Page 31 of Awestruck (Starstruck Love Stories #4)

Elliot swears, echoing my own thoughts. “He’s crazy.”

“Is he?” I reply. A shiver runs through me, and I tuck my arms around myself to stave off the chill left by Markham’s departure.

Muttering something about how a Havenford fisherman has his jacket, Elliot wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me against his side.

As before, his body warms mine, but the heat does not reach my center.

Uncertainty and insecurity sit like an icy barrier around my soul.

I feel so ill equipped to process this development, and a voice in the back of my mind is telling me that Markham’s proposal might very well be the only way I can have the future I have wanted my entire life.

“You’re not considering him, are you?” Elliot asks sharply, as if I spoke my thoughts out loud.

I wince at his tone. “He is right, Elliot.”

“He’s nervous.”

“He said he has thought about this from the start.”

“He can say whatever he wants, but that doesn’t make it true. If he’s so convinced that marrying him is what’s best for Candora, then why did he wait until you started your campaign? Why not weeks ago? Months ago? He doesn’t have a chance of winning, and he knows it.”

I wish I could be so certain. “Yes, I gained some ground in Windgaard yesterday,” I say, “but one informal meet-and-greet on the street does not counteract years of disparity.” Sighing, I step away from his hold so I can look him in the eyes.

“You know as well as I do that he has the majority of the people on his side. I have been on the road for mere days and have only a week and a half to change the minds of an entire country.”

“You don’t know how people will vote,” he argues. “The loudest voices are always the ones of dissent.”

“That has no bearing on this!” I start to pace in the hope that it will calm my racing heart. “The nobility have always held more power than they ought, and there needs to be a change.”

“I won’t argue that,” Elliot snaps back, “but that doesn’t mean you should lie down at Grimstad’s feet and roll over.”

I shoot him a glare to match his scowl. “A political alliance is not a surrender, Mr. Reid.”

“Giving into fear and throwing away everything you stand for isn’t a selfless act!”

His words feel like a slap, and I march up to him, wishing I were taller so I could meet him eye to eye. “I am not afraid,” I say through my teeth.

“You are, and that’s okay.” His anger fades as he stands there, mere inches from me but feeling so much farther when his expression loses all traces of emotion.

A mask. “Grimstad blindsided you, not just with his proposal but with his candidacy in the first place. You’ve barely had any time to defend your worthiness for a throne that was always supposed to be yours, and no one can blame you for feeling like you’re out of your depth.

So you’re scared. So what? Suck it up and keep moving forward. ”

“‘Suck it up’,” I whisper, furrowing my brow. “Have you forgotten that I am a princess, Mr. Reid?”

“Have you forgotten that you and I are friends now, Your Highness?” His mask slips, making way for frustration as he shakes his head and looks at the place Markham disappeared behind a house.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to keep my opinions to myself.

But I care about you too much to let you make a choice you’re going to regret. ”

Several words bounce around in my head with equal force but completely differing sentiments.

Let you. Regret. I care about you. As much as I want to remind Elliot of his place, he is right to worry about regret.

But caring about me? It feels unthinkable, even after seeing the way he has run himself ragged trying to keep me safe.

I am a job to him. A stressor.

You and I are friends.

As a breeze carries his unfamiliar scent to my nose, I return to that moment in his arms when we danced. He did not feel like a friend then. He was something different.

Something dangerous.

You two are a beautiful couple.

“Elliot,” I murmur, unsure what I can say.

“Oi! Elliot!” Hex’s voice cuts through the air, startling me, and my brother lopes over to us and plants his hand on Elliot’s shoulder. “I reckon you and I should see which of us can come the closest to Rand’s stone throw, yeah?”

Elliot’s gaze remains fixed on the houses behind me, as if he did not notice Hex at all.

Hex frowns. “Mate, what—”

“He’s here,” Elliot hisses, instantly jumping into action. Grabbing my arm, he pulls me behind his back at the same time he snatches his gun from its holster. “The lurker, ten o’clock.”

Swearing, Hex whips his head around to look in the right direction and bursts into a run, straight for a figure who vanishes down a side street.

