Page 63 of Guarded Knight

And that makes my nerves climb. But even if he thinks I’m pretty, we’re not kissing again and it kills to think it. So, as usual, I joke.

“If you think Xander would kill you, I think you could take him.” I try to smile, but it lands somewhere between bravery and sadness.

I kind of wish Xander was the problem. He isn’t. Or at least not the only one.

His lips twitch, but the smile dies fast. “I’d take a black eye for you. You know that. The problem’s not Xander, not exactly…” He refrains from explaining what that means. “That was true when we were younger. Now? The problem is more about me. Well, and you… it’s right person, wrong time?”

“I always tried to live my life like now is the only time.”

“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t waste it with me.”

“Isn’t that my choice to make?” I don’t know why I’m saying any of this. I know Gabriel isn’t in a good place even now, he’s told me that much. And don’t I need to… do my thing?

My words are confident, but I only now notice I’m wringing my hands.

He engulfs them inside his strong, warm grip, his calluses brushing my knuckles. “You don’t ever have to be nervous around me.”

I’m not sure it is him I’m nervous about. It’s me. Me wanting to change my mind about my life’s trajectory. Me wanting to take this man and help him out of his dark place. Me thinking I can be the one to fix him. Isn’t that what gets women into trouble?

“I’m not right in the head.” He’s struggling. “After I came back from overseas… I wasn’t okay, as you know, and I’m still not. I can’t ask someone to live with that. Especially not someone who…”

“…might not have a lot of time left?” I finish for him, like I always do in moments like these.

I knew he’d been thinking it.

He lifts his gaze, and it’s full of hope. “But you do now. It’s not like when we were younger. The doctor said those meds…”

“Yeah,” I cut in. “If a person starts them early enough. I didn’t.” I look down at our hands, still intertwined. “But I could get to fifty now…”

His thumb strokes my hand. “When I left you behind the first time, thinking I was giving you years to love and live but sacrificing them myself, never to have what we had again…”

He takes one of his hands off mine and rubs it roughly across his mouth.

“Trust me, I cried in ways that didn’t make a sound. But I figured you had maybe seven, eight years left back then and I was a dead man walking between PTSD and my mom. So I tucked away our unkept future in order to keep your laugh safe and my gratitude loud.” He shrugs. “I don’t think that’s what you got from it, though. And I understood you needed distance to get over me. Over us.”

“I’m not sure I ever did.”

“Fuck…” he says on an exhale. “Don’t say that.”

I shrug.It’s true.

“I know you have more time now, but I’ve proven nothing to myself about being able to stand still. About coping with these demons, unless I’m running. If you have twenty years left, I don’t want you spending them with some guy in therapy.”

“There’s nothing wrong with therapy.” I mean it as words of affirmation, but it sounds more like I’m begging for him not to take this where it’s going.

He reaches across the table and tips up my chin. “If a man wants an angel in his life, he needs to create heaven for her.”

I don’t need heaven. I need you.

The words echo in my mind, but I can’t say them because Gabriel knows himself, he knows his trauma… and I know mine. I don’t want to put him through hell either and I might have twenty years left, but they won’t all be pretty.

Gabriel lets go of my hands and takes his small glass of tequila between two fingers, staring at it like it’s holding secrets. Secrets he’s never shared with me.

He meets my eyes, and I see that same storm that lives inside me. “I’m not enough for you.”

I lean in, brushing his hand with my thumb. I hear where he’s coming from but I hate it coming out of his perfect, loyal lips. To see worthlessness swimming in his deep-brown eyes.

“You’re more than enough, G. Broken doesn’t mean worthless.”