“How so?”
“Success requires personal sacrifice. It always does. You turned down an easy life your father handed you so you could pursue your own dreams. He didn’t give you any loans to do anything you did. He didn’t hold your hand and walk you through what the hell you were supposed to be doing. Sure, maybe he paid for your education. Great. Woo-hoo. You said so yoursel
f that you sacrificed your personal life with women you cared about so you could climb the ranks. Spent countless sleepless nights probably hunched over a desk much cheaper than the one I found you at just to close a deal a little quicker and build your reputation. What you did took hard work, focus, and personal sacrifice. Where you came from didn’t matter.”
“But does coming from an underprivileged family make someone more deserving of success?” I asked.
“No. Because it’s not the child’s fault the parents did well for themselves.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“What did you sacrifice to get to where you are now?”
I watched her face grow dark as she kept picking at her food.
“If you don’t want to answer—”
“It’s fine,” she said curtly. “I’ll try to sum it up. When I entered the military, I chose to sacrifice my femininity. Being more masculine kept me from getting underestimated so often, but it also made it difficult to form romantic relationships. Sacrificing my femininity and, therefore, my personal life allowed me to climb to a rank very few women see in the military. But when women weren’t allowed to test for the position I wanted, I left to find my own way.”
I leaned back in my chair as Sam drew a deep breath through her nose.
“Then, I sacrificed my personal health for the first private contractor that hired me. Sleepless nights, very few showers. Throwing myself onto bombers and taking knife stabs for innocent people. I sacrificed the way I viewed the world. I sacrificed the little bit of beauty I was able to hang onto in order to do that job. Then, when my personal sacrifice wasn’t good enough, I hopped to where I am now.”
I studied Sam, taking in how vulnerable she was becoming with me as I took a bite of my food.
“Sacrifice is different for everyone. I sacrificed everything that makes me a woman to do what I do best, which is protect people. There’s darkness in this world, Derek, a darkness that looms over it that you would never be able to digest. And people like me stand at the edge of it, keeping their backs to the light so they can ward it off. So they can protect those who dwell in the light from the agony that darkness brings. I’m good at that. I always have been.”
“Why have you always been good at it?” I asked.
Sam turned her face toward me, her saddened eyes connecting with mine as they took my breath away. There was no going back. I had asked the question I knew I was going to regret. I had no idea if Sam was going to answer it, but the pain that shot through her eyes convinced me that if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.
The pain and the desolation this woman had endured was great. And I wanted to shine a light on her face so she could feel the warmth of the sun against her skin again.
“Because I had to be,” Sam said. “It was a requirement of my childhood.”
Chapter 8
Sam
I DIDN’T WANT TO RELIVE my childhood. It wasn’t something I enjoyed talking about, so I never did. The only person I ever trusted with anything remotely close to a childhood memory was John, and even that was tempered. Facts were left out in favor of the point I was trying to make, and that was the only glimpse anyone would ever get of it.
Ever.
The conversation turned back toward a lighter subject as we ate and drank. We fell into an easy rhythm of learning more about one another, and the chatting was nice. Topical and easy, which wasn’t something I’d encountered in a long time. I didn’t feel the need to look over my shoulder or count all the exits in the room. I didn’t feel it was necessary to know how many air vents were strewn around the kitchen or how many waitstaff were employed in the restaurant at the time of our arrival. It was nice, shutting that part of my brain off and enjoying the very rich wine I kept pouring for myself.
We were two bottles in once we finished dinner, and the two of us were pretty drunk.
Derek took my hand, and we headed back to the car. The driver drove us all the way up to our bungalow, where we stumbled down the pier and made our way to our bungalow. It really was a beautiful sight with the nighttime sky coating our little island, the reflection of the water mirroring the sky. The horizon was almost invisible as the water stilled, and I studied it through the open doors of my room. The ocean breeze was salted and comforting. The warmth of the Hawaiian air was caressing my exposed legs. The wine was dropping every wall I normally put up whenever I woke up in the mornings, and I found myself feeling freer than I had in a long time.
“What would you have done if you hadn’t been a bodyguard?” Derek asked.
I looked back at him, my body leaning heavily against the doorframe as he lay on my bed. His legs were spread wide, and his linen pants were cupping around his massive cock. Heat rose up the back of my neck as I stared at it a bit too long, my face flushing when he caught me eyeing him.
“I enjoy my work,” I said as I closed my eyes. “I couldn’t imagine doing something else.”
“Would you dance? Like your parents wanted?” he asked.