Fear washes over me, leaving me dizzy. “Lurker?” I gasp. “What—”

Elliot stuffs his fingers into his mouth and whistles so loudly that my ears ring, then he backs me up against the wall, arms on either side of my head as he shields me with his body. My eyes lock on the shiny metal of his gun near my ear, my thoughts jumbled, and I can’t look away.

“Sir!” Multiple voices echo the word around us. Palace guards coming up from the beach?

“Elliot!” Sander.

“Possible hostile, south-southwest,” Elliot growls, pulling my attention to him. “Five with me. The rest, support pursuit.” He barely turns his head toward his men, keeping his sharp focus on me.

“Details,” Sander demands as several guards rush off in the same direction as Hex.

Sliding his arm behind my back, Elliot pulls me forward, not giving me a chance to get my bearings before he’s ushering me up a different street, back toward the inn. Half a dozen guards, my brother included, surround us as we go. “Same man,” he says, the words clipped.

“As Breckenholt?” Sander asks.

I stumble on a cobblestone, but Elliot holds so tightly to me that I come nowhere close to falling. A blessing, I suppose, as I try to understand what is happening. The same man as who?

“He was half hidden, watching the princess.”

Sander swears and runs a hand through his hair. “Hex?”

“Went after him.”

“Good. What do you need from me?” I have never seen Sander this serious or focused, even as the less talkative twin, and he almost looks like a different person as he matches Elliot’s long strides perfectly. My carefree brother has been replaced by an imposing soldier, ready to follow orders.

Slowing his steps, Elliot waits for the guard in front of us to do a quick sweep of an intersecting street before we resume our hurried pace. “I need you to find Grimstad.”

“What?” The word slips off my tongue at the same time I try to come to a halt, though Elliot’s arm makes stopping impossible. “Grimstad? Why would—”

“Keep moving, Princess,” Elliot growls.

I gape at him, still fighting his hold. “You are giving me an order?”

“Sun’s down. Your day’s over, and you promised to obey. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Flashbacks of him carrying me over his shoulders in Invem fill my mind, and I relent, letting him continue guiding me up the street. “At least explain what is happening,” I demand, breathless from our speed.

Elliot glances down at me, his jaw tight and indecision in his eyes.

If it were up to him, I am certain he would tell me nothing, but at this point he knows better than to fight me in every instance.

He chooses to concede this particular battle.

“Remember the man I told you about? The one watching the hotel in Breckenholt?”

Barely. “You said he was in Kirkstead as well, yes?”

“Inside the church,” Sander confirms.

So were a hundred other people. “You told me I did not need to worry about that man,” I argue, which is the very reason I had all but forgotten about him.

“That was before he showed up here,” Elliot says. “Sander.” He nods to his left, and Sander slips down an alley and disappears. Presumably to find Markham.

As the streets grow darker, my fear and confusion dim as well, and each step away from the beach is like a step toward normalcy.

My thoughts still, leaving me with only facts rather than unfounded fears.

An unidentified Candoran man was in Breckenholt, watching my hotel.

The same man witnessed my disaster of a Q&A.

Here in Havenford, he was, as Elliot put it, ‘half hidden’ and ‘watching’ me.

That is not much to go on.

We are all silent until we reach the inn, where Elliot directs half of the guards to check the building and my room despite two unfortunate guards having been stationed here all day.

The rest of us remain outside in the chill dusk air, and I cannot simply stand here and accept this course of events.

“Elliot?”

As his eyes sweep the empty street, my bodyguard acknowledges me with merely a grunt.

“Did he have a weapon?”

That catches his attention, and he looks at me with a furrowed brow. “What?”

I fold my arms. “This ‘possible hostile.’ Was he armed?”

“Freya.”

“Did you see a weapon, Elliot?”

He grits his teeth. “No. But that doesn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t mean you need to jump to the worst conclusions, correct,” I finish for him, anger rising in my throat. All of this madness for what could be nothing at all?

Elliot narrows his eyes. “Three sightings in four locations is a pattern.”

“Markham has been at all four.”

“And you know how I feel about Markham Grimstad,” he snaps.

