In retrospect, I can admit asking Blake to be my date was a mistake.
For one thing, Shane has been teasing me nonstop since that day. For another, the idea of Blake in formal wear—something that had filled me with a special kind of joy the morning of our run—is becoming more and more terrifying the longer I imagine it. If I can barely reign myself in when he’s dressed normally, then how the hell am I going to keep it together when he’s dressed to the nines? Yeah, I didn’t think this through.
He comes to me every morning to join me for my run. I’m starting to get used to the sound of our breathing mixing together. We don’t talk much, but I get the feeling he enjoys it. I can tell by the way he bounces on the balls of his feet when he sees me coming down the drive. Or maybe he’s just impatient. That’s also a possibility.
But even though we don’t talk, I still think he’s warming up to me. He’s starting to smile when I hum to myself on our runs. During one interview when I was feeling a bit nervous, he came up to me during the break and told me to poke the interviewer in the eye.
“I’ve never met anyone who was still intimidating after they’d been poked in the eye.”
I’d laughed so hard the makeup girl had to touch up my mascara, and the look on Blake’s face like he’d accomplished something good was enough to get me through the rest of the interview without assaulting anyone, thank you very much.
Sometimes, I catch him looking at me. Not really a big deal, since he’s my bodyguard and by rights, he should be looking at me, but sometimes there’s a softness to the way he stares.
I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything, but I’m not very good at making myself believe it. If Blake were anyone else, I would have thrown caution to the wind and kissed him already. The only thing stopping me is the way his face would close off, and he’d look all withdrawn whenever I got too close. It was like he was deliberately trying to avoid anything beyond a simple protector/protectee relationship. Which was a shame because it was getting harder and harder for me to ignore my attraction to him. His random bursts of humor, and the way he seemed to genuinely care whether or not I was okay, did not help matters.
On the afternoon of the premiere, Magnus’ stylist meets me in my dorm room with a dress I’d picked out the week before. I’d chosen it from a magazine, and I hadn’t realized until later on that the dresses in that magazine were one-of-a-kind pieces made by designers specifically for events like the one I would be attending.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” I’d muttered into the phone hours later while Shane was on the other end cussing me off for not picking a tux for him. Even if he’s not going to the event, he’d said, he still wanted a fucking tux.
“I can’t believe you’re wearing Givenchy on the red carpet, you lucky bitch,” he’d said. There had been no venom in his voice just an overwhelming sense of awe. “You’d better selfie the shit out of that. Also, let me know the dates for the next bash. I don’t care if I have to kill every one of my castmates and half this campus, I’m going with you!”
The dress I chose is a muted red halter dress with a flowing skirt that shimmers when I walk. I feel unbearably elegant when I wear it, especially when the designer gave me a matching pair of ballet flats that hug my feet like socks and make me feel like I’m walking on a cloud.
Shane had also been instrumental in helping me discover something about Blake. He’d Googled my bodyguard, something I’d never even considered doing, and came to me with dozens of photos of him taken by paparazzi. They were all the same. He would be lingering at the edge of the frame, or just out of it, standing with Sadie Hawks, one of Hollywood’s rising stars, who got a gig in the last Harry Potter movie and will probably wind up owning most of Hollywood one day.
The pictures were taken before her sudden, astronomical rise. I’d been surprised to see Shane was so well-connected, and even more surprised to know he isn’t that connected anymore. Why did he end up protecting my viral ass when he could have been living it up on a yacht in St. Tropez? In some of the pictures, he’d even been smiling. Honest-to-God smiling! What I wouldn’t give for him to smile at me like that.
In a couple of the pictures, pictures where Sadie had been enjoying lunch with other women while Blake had lingered at another table, there had been other bodyguards as well—one man was blond like Blake, but more muscular with the air of someone who could probably break your fingers and enjoy it. While another handsome African American man had gazed at the pair of them with amusement. I wondered if they had been Blake’s friends. Was he still in contact with them? What must it be like to be friends with a man like Blake… real, genuine friends?
I thought it might be nice. Not as nice as dating him probably would be, but maybe there wasn’t much of a chance of us separating business from pleasure. If I couldn’t date him, I would like to be his friend.
My makeup and hair only take about an hour, and by the time Magnus calls to let me know the limo is ready to pick me up, I’m feeling all sorts of nerves. Nerves at the thought of walking that carpet in a dress that, two years ago, I could never have dreamed of wearing. Nerves at the thought of having to smile for the cameras, and try to pretend I deserve to be there even with the niggling doubt at the back of my mind.
Outside, the sun is setting in soft, muted tones over the trees around the dorms. I feel a gentle breeze caress my cheek as I walk toward the street where the limo will be waiting. My mind buzzing so much that I can barely appreciate the thought I will be riding in a limo for the first time. This is my first red carpet walk, and I might be rubbing elbows with actual celebrities while I’m there.
Blake doesn’t even cross my mind until I’m walking down the drive, and then he’s there standing by the limo with his hands crossed over his front. His posture says bodyguard, but his suit says sex machine.
I stop on the drive. “Holy crap, you look great,” I say, and then immediately want to kick myself because it’s one thing to think it and another thing to say it.
