Page 30 of Guarded Knight (Echo Valley #3)

Gabriel’s breath is warm against my throat as the last of his weight settles over me like gravity finally remembered how to work.

We’re a mess. The sheets are off the bed, the lamp’s half-crooked, and there’s broken glass in the other room.

If Freya came home somewhere in between, she’d think it was a crime scene out there. I can just imagine her running around searching for me, then raising her hand to knock at my door and hearing two feral dogs going at it.

My ribs ache from the tightness in my chest. Maybe it is my lungs, too. Being with Gabriel got my heart going faster than running a marathon, and I can’t catch my breath.

I cough to loosen the tight feeling, and he responds by stroking the backs of his fingers along my cheek.

“You okay?”

I cough once more. “Better than okay.”

He smiles softly.

Is this seriously happening? He’s naked.

In my bed. My brother’s best friend. The man I’ve fantasized about in hospitals and hotel rooms and late-night silences I never admitted to anyone.

He’s sprawled over me like I’m his, his hands gentle but possessive, like he hasn’t quite decided whether he’s letting go.

I trail a hand through his hair. He smells like sex and salt and whatever soap he uses, along with the gorgeous scent of his cologne.

“So you’re really staying?” I ask again, not because I doubt him, but because I need to hear it again.

His tone is rough against my collarbone, and he kisses it. “Why are you asking again? You want to take it back?”

Should I have asked him?

Probably not.

I know I don’t have some magic pussy. It’s not like Gabriel’s PTSD is cured or my issues have resolved because of this. We’ll still have the same problems in the morning, and spending an entire night wrapped up in his arms, feeling his heartbeat on my skin, is only going to make me fall harder.

Oh, not to mention tomorrow I should be focused on my stalker rather than on getting laid. Not that this is simply getting laid. This is so much more than two bodies colliding.

And did I just do it all unprotected, too? I can’t have children naturally, or at least it’s a long shot. I know I’m clean, and Gabriel, I should have asked, but I just know he wouldn’t do anything to give me an additional illness.

He asked if I was sure, and the thought of experiencing the ultimate closeness with him, something I’ve never done before… I never wanted anymore more.

Holy shit.

This is still crazy.

But crazy has always been welcome in my life.

“Freya will know,” I add, just to test his resolve and remind myself of it.

“Lara,” he shifts to kiss the underside of my jaw, “I have a lot of secrets, but you deserve better than to be one of them.”

My heart stops. As a person who knows their life is short from the get-go, I’ve often thought about perfect moments to die. This might be one of them. The perfect man. In my bed. Telling me I’m worthy of more than I’ve ever asked.

He pulls me closer into his chest and kisses my hair. “Plus, if I leave now, I might never stop running.”

I slap his chest playfully but appreciate the joke. And as I run circles with my index finger on his tanned, god-like pecs, I think about how Gabriel only seems to joke with me. Like he knows it makes me more comfortable, and suddenly I’m falling even harder, my chest tightens, and I cough again.

And damn it, it’s one of my not-so-cute, laced-with-mucus coughs. Not sexy.

G splays his hand across my back as if concentrating on the message coming through his palm.

He lifts his head, eyes searching mine. “Should I get you something?”

“I’ll be fine,” I confess, despite feeling so unsexy. It’s just the adrenaline. “My chest’s tight. But not bad.”

“Turn over.”

I flip over, and he straddles me. His dick is soft but still thick on my ass, and his warm thighs wrap around my hips.

He cups his hands, something between rubbing me firmly and percussing…

like only he would understand how to help a person with CF.

Like the percussion vest I used to wear a lot when we were younger, he uses his hands to soothe me, loosening the tightness in a way I don’t need that much right now, but it’s an intimacy I would never share with any other man but him.

I worked hard to hide my condition from my trysts. Nebulizers aren’t attractive accessories.

Only Gabriel has seen it all. He’s seen me at my ugliest. Blotchy from coughing, clamped on to nebulizers, thinner than a broomstick with stringy hair to complete the witch look…

And he doesn’t run for the hills.

Just like I said in the bar, it’s what we should all be looking for in a person. Not someone who wants us to be perfect.