The two guards outside with us glance at each other with wide eyes, and I can only imagine their thoughts.

The princess is arguing with her bodyguard yet again.

It was foolish to think Elliot and I had come to trust each other enough to not get on the other’s nerves so thoroughly, but before Markham proposed, things had felt different between us.

Elliot had relaxed and let me see not the soldier but the man.

He had trusted me to take command of the day, and we were both happier for it.

One possible threat, likely nothing dangerous at all, should not be enough to send us right back to the beginning.

“Leave Markham out of this,” I say, keeping my voice at a calm, normal volume despite my frustration with the man in front of me. “What do you plan to do when Sander finds him?”

Elliot folds his arm, and the gun still clutched in his fingers catches the light from the inn’s windows above us, putting me on edge. “I plan to get answers.”

“If he does not have answers?”

“He will.”

I glare at him. “Humor me.”

Clenching his jaw, Elliot signals to the two guards, sending them to each corner of the narrow block and leaving us alone. “What are you doing?” he asks, his voice strained.

I lift my chin. “I am questioning your judgment, Mr. Reid.”

“My—” He huffs, shaking his head. “This is my job.”

“And this is my country,” I counter, waving a hand around us.

“I have spent my entire life in Candora, and while we are not a perfect country and have our share of problems, in my experience, Candorans are good to each other. No one would resort to threatening me if they did not have a legitimate reason.”

He groans. “That is a naive and dangerous way to look at the world for someone planning to lead a country of flawed human beings, and it’ll get you killed. People do selfish things. All the time.”

“Yes,” I agree, “but if you are going to expect every stranger you come across to be inherently evil instead of choosing to trust them, then how can I expect them to trust me?”

Holstering his gun, Elliot shakes his head and looks at me like I have no comprehension of what is happening around me. “Freya, this isn’t—”

“I am not saying you are wrong about this lurker,” I say, “but I am asking you to be less rash. To think before you act, Elliot!”

“How can I think when I can’t focus on anything but you?”

As Elliot freezes, his eyes wide, my breath seems to turn to ice in my lungs. He looks as shocked by his admission as I am. Whether it was a secret that slipped out or a revelation to us both, I cannot say.

“What does that mean?” I whisper, once again thinking of the way Elsa’s mum thought Elliot and I were romantically involved.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“Elliot.”

He lifts a hand, refusing to look at me now.

“You’re right,” he says in a measured tone, like each word requires a good deal of effort.

I can almost see his mind trying to make sense of this moment as he stares at the cobblestones between us.

“I didn’t have enough information to assume the lurker was dangerous.

But if I don’t factor in every possible threat, I can’t…

” He looks up, his eyes stormy and his lungs heaving.

“I need you to be safe, Freya. If I don’t know that I’ve done everything in my power to make that happen, I’ll never… ”

Though deep down I know it is a bad idea, I cross the distance between us and place my palm on his cheek.

His skin is warm and rough with stubble, and his eyes are fixed on mine, so full of emotions that I could not begin to comprehend everything he is feeling right now.

He cares so much, and I wish I knew what haunts him. Why he carries so much fear.

“Okay,” I say as gently as I can, as if using any force will frighten him away. “I will trust you, Elliot Reid, if you will promise to trust me in return. We need each other. Neither of us can do this alone.”

Exhaling slowly, he nods and wraps his fingers around my wrist, holding my hand against his jaw.

Those emotions behind his eyes are still in full view, nothing hidden, and I might get lost in his gaze trying to decipher them.

“I trust you,” he breathes, shifting infinitesimally closer.

I feel each and every millimeter that disappears between us.

“You and I are still friends,” I remind him, though the words do not seem to fit like they did only yesterday.

Elliot does not acknowledge my comment, nor does he move until the guards open the door to the inn and tell him that the space is clear. His hand falls, as does mine, and we both seem to be waiting for the other to decide what happens next. Which of us is truly in command?

Perhaps there is not an answer to that, just as there is no word I can use for the feeling in my heart that grows stronger with each second I look into Elliot’s eyes.

Not one I can acknowledge.