Unbreakable Love (6 page)

Jennie had turned her eyes back to the patio area just outside of the ballroom. Nate followed her gaze and suddenly realized they were talking about two different things. She was right—some kind of confrontation was happening and it didn’t look like it would end well.

“That’s Kaelen and Hanna,” Jennie spoke with an urgency that Nate didn’t fully understand, and then it dawned on him. The gossip floating around school was that Hanna dumped her boyfriend of two years for Kaelen only a week before the dance. From the looks of the boy standing stiffly across from the new couple on the patio outside, he must have been the one that was dumped.

“Who’s that?” Nate asked Jennie.

“Zane, and he’s hot tempered. Got kicked off the football team for beating up, well, everybody smaller than…” Before Jennie finished her sentence, Nate began to move.

“Stay here,” he said firmly before weaving his way through the crowd to reach the patio door.

Inside, hardly anyone noticed Nate slip through the door and out onto the patio. The band had started in on a song with an upbeat tempo and the dance floor filled with another wave of students.

Once Nate was through the door, he quickly began to realize the level of danger. Hanna’s face was white with terror and she and Kaelen stood unnaturally stiff as they talked to Zane. Hanna knew something Nate didn’t but had no way to warn him.

“Go back inside, Nate,” Zane directed his words to Nate but didn’t take his eyes off Hanna and Kaelen.

“Probably a good idea,” Hanna said, her voice trembling.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Nate responded coolly.

While he was talking, he managed to edge a little closer to Kaelen and Hanna without Zane reacting. Now that he was looking at Zane from their perspective, he could finally see why Hanna was so terrified. Just inside Zane’s partially zipped sweatshirt, Nate could distinctly see the barrel of gun sticking out, aimed directly at the nervous couple. Nate forced himself to take a deep breath before he spoke, just to make sure he had time to choose his words carefully, and then cautiously he took one step forward, hoping to redirect Zane’s anger towards him.

It worked. Zane shifted the gun and shouted, “Don’t come any closer or I’ll shoot you!”

Nate could clearly hear fear in Zane’s voice. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He was just hurt and overreacting. Being a protector had exposed Nate to some grisly crimes. He’d seen cold-blooded murder first hand. This was different. Maybe Nate could save Zane from his own impulsive behavior. He certainly could understand how love could make you a little crazy.

Behind his back, Nate carefully used one of his hands to signal Hanna. While Nate kept him talking, Kaelen and Hanna began to noiselessly edge their way back towards the patio door.

“You don’t want to shoot me, Zane,” Nate said, holding Zane’s fiery gaze. “What you want is to go back in time, to have Hanna again, right?”

Hanna and Kaelen were just a handful of feet from the patio doors when Hanna’s high heel caught in a divot on the sidewalk and she stumbled. Kaelen caught her before she fell but the sudden commotion spooked Zane. Acting only on the pure adrenaline now coursing through his veins, he turned towards the commotion on the patio and pulled the trigger at the same time. The sound of the gun going off was deafening as it bounced off the mountainside and returned to them as a thunderous echo.

In a split second, Nate reacted. He wasn’t close enough to Zane to grab the gun from him so he did the next best thing. He put himself between the bullet and Hanna, who was now frantically trying to open the patio door.

Inside the ballroom, chaos broke out. Jennie had pushed her way to the doors and watched helplessly as Nate absorbed the bullet and landed in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Someone behind her yelled out over the deafening music, “Call 911! Someone’s been shot.”

Jennie didn’t care if Nate told her to wait in the ballroom. She thrust open the doors, exposing herself to Zane’s firepower. For a just a second her eyes locked onto Zane’s. Regret had already begun to set in. He was trembling, shaking so badly that he lost control of the gun and it fell to the ground with a dull clank. Already, sirens raged in the background, warning Zane that his capturers were on their way. Zane looked at the gun and then he forced his gaze to meet Jennie’s one more time, as if for the first time realizing what he had done.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed to her and then he turned and stumbled away out into the dark night.

