“When I can’t be around, he will guard your heart for me.” He hugged both me and the bear as I giggled and didn’t completely understand what he said, but I was just happy with the hug I was getting.

I can still hear his voice as clear as the day he said it to me. And as much as I hate my father for everything he did and how he destroyed our lives back then, I know there will always be that little girl inside me that will never stop loving the man he was.

When I packed to leave my apartment for the renovation, I put my bear in my bag because he is the most precious thing I own. Not in monetary value but in such a treasured memory that I would never be able to replace.

A knock on my door startles me, and I quickly push him back under the bed so Forrest doesn’t see him.

Before I even have time to get up, his voice comes through the closed door. “There is some dinner for you at your door. Eat it,” his gruff voice mumbles through the wood, and then he is gone.

“Shit, how long have I been in here?” Checking my watch, I see it is nine pm, and he probably thought I was never coming out.

Little did he know I’ve been sitting in here trying to analyze the complex man he is.

Why am I attracted to a man who drives me crazy?

I make him so agitated, yet he never backs down from me.

For someone who is so stern and arrogant, why is he so attentive to me? Knowing what I need before I do.

And the biggest question that is spinning around in my head is why the hell when he touches me does it do the opposite of what I feel with anyone else?

It gives me a strange warmth and calmness that I don’t know how to understand. Instead of wanting to crawl out of my skin, I just want the contact between us to last that little bit longer. But he seems to know just the right amount of what I need and then pulls away, though he is never far away.

Just the simple act of turning up in my office tonight so I wasn’t on my own was something I didn’t know I needed, until he looked at me with those deep brooding eyes.

But what really threw me was those words in the elevator. They keep repeating in my head.

“You are off limits… and I will kill him.”

Those aren’t the words a man uses when speaking about a friend.