President's Daughter's Bodyguard-Chapter 96: Naked Truth

Chapter 96: Naked Truth

"I see..." Theo walked back into the room and closed it quietly behind him. The villa felt too small for what he was about to say.

"What do you see?"

This energy pressed against them like a living thing. Inside this house, the three of them were small and brittle and dangerously honest.

He didn’t sit or try to run away.

Theo removed his vest first, slowly and carefully, like someone setting down a heavy thing he had carried for years.

The vest hit the armchair and made a small, final sound. Then he undid the buttons of his uniform shirt.

"Theo...?"

Fabric slid away from his skin. He folded the shirt and left it on the table as if it were an offering.

Danielle watched everything. Her breath came shallow.

She had seen him hurt and angry in a hundred different lights. She had never seen him like this, exposed in a way that had nothing to do with enemy bullets.

When he took off his last layer and stood bare chested before her, the sight stole something from her chest.

He was not perfect...

There were scars that ran like rivers across his skin, thin pale marks that told of other endings and other fights.

His muscles were tight from the days that had been full of running and from the nights that held no sleep.

He was human and real and utterly dangerous in how much he gave up to stand there.

If she thought for a moment that this was a show, she was wrong. He had offered them truth, not theater.

Theo set his jaw and met her eyes. "If this is what you think of me," he muttered and took another breath, "then you should stab me. End it. Put me where everyone who would hurt you belongs."

The words landed like a stone straight into Danielle’s heart.

They were reckless, cruel in their bluntness, but they were honest... They were not designed to test her.

They were offering a choice, of the one cruel option he wanted to make impossible.

Danielle felt the muscle in her throat move. She had wanted to run a thousand times and not always from men chasing her.

Sometimes she had wanted to run from the shape of her own heart.

Now the shape sat naked and open in front of her and dared her to name the worst thing she could think.

"No," she hushed at him. "I would never."

Theo let a small, bitter laugh escape him. "Do you mean that now, or do you mean that because you have been taught to not kill the person who asks for it?"

She blinked and the world narrowed to his face. "I mean it now," her voice gained a little strength. "I am sorry for thinking about it. I am sorry for saying words like that in my head. I do not want to hurt you."

Theo took a step closer. The lamp light made shadows across his ribs and the pale scars on his collarbone.

"Then do not stab me," he commanded. "Do something harder. Tell me what you think. Tell me how you feel when I am quiet. Tell me what you fear."

She looked down at their joined hands. For a long time her fingers had been wrapped around his as if clinging to the idea of safety.

Now she let them fall and placed both of her hands on his chest, feeling the strong steady beat beneath her palms.

It was a normal pulse. It was not a bomb...

"I am afraid," Danielle’s voice broke like a twig. "I am afraid because I have been used by men who promised me the moon and gave me knives instead. I am afraid I will let myself love someone who will become a monster, or someone who will leave me when the world gets hard again."

Theo closed his eyes for a moment. He rested his forehead against hers, just barely touching. "I deserve that fear," he murmured. "I built myself for war. I trained to obey. I let my hands learn how to ruin things. Why should you trust the man who was made to obey a command to kill?"

Danielle lifted her face and searched his eyes like someone looking for a map back home.

"Because you didn’t kill him. You did not pull the trigger. You did not finish what you were trained to do. You broke, Theo. Not because you were weak, but because you allowed yourself to break for me."

Theo swallowed his stuck saliva. Her words felt like a small, bright knife slicing through a knot he had carried for so long.

He had prepared himself to be a tool. He had wanted, at first, to be nothing more.

That idea had kept him alive in the worst places. Then she had arrived, laughing like someone who thought the world deserved to be kind.

She had said ridiculous things like not being a hero and still needed saving. She had filled corners of him that had been empty for reasons he would not admit.

He was honest because the moment had no room for anything else. "I did not like you at first," he confessed.

This sentence surprised her because it sounded weak in a way that made him feel naked again. "You were loud. You made jokes at bad times. You smiled at men I wanted to break. I thought you were reckless and soft and unsuitable for war."

Danielle blinked, and a small, confused laugh pushed through. "That is not what I expected to hear today."

"It is the truth," Theo’s lips formed a smitk. "I told myself I could manage you. I told myself I could hold you like a thing that needed fixing. But the more I watched you, the more my entire plan fell apart. You became a problem I did not mind solving. You became a person I wanted to protect regardless of the orders I had in my pocket."

He took a breath like someone pulling air through grief. "I could tell you a dozen manly lies to make this sound noble. I could say I fell in love in the heroic way stories claim. But the truth is smaller and meaner. I simply could not stop watching you. I could not stop putting you first in a list of reasons I was supposed to be angry at. I thought control was power. You made me understand that control is a prison. Loving you made me want the door open."

Danielle felt her knees tremble. She slid down onto the edge of the couch so she could look up at him properly.

"So what now," she asked. "You say this, you stand here with your chest bare, and expect me to trust you immediately?"

Theo smiled, not wholly pleasant but honest. "I do not expect it. I ask for the chance to earn that trust every day. I will prove it by the things I do, not only by words. I will not ask you to forget my past. I will not ask you to pretend it never happened. I will show you that my hands can be used to protect, not to harm. I will be patient if you need me to be. I will stand as long as you want me to stand."

Her eyes flooded. Tears leaked without drama. She didn’t look weak...but seemed like someone holding a candle in a wind that wanted to put it out.

Danielle reached up, touched the scar on his chest with a fingertip as if blessing him and also claiming him.

"I am sorry...Sometimes I am not sure what I want. That scares me."

"You are allowed to be scared," Theo bowed his head and pressed his lips to her knuckles in a small, reverent kiss.

"And I am sorry for making you feel like a decision you had to make. You are not a test. You are a person I care about. I will not use you as a reason to wage war."

She searched his face for any hint of the soldier she had known who liked to joke and hide his feelings.

There were shadows of him there, but also a softer layer she hadn’t seen until tonight.

"Stay," she breathed.

"I will stay," he answered. "I am not leaving."

She let out a shaky laugh that was half sob.

The truth between them was fragile, but it was truthful at least.

For the first time in a long time, both of them felt something like resting in a room that had been built for drama.

"What about my father? What will you do to him?" Danielle moved her head up to look into Theo’s eyes.

"I have to kill him, Bunny..."

"And you will show no mercy?

"Mercy was a language I unlearned the day they taught me obedience."

"Why do you need to be so cruel, Theo?"

Her bodyguard moved her chin up, "you call it cruelty...I call it balance."