Page 43 of Guarded Knight (Echo Valley #3)

I stalk down a hallway, gun pulled. It smells like gunpowder. Acrid and dirty. It clings to my skin, seeps into my pores, coats my teeth with the taste of metal.

“Gabriel…”

Her voice calls again, and I break into a run. Boots slam tile. Doors bang shut behind me. My name echoes all around, but when I hit the last door, she’s already on the floor, coughing.

Lara.

She’s reaching for me. I try to get to her, but my legs won’t move.

“Help me,” she gasps.

But it’s not her voice. It’s synthetic. Robotic. My blood runs cold. I reach for her… and miss.

I wake with a sharp inhale, cold sweat soaking the back of my neck. My lungs drag as if I’ve run a four-minute mile. For a second, I don’t know where I am. Then the shape of her beside me steadies the room.

My Firefly.

She’s peaceful and curled into herself beneath the blanket. Her hand rests on my pillow like it is reaching for me in her sleep.

I want to reach out for her, too. Thank God she’s safe… it was just a dream.

I scrub my hand down my face. I’m glad I didn’t wake her. I don’t want her to see me like this.

Not now, when she needs me to be a rock.

Xander’s words take space in my mind. I don’t want to be seen as vulnerable.

But why not? Isn’t that what I’ve had to do in therapy to get this far? Isn’t that what I’ll have to do, here, in real life, not a shrink’s couch, to get what I want?

Even if that’s true, there’s no denying it’s the worst possible time for me to show Lara I don’t have it all together. I can’t trust Kevin around her on Thursday. I can’t believe he won’t try something when they’re actually in the same space.

He must have more planned. I didn’t say it in the meeting because I didn’t want to scare her, but there’s an inescapable dread in my gut that he wants her gone. She knows too much. She’s smart, and I’m sure Kevin knows it.

Cameron was a plan. Kevin and this gala?

The territory is unfamiliar. We don’t have any more security than Anton and me in a room full of hundreds of guests.

I know what it’s like from my celebrity bodyguard days.

Danger strikes fast, and Kevin has had a hell of a lot more time to plan than we have.

I should have expected a dream to visit. My head is a tornado of good and bad. Lara is a light in my life again, but there are monsters out there who want to snuff her out. If I came to Echo Valley to settle, I feel a million miles away from that right now.

Shit. I could have woken her. Or smashed into her like I once did to a bedside table lamp in the middle of a nightmare. I can’t go back to sleep now.

I shift quietly, untangling from the sheet. My feet hit the floor with barely a sound.

I’ll do what I’ve done many times before and let insomnia drag me like a heavy tide toward the kitchen, where caffeine will keep me from sliding back under.

I glance at Lara beside me, all softness and tiny snores, and I don’t want to leave. I hover there, just watching her.

Is this the spiral again? That switch in my brain that flips when something good lands in my hands, where joy mutates into risk and I brace for the fall before it ever comes?

I need more focus than ever, because tomorrow she might be standing next to her stalker. And I don’t know what Kevin’s capable of—I only know how quickly violence unfolds, how little time there is between a wrong look and a shattered body.

And I haven’t had enough time to make this, us, real. That’s what claws at me most. But after tomorrow, we’ll take time together, sift through the possibilities, the desires, the truths and the fears.

I told Xander she’s a yes. I need to lay it on the table and see if it’s a yes for her.

I slip out of bed and stealthily sneak out. The stairs creak, but I manage to miss most of the spots. Down the left, skip the fourth, land quietly.

The kitchen is dark, save for the white glow of the oven clock. I flick the coffee maker on and brace my hands on the counter while it groans to life.

My heartbeat’s still too fast. I breathe in through my nose. Hold it. Out through my mouth.

The dream’s fading at the edges, but the feeling stays: the helplessness, the choking silence, the weight of not getting there fast enough, of not moving when it counts most, and this time, it wasn’t a nameless stranger. It was Lara.

They’re only dreams, but I’m so fucking tired of not getting there fast enough.

The coffee drips. I pour a cup and drink it black as usual, wishing the bitterness were something I could drink myself sober on.

And then, the stairs groan, too light to be Anton.

Her voice slices through the dark. “If this is your idea of a graceful exit, you’re not very good at it.”

Lara leans against the doorframe, hair mussed, wearing one of my old t-shirts with sexy bare legs tumbling out from beneath the hem.

“Sorry if I woke you,” I say.

“I wish you had.” She crosses the room and hoists herself onto the counter. “You okay?”

I nod. “Just needed a minute.”

She studies me. “Bad dream?”

How did she know? “Yeah.”

I think about leaving it at that.

But this? It deserves a conversation. I have to brave my way through the silence if I ever want to get to her.

“I’m pretty sure all this shit brought it on. I should have expected it.”

Sadness settles on Lara’s shoulders. “I’m a trigger?”

I turn to fill the mug again, even though it’s full, to avoid gazing at her. I’ve never spoken to anyone but my therapist, Anton, and Xander about the dreams.

I keep my back to her; it’s hard to open up. “The second I matter, the dreams come. That’s why I kept running—if I didn’t matter to anyone, I couldn’t fail them.”

When I turn, her legs dangle and her fingertips grip the counter tightly.

“So you planned not to let good things happen to avoid the pain?” She wiggles herself across the counter and straddles her legs around my hips.

