Too Late, Guardian: I Choose Him Now

*The night I finally decided to confess ten years of secret love to my guardian, I found another woman wearing his robe and his scent on her skin.*

The silk robe Derrick Harmon wore wasn't his own.

It hung open, revealing the hard planes of his chest, still damp from the shower. But it was the scent clinging to the fabric-a suffocating cloud of vanilla and gardenia-that told Alaina Spencer the truth before her eyes could fully process the scene.

She stood frozen in the marble foyer of his Bel Air mansion, rain-soaked and shivering, a pathetic brown paper bag of cold medicine clutched against her chest. The October rain had plastered her hair to her scalp and soaked through her thin jacket, but the cold that seeped into her bones now had nothing to do with the weather.

A tall, impossibly beautiful woman she recognized from every billboard on Sunset Boulevard glided down the grand staircase. Ashley Vance. The supermodel wrapped a proprietary arm around Derrick's waist and smiled down at Alaina with a look of sweet, venomous pity.

"Oh, you must be the ward. Alaina, right?" Ashley's voice dripped with honeyed condescension. "Don't worry. Derrick's feeling much better now."

She let the robe fall open a little more, revealing a long expanse of pale thigh.

"I took *very* good care of him."

The words hit Alaina like a physical blow. The paper bag in her arms, still warm from the pharmacy, suddenly felt like it was branding her-a scarlet letter of her own pathetic foolishness. Her fingers went numb.

And then Derrick appeared.

His jet-black hair was damp, his handsome face etched with exhaustion and something else-annoyance. When his gray eyes landed on her standing in the foyer, dripping rainwater onto his expensive marble floor, his expression hardened into the cold, appraising mask she knew best.

Her guardian. The man who had saved her from bullies when she was nine years old. The man she had loved in silence for a decade.

"Alaina." His voice was hoarse from the fever, flat and unwelcoming. "What are you doing here?"

*I came to take care of you.* The words died in her throat. What a fool she was. He didn't need her. He had never needed her.

Ashley pressed herself closer to his side, planting her flag with the confidence of a conquering general. And Derrick-Derrick did not push her away.

That silence was the loudest sound Alaina had ever heard.

Something inside her cracked. But instead of shattering, the pieces rearranged themselves into something harder. Something colder.

She had spent ten years being invisible. Ten years loving a man who saw her as nothing more than an obligation, a burden he had inherited along with his father's second marriage. She had learned to swallow her pain, to smile politely, to disappear into the wallpaper of his life.

Not tonight.

Alaina lifted her chin. She walked forward, her worn sneakers leaving wet footprints on the marble, and set the paper bag down on the ornate console table with deliberate, almost ceremonial care.

Then she looked at Ashley. Really looked at her-a slow, assessing sweep that stripped away the supermodel's veneer of superiority and found the insecure social climber beneath.

When Alaina finally spoke, her voice was eerily calm.

"I brought medicine. But I can see you've already found yourself a prescription." Her lips curved into a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I hope the side effects aren't too severe."

Ashley's smug expression flickered. "Excuse me?"

Derrick's brow furrowed, a flash of something unreadable crossing his face. "Alaina-"

But she was already turning away.

He caught her wrist. His grip was warm, firm, and for one traitorous heartbeat, her body leaned toward him, craving more of that touch. She hated herself for it.

"It's late. The rain is heavy," he said, his voice dropping into the paternal tone that had always twisted the knife in her chest. "Did you drive yourself?"

She looked down at his hand on her wrist, then back up at his face. The question she had swallowed for ten years burned on her tongue.

*Did you ever see me? Even once?*

Instead, she pulled her arm free. "Does it matter?"

He stiffened, and something dark flickered in his eyes. Guilt? Regret? She didn't care anymore. She refused to.

"Ashley," he said quietly, as if the name itself was an explanation. "She's just a fling."

There it was. The final nail in the coffin of her decade-long devotion.

Alaina let out a soft, humorless laugh. "Good for you. I hope she's worth the flu."

She turned and walked out the heavy oak door, stepping into the cold, cleansing rain. She did not look back.

If she had, she would have seen Derrick Harmon standing in the doorway, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle jumped, his hands balled into fists inside the pockets of his robe. His face was a thundercloud, dark with something that looked terrifyingly like regret.

But Alaina didn't look back.

And in the shadows of the second-floor landing, unseen by anyone, a figure watched the entire scene unfold through the lens of a smartphone camera. The red recording light blinked steadily in the dark.

The video was uploaded to a private cloud server ten minutes later, tagged with a single name: *Julian Rhodes IV*.