I used the word “boring” out loud because to him it probably would be, but to me today’s agenda sounded amazing. I enjoyed the city and life of a famous singer, but I loved this side of me, too—the woman who got her hands dirty in the garden and who sat in her sweater and underwear all day writing music and hanging out. I could just be here, listen to the silence of the forest, and be thankful for my life.
“I’m not going anywhere.” His stare challenged me to deny him. I may have read too much into his statement, then pushed the sentiment away.
Instead of choosing to sit at the table with him, I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and carried my breakfast to the porch swing outside to watch the morning sun rise over my property.
As much as his presence bothered me, I needed to find a way to come to terms with it. We both had changed, and I didn’t know him anymore than I would have known a random bodyguard chosen by the label. I could tighten the armor around my chest and go on living like he hadn’t shattered the beating heart behind it so long ago. With resolve to ignore the issues of the past sitting in my kitchen, I finished my breakfast and went inside to change for gardening.
By the time I finished getting dressed in a pair of super-worn-out jeans, a pale pink sweater, and my flower printed rain boots, Maddie waited in the garden. His massive body in cargo pants and a hoodie didn’t harmonize with the plant life well. He looked moderately out of his element, which made me smile for second.
“You look like a body-building gnome standing there.” I chuckled, bringing his attention from the primroses opening for the season to me. His rigid posture shifted to look over my mismatched appearance with a curious stare. Instead of attempting to ferret out the motivations behind his roaming gaze, I walked over to my storage bench and grabbed my gardening gloves.
“I’m gonna pick weeds. You really don’t need to stand there if you don’t want to.” My second attempt to push him away went unheeded. He stood there like a statue as I knelt down into the dew-covered ground and pulled weeds. Of course, I could have taken care of my garden with my powers, but I found doing it by my own hands peaceful. Music and gardening are where my mind could drift off and find peace.
However, no amount of dirt digging, bright flowers, and veggies I’d piled into a basket over the hour could distract my brain this time. Maddie had weaseled his way into my life like a mosquito, and no matter how hard I tried to swat him away, he was a persistent bugger.
The rest of the day passed in the same manner. No matter how I tried to relax my nerves with him here, the distraction remained. Didn’t he have a life? Social media to scroll? Anything other than to be in a constantly twenty-foot radius from me? Even my writing room couldn’t save me from his presence. I’d sat at my piano to play, but every time my fingers touched the ivory keys, my thoughts shifted to Maddox’s judgment of my music. Did he know the song that gave me my big break was about him? Had he listened to my music over the years? Did he think I sucked?
After fifteen minutes of frustration, I walked from my music room back to the main section of the house and disrobed my jeans to get comfy and make lunch. I offered him some food and he declined with the same gruff voice from earier, his focus out the window giving my face a break for once today. Fine, he was an adult. He wouldn’t starve himself.
I ate on the couch and watched one of my favorite TV shows. I laughed and smiled, but I felt his blue eyes staring at me so intensely. I sensed the need to move from where I sat on the couch, watching the newest episode of my favorite show. It was rare for me to be able to sit down and watch one of my shows not on the DVR, and he was ruining my mood by being surly and stoic.
“I doubt anyone is going to attack me while I sit in my living room wearing my sweater. No one’s hiding beneath the couch, so can you go outside the room or something. Your stare is annoying.”
His stare wasn’t really annoying . . . it was annoying the young, fifteen-year-old Hazel inside my heart . . . the Hazel who had been in love with him and liked his eyes upon her, even if it was only for her protection. But Maddox had been gone a long time from my life, and now we were two different people: a hippie singer and an ex-military brute. My temporary bodyguard who I didn’t need.
I’d hoped he left, but instead he remained at his chosen post. Fine, if he wanted to be a pain in the ass, then I would be one right back. I stretched toward the sky, then took off my oversized sweater. A body was a body to me, and I embraced my own beauty long ago. However, being close to a naked person freaked many people out, and right now I was willing to use my body as a tool to make him feel uncomfortable.
Sitting back on the couch in nothing but my nakedness, I reached over to the coffee table and grabbed my teacup with a big smile on my face. Sucker. Barely paying attention to the show, I listened for his large frame moving to the door.
