and I’d show up at his apartment,” I cringed as I began telling the story of the slow and steady descent into the darkness of our relationship. “But if I didn’t show up quickly, he’d pepper me with texts and phone calls asking where I’d been and who I’d been with. He said it was because he was worried about me and he wanted to make sure I was safe.”

  Brian nodded as he connected the dots between his presence and my resistance to the whole safety routine. I wasn’t sure how much of the rest of the story I wanted to tell him, but when I looked up at him he said, “Tell the truth, Ava. Just tell the truth.”

  “I was flattered by his attention. My whole life I had felt like an inconvenience to my parents. They’d shipped me off to boarding school in third grade and I hadn’t lived in any house for more than a month at a time, often times my parents weren’t even there. It was just me and the staff, and maybe a friend or two if they weren’t traveling with their own families.” I explained as the sadness crept up and wound itself around me. “Dominic was always there. He’d call me in the middle of the night just to tell me he missed me or he’d drop by my classroom to give me flowers or tell me a story about his day. There wasn’t anything menacing about it at all. He looked out for me and took care of me in a way that my parents had never done, and I felt…loved. I know that sound ridiculous to someone who grew up with parents who loved them, probably like yours did, right?”

  I looked over at Brian as he nodded slowly and then shifted his gaze away from my face. There was something going on, but I was too deep into my story to stop and find out, so I continued.

  “Half way through our second semester, I moved out of the dorm and into his apartment,” I shifted my body so that my knees were drawn up to my chest with my arms tightly wrapped around them. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a terrifying abyss as I had never told anyone what I was about to tell Brian. “Dominic was so sweet when I moved in. He took me shopping for all our household items and we picked out new bedding and sheets and towels. It was like we were married. And he was so attentive and kind in those first new days that I didn’t notice the change. Have you ever been to a lobster boil, Brian?”

  “No?” he replied with a perplexed look on his face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “If you really want to boil a lobster the right way, do you know how you do it?” I asked quietly.

  “I really hadn’t thought about it,” he said.

  “You put the heat on low, put the lobsters in the pot and then gradually raise the temperature until the water boils,” I explained in a soft voice. “That way they don’t know what’s happening until it’s too late.”

  Surprise and recognition flashed across Brian’s face as he processed the story I was telling, then he nodded and said,
“I imagine it’s more humane for the lobsters, right?”

  “Maybe, but I’ve always thought it was tremendously sad to betray them that way; to use what they are familiar with to end their lives,” I sighed. “It feels horribly sad.”

  “Yes, I imagine when you look at it that way, it is sad,” he echoed.

  “As time went on, he got more and more possessive, but I was too blind to see that it was because the temperature was being turned up all around me,” my voice broke a little. “I would come home and find him pacing the apartment worried to death that something had happened to me, so I’d comfort him and make sure he was okay, and that usually meant having sex. I got to be an expert at knowing exactly what kind of mood he’d be in depending on the text or phone call, and then I’d know precisely what I’d have to do when I got home. In some ways it was really easy because he was so predictable, but that also made him so much more dangerous. About three months after I’d moved in was the first time he hit me.”

  “He hit you?” Brian’s voice was calm, but his jaw was tight and tense.

  “He did, but he always made it seem like it was my fault. He would explain it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and I’d find myself agreeing with him,” I said. “The memory of that first night is the most painful one because, in retrospect, I can see where it was all headed, but at the time, I was too naive and trusting. He’d followed me around campus that day, and he found me in the quad talking with a guy from my chem class. He wasn’t someone I’d ever talked to before, and we had been double checking our study guides because we had an exam coming up. Dominic showed up on the quad and ‘caught’ us. I introduced him and told him what we were doing, and he was so incredibly charming and funny that I didn’t give it another thought. In fact, I remember thinking how lucky I was to have a boyfriend who was so friendly and warm. What a fool I was.”

  “So, he shows up and acts all nice to the guy, and then what?” Brian probed.

  “When I got home later that afternoon, all hell broke loose,” I looked down, dropped one arm and began picking at the bedspread. “He was in a rage. He interrogated me about the guy on the quad—Dave? Doug? I can’t even remember his name now. Anyway, he accused me of sneaking around behind his back and seeing other guys. I was shocked because that had never even occurred to me. Not once. I was happy with him, and happy in our home together, and I told him that, but he refused to believe me. He went on and on about how I was betraying him while I tried my best to show him all the ways in which I wasn’t. That’s when I started to get mad and tell him that if he didn’t believe me, then maybe I should leave. Big mistake.”