Page 18 of Guarded Knight (Echo Valley #3)

Gabriel didn’t sleep on the couch last night. He slept in his truck.

Maybe he met with Anton. Maybe he just didn’t want to be where that alley conversation left us, halfway between a fight and a dangerous collision with our past.

Do we really need to resurrect those feelings?

Not that he owes me anything. He explained himself years ago in typical Gabriel fashion: a few words about PTSD, zero room for misinterpretation. He told me he cared about me. Deeply.

And that he couldn’t be what I deserved.

At least I had the decency to walk away.

And walk away he did. That’s the problem. But that look in his eyes in the alley tells me it wasn’t about him, it wasn’t just about working on his demons like he said all those years ago, but it was about letting me get what he thought I deserved, too…

More than him.

It’s the first time I ever considered that him never coming back was for my benefit and not just his.

But that’s what made my chest so damn empty…

It wasn’t that he had trauma to work through and wanted to focus on himself.

He had a heap of it with war and his mom dying…

I understood it wasn’t a good time for him to be in a relationship.

Hell, I was exploring my independence, too, at college, and convinced myself it just wasn’t the right time.

But I always eventually thought we’d both return to Starlight Canyon one day and pick up where we left off.

But even while I returned, he drifted. Kept his distance. Only showed up for holidays and birthday parties, always on the edge of things. He made efforts to say hi. But he didn’t try to stay. Not in the town we both came from. Not in the life that could’ve included me.

And each time he came back, he was a shadow of himself. It hurt to see him that way and know there was nothing I could do. So I built the wall.

I barely got any work done this morning, and now I need to get to San Jose to meet my new doctor.

As if yesterday wasn’t weird enough, it’s also my first appointment with my new adult CF doctor.

I’ll miss Dr. Hilder. There was so much trust there. Years of it.

God. Every step I take now is a leap of faith.

I’m half-dressed and already on my second round of dry shampoo when Freya pokes her head into my room.

“Almost ready?” she asks, brows drawn.

Freya always comes to the doctor with me. I confessed to her one night when I was a glass of Pinot deep that I hate going alone. She never even let me ask her to come. Just assumed.

And I love her for it. The best friends in the world have a sixth sense for things and know how hard it is for most of us to ask for help.

“‘Ready’ is a funny word,” I murmur.

She throws me an empathetic smile then disappears, reappearing a minute later with her coat and keys in hand. “All right. Let’s do this.”

I reach for my hoodie just as my phone buzzes on the nightstand.

GAbrIEL

YOU READY TO GO? I’M OUT FRONT

No man anticipates needs like this one.

I stare at the screen a second too long.

Freya catches it. “Gabriel?”

I nod. “He’s offered to take me.”

She leans against the doorframe, watching me with something soft and knowing in her expression. “Do you want to go with him instead?”

I shouldn’t, but I do, because no matter how hard I try, being around him, especially when it comes to my disease, something he’s known as long as my family, there’s a comfort in knowing he won’t be rattled, won’t flinch at anything the doctor says. Not that Freya would but, he’s… Gabriel.

He knows it all and has seen me at my worst. Freya has seen me at my best. And every time I go to the doctor, I always fear which version of the future I’m going to get.

“I don’t know what I want,” I admit. “But I don’t think I have a choice.” I pull the hoodie over my head. “I’m either in his truck, or he’s tailing us. And you shouldn’t have to take paid time off for this.”

“After yesterday…” She doesn’t finish and scans my features deliberately. “You sure?”

Damn my heart.

“I’m sure.”

Outside, Gabriel stands next to his truck, with his iconic sunglasses on.

He opens the door for me without a word, and I climb in.

He slides into the driver’s seat beside me.

I buckle in. “Morning.”

He shifts into gear. “Morning.”

And then that’s it. No mention of the bar. No mention of last night.

A small part of me wants to skirt over it and move on. I’m not staying here, and if his past is any indication, he isn’t either, so we’ll be going our separate ways. I’m not sure hearing I deserve the world again from that mouth I once wanted as mine is going to make any of this easier.