I smooth hair off her cheek. “I have no plans of avoiding you.”

No. I won’t be avoiding her. But what if she has to walk away anyway? Scarlet Hope is collapsing. Her job will vanish. And no matter how much I feel for her, I can’t change the fact that she hates being someone’s worry.

And I will worry about her. I don’t think I can change that. I care too much.

The corner of her mouth quirks. “So this midnight exile isn’t you avoiding me?”

I tilt my head toward the coffee machine behind me. “Just putting a Band-Aid on it.”

“You don’t need to hide your wounds from me, G.”

“I know. But it’s bad timing. I don’t want you thinking you have a man down. Not when… tomorrow…”

She inches closer, tiny legs wrapping around my waist, and she lays her head on my chest. “Can’t we all be both strong and weak at the same time?”

I place my hand on the back of her head, relishing the sensation of her cheek on my skin, the trust she has in me, the outlook she brings to my life.

Her disease is an ugly curse, and yet somehow, casts a spell of optimism over her.

“I have to believe you’re right.” I kiss the top of her head and lift her chin. “You’re proof that broken and beautiful can exist in the same body. You are absolutely perfect to me, Firefly.”

She threads her fingers through my hair. “So why can’t you be my perfect contradiction?”

Her words gut me, because I want to be. For her. For us. But with Kevin circling and the gala tomorrow, there’s no room for contradiction. There’s no room for the man with blind spots.

She rolls her lips, thoughts spiraling behind her eyes that sparkle bright in a sliver of moonlight. “Did something happen with Xander?”

“He just asked yes or no,” I admit.

Her gaze sharpens. “And what did you say?”

“Yes.” I gaze into her eyes and see all that hope and need to tell her everything.

She deserves every chance to live wide open, to chase joy, to never feel chained by me. I can’t let my yes become the thing that clips her wings.

“But if it’s a yes for you, promise me you’ll never stay if it feels heavy… if you want something else… if…”

I’m not worth it.

“We can be there for each other.” Her eyebrows furrow, and her gaze is distant. “You’ll have it worse than me.”

I slide my fingers around the base of her skull.

“Every moment with you, every single one of them, will be my honor to have. I want this. You. Us. I’m not unsure.

” But I am afraid. Losing her would be the death of me.

“I’ve known you and your wounds since you were walking around in pigtails.

I know you. But I worry you’re clinging to an old version of me.

All I’m saying is don’t stay. Don’t stay if there’s ever any doubt. ”

“Gabriel—”

She wants to reassure me, but I cut her off. “Promise you won’t. I need to know I won’t steal a single second from you. I don’t want you to spare my feelings. I will always…”

…love you.

I don’t finish. I can’t put freedom to leave and those three words in the same breath—it feels manipulative.

Her eyes sparkle with the knowing that’s always there. “I love you, too.”

The words land right under the ribs. A hit I didn’t see coming.

My love for her has been there forever, rooted so deep it’s fused into everything.

Every part of me wants to say it back. But when I do, it’ll stand on its own—a vow, not a plea. If I say it now, it could become a chain, keeping her here even if she doesn’t want to stay.

But she reads my silence as rejection. “I didn’t… forget it.”

I tip up her chin. “I’m not going to forget it.”

“I wasn’t trying to pressure you into saying it.”

“I know.” I grab the sides of her face and swipe my thumb across her lip. “Don’t back down from it.”

Hearing her say she loves me feels like the one thing I’ve been starving for my whole damn life.

“Come back to bed,” she says, sliding off the counter as if she needs to escape this moment or she’ll crack open. “You don’t need that coffee. You need rest…”

I catch her wrist. “Hey.”

She looks up, hesitant.

I thread my fingers through her hair. “You’re not the only one all in. You got that?”

She nods sweetly. I think she understands, but a small wave of guilt wonders if I made the right call. I’ll tell her. Soon… in another moment.

Her fingers find mine, and she leads me upstairs with that silent pull of gravity between two people who’ve never needed a map to find their way back to each other.

She climbs into bed, curling toward me like she was made to fit there. I settle in beside her, keyed up—lungs tight, blood loud in my ears. There’s too much inside me, and I don’t think sleep is anywhere close after that dream, after those three words.

But then she shifts, tucks her face into my neck, her breath warm against my skin, that little pixie nose brushing me as she inhales. Her fingers trace idle patterns over my ribs, grounding me in the now. In this room. In this heartbeat.

And something in me finally eases.

The darkness doesn’t vanish. It doesn’t retreat. But it quiets.

Lara has been in my life since some of my earliest memories. She was always the girl who lit up a room, all laughter and bite and mischief, making every shadow think twice about going near her.

She’s not across the room anymore. She’s here. Choosing me. Not despite the wreckage, but with her hands in it, ready to build something anyway. If she stays, I’ll learn how to stay, too. I’ll fight my instincts, resist the urge to run. But if she leaves, I’ll have to survive that, too.

Air leaves my lungs, a sigh if I ever did feel one, and against every instinct that tells me to stay on guard, I close my eyes.

Sleep takes me before I can fight it. This time, when the dark returns, it doesn’t drag me under. It cradles.

And when the dream comes, it’s not smoke. It’s saltwater.

Down in the deep, she’s waiting.

A mermaid in the wreckage, calling me home.