Before he was even out of sight, Jennie ran to Nate and dropped to her knees, thinking he was already dead. She stretched out her bare hands and began stroking his soft wheat-colored hair. When he groaned and rolled over, she shrieked, first from the surprise and then out of pure joy. Before he could respond, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. Tears were coming now fast and furious, dripping from her cheeks and onto Nate’s skin, leaving a warm, wet sensation that rivaled the cool night air. The minute their skin connected, the sensation of warmth and comfort that had come in the past flowed effortlessly between them.

“Jen,” he said, his words sounding muffled from their awkward position. Jennie either didn’t hear him or couldn’t bring herself to let go.

“Jen,” he said, more firmly this time, “I’m okay. I didn’t get hit. I just fell down.”

Finally, with this assurance she pulled back. Still a little disoriented by the fall, Nate first sat up and got his bearings before finally slowly rising to his feet.

“You really didn’t get hit?” she asked. Nate pulled back his dark coat to show her that there were no bullet wounds. As if she needed proof, she ran her hands thoroughly across his chest and stomach. Nate smiled at her reaction and tried not to enjoy her touch while at the same time storing away the memories to savor another time.

By now, students had begun to venture out onto the small porch and police were everywhere. The dance was prematurely shut down and the hotel became a crime scene with Jennie and Nate stuck in the middle of it. The rest of their night was spent answering questions and helping the police in any way they could. Finally, near midnight they were free to go.

The air had turned chilly with winter moisture. Nate was quick to notice Jennie shivering on the way out to the limo. Braiden and Marissa were long gone; it was just the two of them now walking in the dark of night. Nate took off his coat and wrapped it around Jennie’s shoulders. They were quiet as they walked, both frazzled from the night’s events. On the ride home, they sat close together but not touching. So much had changed in such a short period of time. Jennie wanted to crawl into Nate’s arms, but he seemed lost in his own thoughts. Still feeling cold, she slipped her hands into the wide pockets of his coat but recoiled when she felt the cold metal of a bullet in the right hand pocket.

Jennie felt her stomach lurch as she tried to make sense of her discovery. To be sure, she was right, she rolled the bullet between her thumb and her fingers, feeling the rough edges that had been malformed as it was pushed through the barrel of Zane’s gun.

It couldn’t be,
she thought. She glanced over at Nate; he appeared to be focused on something outside the window. Taking great care to be inconspicuous, she began systematically running her fingers across the front of his coat. The fabric was soft and cool to the touch and just when she thought she might be losing her mind, her pinky finger snagged on a small bullet sized hole several inches below the collar.

Jennie could actually feel her heartbeat surge inside of her chest as she tried to come to grips with the tangible evidence of what seemed to be an impossibility. No matter how she rationalized it, she knew that pinky-sized tear was a bullet hole and that Nate shouldn’t be sitting next to her in the limo.

“Pull over,” she burst out suddenly. Nate turned to find her ripping off his coat like it was made of venomous snakes. In the dark, he could see her green eyes filled with bewilderment. Once it was off, Jennie nearly threw the coat at him.

“Pull over,” she cried out again as she dug through her purse, looking for her phone.

Jennie was so upset she hadn’t even noticed them pull up in front of her house. Once she realized she was home, she threw the door open and scrambled out of the car. Feeling equally confused by her sudden and rash behavior, Nate followed her out.

“Jen,” he called out as he trailed behind her. “Jen, stop!”

Once they reached the porch, Jennie finally did stop but the front door opened and her father stepped out, interrupting them. Clustered just behind Jennie’s father were her mother and sister, looking equally worried.

“The police called,” Jennie’s father Alex said, wrapping his arms protectively around her. “Are you all right?”

Finally, the night’s events took their toll and Jennie began crying, letting out great sobs that she’d been holding in for hours. Her family hovered around her asking questions and trying to comfort her. Unsure what else to do, Nate slipped away, unnoticed except by Jennie’s father, who watched his departure with curious eyes. Before he ever reached his car, Jennie’s family had taken her inside, closed the door behind them and with finality turned off the porch light.

