The Bodyguard ✔

Chapter Twenty-Four

We look each other in the eyes, holding a silent conversation in our minds.

I know he thinks I'm lying about something, that I'm holding something back. I must've made myself more suspicious by sneaking around in my father's office, his temporary domain. I ask myself how far he'll go to find out what I'm holding to myself.

Frank's look shifts to my hand covering my ribs. Something in his face softens.

He takes a step towards me but immediately freezes when he hears my voice: "Don't!" He looks at me, realising how scared I actually am of him.

After a moment of hesitating, he again walks up to me.

"No, don't come closer!"

With sad-looking eyes and a painful face, he ignores me and takes my hand from my ribs. His presence, being so close, makes adrenalin rush through my veins, being reminded of Frank's impetuous behavior just moments ago, and his touch, stinging on my skin from hostility, makes me act instinctively. I slap him in the face. He lets go of my hand and takes a step back.

I leave him behind standing fixed like a statue, when I flee upstairs, to my room. I lock the door. I really don't want him coming in now. I raise my shirt to examine my ribs underneath it. The sharp edge of the kitchen counter has left behind a red horizontal line on my skin. It's nothing: it will fade.

I go sit on the ground against my bed, bend my legs and lay my forehead on my knees. I'm beginning to think my father has made a big mistake by hiring Frank: he spies on Lucas, after having punched him, he lies to me, I don't know anything about him and he doesn't listen to me. He has lost his temper. He's too strong. He has a gun.

I jump back up on my feet. Your mind is overreacting. What if I'm not overreacting? What if he's seriously dangerous? He's too young to be experienced: he can make mistakes, unforgivable miscalculations.

I cover my face with my hands. I have to tell someone. I look for my phone and when I find it, I notice I've received messages. Assuming they're from my dad, I'm left surprised they're not. My father hasn't wrote me back in days. Is he being that busy? My plan to write him has changed when I see that Lucas, instead, has written me several messages.

The first two sound neutral, saying that I don't have to apologise for leaving his party so sudden and asking if everything is alright, because I left in a hurry. His next three messages change tone. He persistently asks if everything is alright, because he found out a couple of girls at the party were drugged against their will. I wasn't the only one.

From the content in his messages, I can tell he doesn't know who drugged the other girls and me. I quickly reply I was drugged as well and that I suspect someone. After hesitating a moment, I add that I'm not really feeling very comfortable with Frank lately. I press send and let my phone fall on the sheets of my bed.

I go sit at my room's window and look outside. The trees are not moving: there probably is no wind. I can find no clouds painted on the midnight sky as well, only a bright, full moon and some stars. I recall the memory of the first time I saw Frank. It was downstairs, in the hallway. I was feeling terrible, because my dad was leaving. I felt ashamed of how things had escalated that one night with Lucas, how I run away with his jacket. I was so lonely, having nobody to understand how I was afraid all the time. No one to look at me and to see me: to see I was carrying the fear of the abductors I have never seen, a crime against me I had never witnessed and of having lost time forever.

I was losing my mind. I lost my touch with life. Frank looked at me, then and there, and he saw me. I couldn't understand what I was feeling back then and I can't explain it now. I've disliked him for a while, playing with my feelings and all: pushing me against a wall. He probably is that kind of guy: playing with girls like it's nothing, not realising what he's doing. I could punch myself in the face if I would let him have kissed me. Instead, Frank punched Lucas in the face. I still can't believe that actually happened. But after a while, I didn't mind his presence in the house that much.

Outside, all snow has almost melted.

The memory of the cutting cold overwhelms me. Was it yesterday? Or was it the day before, on which I fled into the freezing forest while hallucinating? If Frank wouldn't have come after me...

A tear rolls over my cheek.

But then I found out he's spying on Lucas and that he's keeping something from me, lying to me. I even more realised I didn't know Frank at all when, just a couple of minutes ago, he completely lost his temper. He even got physical in a minor degree. To what bodyguard does that happen? And I slapped him. I can't recall that I have ever slapped someone in my life. This is not okay. It can never happen again.

I stand up and start pacing up and down in my bedroom. This should never have happened in the first place.

My phone, laying on my bed, lights up.

I stop pacing when I hear the wooden staircase crack under heavy footsteps.

Frank is coming up.