But if we don’t talk, we both might erupt because the lava beneath the surface has been heating up.

But I’m not sure how to broach the subject and I’m simultaneously fretting about meeting my new doctor.

But keeping things to myself hardly creates a sense of calm.

Twenty minutes of silence. Then thirty. Then forty-five. It stretches between us, thread pulled tight between two fingers just waiting to snap.

The only sound is the music, low and brooding country soul, from the truck’s speakers. Only the GPS breaks the quiet now and then, cutting through like an unwanted third party.

I don’t look at him, and he doesn’t look at me.

But I’m aware of every breath between us. Every gear shift. Every flex of his hand on the wheel. Every brush of his arm when he reaches for something on the console.

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

By the time we pull up to the hospital, I’m not sure what’s got me more rattled, the appointment, or being alone with him in a place that reminds me how this chasm all began.

He kissed me in a hospital.

It was right before his first deployment.

He was fresh out of SEAL training. His head was shaved, and I remember thinking he was hotter than ever like that.

The shadow of his buzzed jet-black hair gave him an edge, but something about it made him look soft, too.

Touchable. His jaw was tight, his posture military straight. His eyes burned brighter.

He looked like sin and salvation wrapped into one.

I’d been admitted with a chest infection after a cold spiraled too far. No makeup, greasy hair, cheeks blotchy from days of coughing. Next to him in that uniform, I felt like a wet rag tossed in the corner.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, G,” I said, turning my head. “But I’m not exactly dying for anyone to see me like this.”

“Why?” he asked, voice soft. “It’s just me.”

Exactly. Especially you.

He read my mind, my need to be pretty at such a young age; it mattered more than it does now. He reassured me, made me feel special, and… he kissed me.

The world dropped away. My body, so heavy for days, felt light. Untethered. His lips were soft but certain. He smelled like soap and steel and something sharp and clean. It wasn’t a wild kiss. It was reverent. Measured. Almost polite.

That kissed turned into another, small moments of me giggling behind closed doors, snatching another behind them when no one was looking, in the middle of a Sunday dinner while Gabriel and I offered to get whatever was missing from the table or in the hayloft of their barn when I told my mom I’d take the lasagna she made for Luis and Carmen over…

we clung to those last moments before he deployed, never defining them until he had to leave.

That’s when he told me he could never ask me to wait. It stung. I wanted him to want me enough to ask me for more, but in light of how old I was already, that this medicine didn’t exist, that I was possibly only a decade away from dying, it was also selfless.

Then his mom died.

War happened.

And the man he told me I had wasn’t there anymore when I saw him next.

We arrive at the hospital, and he parks in the structure, engine idling for a beat longer than necessary.

I reach for the door handle, but he signals for me not to open it. He rushes out to open it for me and offers me a hand.

I don’t need it but I want it.

I don’t want to be alone.

Not right now anyway.

I’ve only just gotten up on the table, the crinkle of butcher paper loud beneath my skin. The gown is open in the front, standard for a pulmonary exam, and no one ever warns you just how cold it feels when you’re braless under fluorescent lighting, trying not to look as vulnerable as you feel.

The nurse gives me a kind smile as she finishes jotting something on my chart.

“The doctor’s just stepped in with a late patient, but she shouldn’t be long. You’re her next visit, so just sit tight, and I’ll check back in if it’s more than ten minutes.”

I nod, gripping the edge of the gown where it crosses at my chest.

She exits with a soft click of the door, and then it’s just me and Gabriel.

I cross my arms loosely, then uncross them. My legs dangle off the table, and even under my jeans, I have goosebumps. I shift again, but there’s no getting comfortable on a surface designed for exposure.

Gabriel stands a few feet away, leaning against the wall near the window. Watching me.

I feel the drag of his gaze tracing the edge of the gown where it parts at my collarbone and dips toward my skin. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just lets his eyes fall for a beat too long… before his jaw flexes, and he pushes off the wall.

He shrugs out of his jacket and crosses the space between us.

Wordless.

Heavy.

God, I can barely breathe.

