Page 4 of Guarded Knight

Least of all when the clock has always ticked louder for her than for the rest of us.

Lara’s time might be shorter than most, and she deserves to fly free. Her cystic fibrosis is under control now, but it’s impossible not to remember that when she was born, before all these treatments and medications were invented, everyone thought she’d only have thirty years.

She’s two years younger than me.

Thirty-four.

I’ve only ever asked God for two things. First was to get my mom through cancer. Second was that Lara would be given a full life. She’s the reason I still have faith despite so many reasons in the world not to.

Xander interrupts my drifting mind. “I knew this guy was trouble, and when she finally broke up with him, I was glad. Until I heard he was stalking her. Fucking bastard has been leaving notes and broke into her place twice now. And there was no sign of how he even got in.”

My chest fills with adrenaline, instantly ready to fight. “You fucking kidding me? Is she okay?”

“She only just told me about this now. Shit. I wish she would have said something straight away.”

I know he’s squeezing his eyes shut like he does when he needs to reset.

He clears his throat. “I need you to look after her. I leave Starlight Canyon for DC tomorrow and I can’t do it from there.”

I’d never refuse to help my best friend or Lara, but calling me in willnotbe what Lara wants.

“She won’t want a bodyguard,” I say, not in protest but to hear if he’s already figured a way around this fact.

“No shit,” Xander mutters. “What’s new?”

That’s not the answer I was hoping for.

I stare through the windshield, focusing on nothing, slowing my pulse, which now thrums in my neck.

I’ve known Lara for nearly as long as I can remember. She’s part of my fabric. This isn’t the first time the Youngs have asked me to look out for her.

Lara went through lots of hell as a kid with archaic treatments and hospitalizations. Dave and Stef, their parents, tried to stuff her in bubble wrap. Didn’t matter. She ran us ragged anyway.

One time, Lara slipped away at the mall while we were supposed to be watching her. She vanished for forty-five minutes. Xander nearly lost his mind thinking she was breathless, suffering an attack in some dressing room somewhere. And when we finally found her? She’d been trackingus.

She’d been trouble even at twelve.

When she started a new medication four years ago, it gave her a new lease on life, and she moved to Santa Fe to get out from under that watch.

And now? She’s trouble in a whole new way. She’s stunning, charismatic, and utterly reckless. Not to mention she’s still holding our past against me.

Not that I blame her. I hold it against me, too. I wish like hell I could have taken her as mine when I came back from deployment but… I couldn’t. I told her I wasn’t in a good headspace to be exact. She said she understood.

But I guess my not sticking around hurt us both, because now, she hardly says a word to me,ifshe even stays in the same room.

Shit, maybe Xander wouldn’t even be asking me if he knew how much I hurt her. Hurtus.If he knew that the last feeling I ever had for her still lives in my veins and it isn’t platonic. Not that I’d cross the line again.

He can trust me in that.

“She’s going to hate this,” I say, not an excuse, a statement.

“She actually agreed.”

He throws the words out casually, but they land like a nuclear blast. She agreed to be… with me?

For a split second, hope rushes through me.

But then Xan continues. “Not to you per se, but to leaving Santa Fe anyway. She must be scared if she agreed to leave. She loved that place.” His tone is somber.