Secret Service

by Tal Bauer

Brennan Walker had my heart in his hands from the moment I first walked into his Oval Office. There is a key to a part of my soul I never knew existed, and he holds that key inside himself. Didn’t matter that I’d never been with a man. Didn’t matter that I had never craved a man.

There are people who should not come together in this world. Reality quakes too strongly beneath the force of their love. I am no one. I am no titan, no giant walking this planet, but if my love for this man was ever tested—if ever the world tried to take him from me—I would rip the sky from the edges of this earth.

We should never have met, because there’s nothing I won’t do for Brennan, and that kind of love—burn the world down, fly the black flag, you are my forever for always—is too dangerous. We are dangerous together.

Years ago, I buried a black box on a beach inside myself, full to the brim of truths I couldn’t face. Reese’s voice is the tide, and his words are waves crashing against my hidden shores. The box is unearthing. Rising.

“You’re under my skin. You’re inside my mind. You’re down deep in my bones. You’re everywhere, and you’re everything. I can’t escape, but I also don’t want to escape. From you, or from this.” His eyes are huge, tumbled sapphires lit on fire. “You feel inevitable. Like I’ve been waiting for you.”

“That’s how you make me feel. I’ve kept this inside myself for years, and then I met you, and… You make me dream impossible dreams.”

Brennan, always remember that good men make their own way when all the options are bad. Choose good. Always choose good.

You fall in love with people for different reasons.

Sheridan, silhouetted in the halo of the open cargo door. I know it’s him even though I can’t see his face. Who else would be behind me with a pair of handcuffs and the interior panel of a SUV door dangling from one wrist?

“What matters is now and what we do with today. Tomorrow is a dream. The past is forgotten. Today, I love you.”

“Danse avec moi, mon amour.”

“Mon cher, tu es l’amour de ma vie.”