He doesn’t react for a moment, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s looking at me as intensely as I’m looking at him.
His suit is just so… perfect. It’s a creamy gray color which sets off his blond hair perfectly, and his cuffs are rolled up a little so his forearms are on display and a hint of his tattoos are visible. The shoulders and chest are tailored perfectly, and I am wondering yet again whether it is even possible for me to get through an entire night of him looking like that.
“Seriously, where did you get this suit?” I say. I’m babbling, but it’s all I can do as I make my way the last few feet to the limo where he is waiting. “It looks great. You didn’t get it just for tonight, did you?”
“No,” he says. His Adam’s apple bobs as he looks me up and down. The sight of it reminds me of something Shane once told me—that a man’s feet point to what he wants most. I look down and see Blake’s black dress shoes pointed squarely in my direction. “I’ve had it for about a year.”
“Go on a lot of red carpet dates, do you?” I ask. I know he has, of course. In some of the paparazzi pics Shane had found, Blake had been on red carpets with his elbow crooked, Sadie Hawks’ perfectly manicured fingers tucked into it. And damn if that didn’t make me jealous as hell.
And suddenly, as if a switch flipped behind his eyes, his expression darkens. “I used to.”
He looks like he’s starting to close in on himself, and I don’t want that. I’m nervous as hell, but this is my first red carpet, and I don’t want to spend it feeling bad or standing beside a man who clearly doesn’t want to be there. So before I can tell myself what a stupid idea it is, before my brain even registers what I’m doing, I throw my arms around his neck and pull him into a bear hug.
“Thank you for doing this,” I say into his ear.
His cheek is covered in gentle stubble that tickles when I press against him. He seems to hesitate for a moment before finally putting his arms around me.
Victory! I think. And then I think, Oh no, he’s so warm.
Blake leans into my ear and whispers, “You look great, too, by the way.”
Oh, boy.
What I wouldn’t give to just lean back and press my lips to his. The way he held me felt so good, and the way I felt like I was the only person in the world didn’t help. In fact, the only thing that stopped me was the fact I was still not entirely sure how he would react. Would he kiss me back? Or would he pull away?
Eventually, it’s Magnus who breaks through the little bubble I’ve built around Blake and myself.
“Hey, Natalie, don’t forget we’ve still got an event to go to,” he says.
I pull away from Blake and look over at my manager who looks very dapper in a blue tailored suit and is giving me a kind smile.
“Right, yeah, of course.”
And, just as I’ve half-feared and half-expected, Blake has already gone back to full professional mode.
What will it take for him to finally open up?
Inside the limo, Magnus fusses over my hair—which is in an up-do that extends my neck and makes me look like a graceful ballerina—before sliding into one of the opposite seats and tapping on his phone preparing for whatever is coming.
Blake sits at my side. I’ve never been in a limo before, and I spend some time poking at the buttons on my armrest revealing a fridge in the seat opposite, a set of coffee mugs, and a sunroof that opens up and sends gentle sunlight into the cabin. I close the roof and glance over at Blake. He’s frowning at his armrest as though it’s offended him.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask, leaning over so he can hear me over the gentle hum of Rhianna’s ‘Love on the Brain,’ which is playing through the limo’s speakers.
He glances over at me, his frown fading. “Sure,” he says.
“How come you hate this stuff? Did something happen?” His face says it all, but before he can shut himself down, I reach out and put a hand on his. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I say. “I just… want to understand, I guess. And I want to make it better for you if I can, but I don’t know how.”
“It’s not something you can fix,” he says.
I push on. “But is it fixable?”
He shrugs. I notice with some interest his hand doesn’t leave mine. “It’s… complicated.”
“I have a 4.0,” I say. His lips quirk up a bit, and I think he might be trying to stifle a smile. “Come on, you don’t need to give me any details you’re not comfortable with.”
He clicks his tongue apparently thinking for a moment. Finally, he looks out the window at the same time he leans into me guiding our heads together so he can talk to me at the same time he doesn’t meet my eyes.
“I’ve just been in the business too long,” he says. “I’ve seen what fame does to people. I don’t like it.”
Is that it? I want to ask, but I can tell this is an issue for him. I wonder if he’s talking about Sadie, the woman he’d protected before. Shane had tried hard to find more pictures of Blake after Sadie’s sudden rise to fame, but it had seemed as though Blake had completely fallen off the grid. All of Sadie’s paparazzi pics had new bodyguards in them after the movie had been released, and Blake’s face was absent from every other candid celebrity pic after that.
“You think I’m gonna wind up as one of the army of celebrity beauty bloggers?” I ask. “That I’m gonna join the cult?”
He looks over at me, tearing his eyes away from the New York streets starting to bleed into one another. “No,” he says. His gaze is shrewd as he looks me up and down. “I don’t think that.”
“Well, good, because I won’t,” I assure him.
“I still don’t like it.”
I squeeze his hand, and it’s warm enough to heat me from the pads of my fingers to the bones of my feet. “I’ll protect you from the big, bad celebrities.”
His lips quirk up again, and this time I’m close enough to see the way his eyes wrinkle when he does it. “And I’ll protect you from everyone else.”
Oh, boy.