It wasn’t until Nate was getting ready for bed later that night that he discovered the hole in the tuxedo coat. He felt sick to his stomach as he realized that Jennie had probably already discovered the tear made by the bullet. At least now he understood her strange behavior. Immediately, he thrust his hand in the pocket and found nothing. The bullet he’d so carefully hidden was gone. Nate moaned and let his head fall down in defeat.

This complication was so much bigger than anything he’d ever faced. He’d had to explain a lot of crazy things to the people he protected, but this time, his actions seemed unexplainable. He was in over his head and he knew it. Putting his pride aside, he quickly decided to call Celeste. For the first time in all the years they’d worked together he called her not out of fear, but because he really needed her. Not long after the phone was placed back in its cradle, he collapsed on the bed and waited with his eyes closed for her knock at the door.

At Jennie’s house, she pulled the tiny bullet out of her purse and placed it in her nightstand drawer before climbing into bed. As she lay in bed unable to sleep, thoughts about Nate rattled around like thousands of tiny puzzle pieces begging to be put together into some kind of plausible picture. It seemed the harder she tried to make sense of the night’s events, the more confused she felt. There were so many things about Nate that didn’t seem to fit, and yet she hadn’t acknowledged them until tonight. Little things, things that were unique about him. There had to be more information. Things she still didn’t know, things she couldn’t understand. She hoped that was the case; otherwise there was no way she could live with the terrifying reality that she was quickly falling in love with him.

Finally, after hours of wrestling with her own thoughts, exhaustion took over and she succumbed to sleep.

Nate must have checked his cell phone every hour for the rest of the night. He’d learned to enjoy sleeping even though his body didn’t require it. Normally, he spent four or five hours a night sleeping but the night following the dance, he was too nervous to sleep for any length of time. Finally, at six thirty in the morning he received a text.

Meet me for donuts.

Nate stared blankly at the message. Celeste wasn’t the best texter. She’d only been using a cell phone for a couple of years and would often forget to write the entire message.

Nate had no idea what donut shop she had in mind or what time she wanted to meet. Nate climbed out of bed and showered, realizing he’d better get started looking for her.

An hour later, he found Celeste sitting in front of a large, half empty box of donuts. Considering she was more than likely there to discipline Nate for his mistakes at the dance, she seemed relatively happy. Nate sat down and watched her systematically lick the chocolate frosting from her fingers one by one. Maybe the donuts were soothing to her, or maybe she was going to reassign Nate and she knew the struggle was over. Either way, her relaxed demeanor was a welcome change.

“Have one,” Celeste said with her mouth full, “they’re delicious.” Nate picked up a maple bar and placed it on a napkin in front of him. Celeste took another one out and started in on it. Nate couldn’t take the suspense anymore.

“I know you know about my disastrous date,” he began. “I also know that you know what a mess this assignment is turning into.”

Celeste let out a little chuckle. “Yeah, you are entertaining,” she said, uncharacteristically amused by his mishaps.

“You’re not mad?” He questioned.

“Naw, you were just trying to do the right thing…mmm…I just love these donuts.”

She paused and looked up toward the display counter as if she was trying to decide if she wanted some for the road before continuing.

“Besides, Kaelen’s protector failed and you saved his life, so the boss is happy.”

Nate’s eyes grew wide as he understood. “Kaelen and Hanna weren’t supposed to die, and I stepped in and saved them?”

“Yup,” she said. “That Kaelen kid, he’s going to build on the moon someday...but you did make a big mess letting Jennie wear that coat.”

Nate hung his head; so much for enjoying small victories.

Currently between donuts, Celeste began to eye the maple bar sitting on the napkin in front of Nate.

“Are you going to eat that?” she asked.

Recognizing that Celeste wasn’t really asking, he slid the napkin across the table and watched her attack the maple bar.

“What you need is a distraction,” she said, spitting tiny bits of donut as she spoke.

“Please finish your bite before you talk,” Nate complained. As soon as the words came out, he wished to take them back. She was his superior and she was Celeste, after all. Celeste shot him a withering glance before addressing him again.

“Do you want my help or not?” she asked. She looked a little irritated, but by now she’d accumulated quite a bit of chocolate and powdered sugar around her lips so it was hard for Nate to take her seriously.