But it never came.
The man was impossible! The whole situation was ridiculous. I was perfectly capable of handling myself against anyone who tried to hurt me. I was part of the Hero Society and had eighty-three saves on my hero belt. Of course, I couldn’t tell my label that. To them I was Hazel Kennedy, five-time platinum-record singer and advocate hippie for all green life. Plants and trees were my jam. However, what they didn’t know was that at night, I was someone else. In my hero suit, I became a warrior, using my power over plants to help save lives and protect the innocent.
Maddie was completely unnecessary. There was no need for his massive body to be so close all the time or his blond hair and beard to smell like a crisp breeze from the frosty mountains. There was no need for him to look at me with those same eyes I’d once written songs about in my teenage bedroom.
I had to get rid of him somehow. Suddenly, an idea occurred to me, guaranteed to get Maddie out of my life as easily as he had before.
Eat your heart out, Maddox Kennedy. You have no idea who you just agreed to bodyguard. I wasn’t the Hazel he remembered, and it was time I introduced him to the new and improved Hazel.
Chapter Six
Maddox
I felt her smile from across the room. She didn’t need to turn my way and reveal the devious expression on her face for me to know her thoughts. I knew Hazel, the one on the inside. She wanted me gone, and I might have been a bit of a dick today by staying close, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
I saw the cogs in her brain working overtime, devising a plan to make me leave of my own free will. She wanted to annoy me, try to make me uncomfortable, or anything to get me to walk out of her life again. I knew she had a thick armor around herself against me, and she had every right to be so protective. I had abandoned her.
However, I couldn’t change the past. Wherever she stood, I would be there, too. Even when she grew older, found someone who cherished her like I would have, and had beautiful babies together. My hands clenched across my chest as I leaned against the door.
Her perfectly brown skin looked so soft from here. The silhouette of her neck begged for a mouth and tongue to lay claim. Nudity lost its appeal in the military. I couldn’t give a fuck about the human body, but her body had the opposite effect on me that I knew she wanted. I didn’t want to shy away from her nakedness or cover her up. My masculinity wasn’t fragile. I’d seen how she presented herself to the world. She held her head high and remained free. She almost never wore a bra and embraced her woman’s figure, empowering woman with every sweet breath her lungs expelled. I’d been on missions where the only thing that got some men through the hard times was thinking about how sexy she was, imagining her body with theirs. The only thing that got me through was the knowledge that she wasn’t truly theirs. They never knew how her smile could make any day feel brighter, or how she loved spending her days being in the woods, hands in the dirt. She sometimes talked in her sleep and loved to snuggle close into the nook between your arm and chest. I’d basked in her before. I’d experienced Hazel Kennedy first hand. They hadn’t.
So this little stunt of hers would entertain us both for a while. I’d get to see a precious gift I could never touch, and she’d be safe without a care about the Collector, who was on the hunt for her.
She didn’t know about my power, either. I controlled air. I could direct a breeze to lick the front of her chest, pebbling her nipples with the chill. On the other side of my burdensome gift was with a single thought, all the air in her lungs would be gone and she could suffocate to death. When I first came into my powers on my sixteenth birthday like the rest of the people like me did, I was unable to control it. I’d nearly killed a boy that day. If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed with the gripping emotions that created a literal tornado that swept me away, I would have killed him.
Fear squeezed me like a constrictor, nearly paralyzing me at the thought of hurting her by accident. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, even if I had stayed. The woman before me, watching TV in the nude evolved because of all that happened. Without the pain and heartbreak, she would have never written the song leading to her successful career. Who knows where we’d be if we’d both been normal people like everyone else.
My regret was when she came into her powers, I wasn’t there for her to assist through the confusion. It took two years before I felt confident to be around people without a major leash on my powers. The military gave me control on many levels, as well as a purpose. I’d keep the world safe for Hazel and many others, while they lived peacefully from threats they didn’t know about. I’d found a family within my unit, but I knew I’d return one day to my first family—Hazel —in whatever way I could, whether it be as her protector, lover, or someone she scowled at when our eyes met.