He drapes the leather over my chest like a blanket, with a gentleness that reminds me of all the other times he’s done this exact thing. His hoodie at a bonfire. His jacket in the stands of a football game.

It’s worn and warm and smells like him, a scent that wraps around me just as tightly as the fabric and gives me comfort.

“Thanks,” I say quietly.

He nods once but doesn’t move away.

I glance up. “You can sit, you know. I won’t bite.”

He pulls the rolling stool over and drops into it beside me, forearms braced on his knees.

Silence falls again, but it’s not the same one we drove here in.

This one feels… full.

Someone has to break it. “This place reminds me of where our troubles all began.”

His eyes meet mine. “Mmm.”

My voice softens. “When you kissed me.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

The words stab clean through my ribs. “Oh.”

He drags a hand down his face. “That came out wrong.”

“Did it?” My defenses rise slowly like a drawbridge.

He sighs. “I didn’t mean that. But… I didn’t know what was going to happen to me out there, Lara.”

“I know you had a tough time, I can’t even imagine, especially with grieving your mom around the same time.” I have to steady my hands from shaking. “But I guess…” I hesitate, but the words come tumbling out. “I was hoping you would’ve come back… when you got better.”

“Yeah…” His warm eyes meet mine with an apology in them. “Well… I never got better, Firefly.”

My fingers tighten around the edge of his jacket. “Never? Like… even now?” A sadness sweeps through me. “You still have nightmares?” I know about the nightmares.

From Xander.

“Sometimes.” He exhales through his nose. “I didn’t want to drag you into the mess I became. Trust me, I would have come for you if I thought I deserved you.”

He looks up. Eyes dark. Haunted.

“But the thing is, the only way I was able to cope with the nightmares and grief was to keep moving. The Canyon only reminded me of things I lost, you, my mom… hell, my former self. And if I kept busy, my mind was occupied. Much of the work I did meant I didn’t sleep full nights, so the nightmares were limited.

It was my coping mechanism, and I was terrified to stop because the couple of times I changed it up, it all returned with a vengeance. ”

“I wish you would have let me help you.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t want to bring baggage into your life.” He glances around the stark room. “For obvious reasons.”

That’s ironic. “Well, you did anyway. Not going to lie. I was heartbroken.”

His whole body stills. The words hit him like I just cut the air out of his lungs. He drops his gaze, then shakes his head slowly. “Christ, Lara…” His voice is low, rough. “That’s the last thing I ever wanted, for you to carry that kind of hurt because of me.”

He swallows thickly, like he’s not sure whether to touch me or push me away from the wreckage he made. “I thought I was protecting you. I didn’t know what was in store for you, but whatever it was, I wanted it to be better than what I had on offer.”

His head drops as he braces on his knees, looking defeated.

It’s true, for as much as was going on with Gabriel, I had my demons, too. I was away at college and wondering if it was even worth it, staring down the barrel of my twenties. I still wasn’t on this medicine, and somehow always had my thirtieth birthday written on my tombstone.

I reach out and stroke his hair, and when he glances up. I want to soak up every ounce of sincerity in those hooded brown eyes.

I hope he sees mine, too. “So much of what happened, G, went without saying. I didn’t want to pressure you because you had a lot on and vice versa.

I guess I didn’t know it was your coping mechanism to be away.

That was the part that hurt. Especially where I didn’t know how much longer we could have had.

I would have at least wanted you as a friend. ”

His gaze nearly eats me alive. “After that kiss, I didn’t know how to be your friend.”

The words steal the air straight out of my lungs. My heart lurches, wild and unsteady, and for one dizzy second, I see it all—the truth behind his silence, the reason for the distance, the possibility that it was never indifference but too much.

That kiss didn’t end us. It changed us.

The thought is almost too much to carry. And then the door clicks open.

“Sorry for the wait,” the doctor chirps. “I’m Dr. Lee…”

Gabriel rises and steps back, jaw tight, gaze on the floor.

It’s quietly devastating, the way he disappears… It’s cruel, how someone can sit three feet away and still feel galaxies out of reach.