Suddenly, the backs of my eyes prickle. This is so unfair. I wish I could reach inside his chest and massage his heart the way he does my lungs and take away all his pain. Clutch my fingers around that trauma in there and tear it out, shred it until it’s gone.

But it’s still there. He’s not mine. This probably didn’t change anything, even though I want it to.

But if there’s one thing that washes the tide of disappointment and pain out, I know better than anyone from moments when my mind spirals into how unfair life can be, it’s gratitude.

“Thank you, G. That feels really good.”

“Anything for you.”

I twist my body to gaze into his eyes. “I’d do anything for you, too. You know that. Right?”

His hands stop mid-motion, like I’ve knocked the wind out of him. His eyes search mine, wide and unguarded, as if I’ve said something he doesn’t know how to hold.

“I’m okay. Really. Come lie down with me.” I pull him down on the bed beside me, and he slides his tall, strong physique along mine, and we lie in loaded silence.

I want to ask him what this all means.

What will happen tomorrow?

Can we survive just being friends after all this?

But this moment is so tender I don’t want to ruin it, so I pretend, like so many times before in this life of mine, that tomorrow will never come. That all that matters is now.

It’s all we actually ever have anyway.

His arm is draped over me, and he continues to run soothing fingertips along my back. My chest is still tighter than usual, but I don’t care. It just reminds me that I’m still living.

Which, as always, reminds me of not living.

Every breath I take has always been laced with the question of how many more I’ll get.

That’s the thing about cystic fibrosis, every laugh, every kiss, every good day is shadowed by the possibility it could be the last. I usually keep the sad part of my reality tucked away behind cold truth or humor, but with him here, his heartbeat under my cheek, it feels different.

Like maybe I’m finally strong enough to say what I really feel about my future.

“I remember the first time I talked to someone about death.” I wrap my arm around his strong chest and enjoy the beat of his heart against my skin.

My face is buried in his shoulder. He probably doesn’t want to think about me dying right now—I don’t either—but something about being wrapped up in him makes it feel less raw. Like he’s the mirror that reflects the realest me, the me who can’t hide anymore.

“When was that?”

“I was about eleven. I was in the hospital for two weeks…”

“I remember that.”

Of course he would. He came to visit with his mom and those gorgeous cookies I love. They were the only thing that tasted good to me in all that time.

“You probably don’t remember I shared a room with another kid, funny enough, one with sickle cell anemia. And we got to talking in between her family visit and my mom going down to the cafeteria.

“I told her about cystic fibrosis and what I had. She told me about sickle cell anemia and what she was in for.” I laugh lightly.

“We were two angsty cell mates. And it all felt pretty normal until she said she would probably die before she has grandchildren. It was such a grown-up thing to say, coming out of her mouth. She was probably only a year or two older than me.”

The memory hits hard and stops the world, even all these years later.

“Then she asked me if I was going to die young, too. Even though I knew it, that thirty was a number I’d had in my head since I was able to use the internet, it was the first time I said it out loud to someone.

Yes. I was going to die young. Yes. I, too, would not have grandchildren. Hell, children even.”

He curls his arm tighter around me, pulling me into his chest like he wants to shield every part of me, past and present.

I’ve never told anyone this story before apart from Freya because we got drunk one night when we first found out about each other’s diseases and it came out.

“By the time my mom came back up, I was agitated by the conversation and I’d started to cough a lot more. She pulled the curtain, and it was dark inside the little makeshift room, and I started crying.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows knit together.

“Everyone thinks I’m brave about it, about knowing I have this life limit. It’s like how people tell cancer patients they’re so brave, not realizing they cry in private all the time.”

He swallows thickly, and his jaw is tight.

“I’ve cried a lot about death. I just keep it to myself.

He lifts my chin so our gazes meet; his eyes are set on me with intention and the validation every human craves so deeply.

My heart folds under the weight of it. His steadiness. The way he listens to my every word in quiet devotion. Time separated us, and yet nothing has changed. He still comforts me like no one else can. There’s an invincibility I feel when I’m with him.

He makes me believe I could outrun my illness, even as every second with him reminds me how fragile my time really is. Like he holds back the clock with one hand and exposes every second with the other.

Am I really going to spend the rest of it without him in every day of it?

“What did your mom say?” he asks, waiting for it.