21. Chapter Twenty-one #5
I try to keep my voice light. Teasing. “I mean, if I’m going to have a fans, I’d like to know about them."
He doesn’t smile.
Because I wasn’t really joking.
And he knows it.
Kane reads me like a language he invented. He hears what I don’t say.
“You’re scared,” he murmurs, sitting up slowly. “And you’re trying to hide it in sarcasm.”
I close the book and set it aside. “It’s not fear. Not exactly.”
“What is it?”
I pause. “It’s knowing I’m not built for this. That every time I think I’m learning your world, it pulls me under again.”
He watches me in silence for a long beat.
Then: “Come with me.”
We move through the belly of the house, past steel doors and a biometric scanner, into the part of Kane’s world I’ve never touched.
The air gets cooler. Thicker.
The walls turn darker. Concrete. Exposed steel.
The moment the door hisses open, I know where we are.
The sound hits me before the scent does.
Gunpowder. Oil. Leather.
An indoor range. Sleek. Clean. Efficient. The kind of place designed to erase hesitation.
My stomach flips.
“Kane…”
He doesn’t look at me right away. He’s focused, meticulous as he pulls a weapon from a matte black case mounted on the wall.
“It’s not about you becoming me,” he says, voice even. “It’s about knowing how to survive me.”
I go still.
He turns, places the gun carefully on the counter between us.
“I can protect you every second I’m awake, Camille. But if something happens… if you’re ever alone you need to know how to stop someone from taking what’s yours.”
He’s not angry. He’s not even cold.
He’s scared.
And in Kane Rivera, fear comes dressed in preparation.
I swallow hard. “Okay.”
That one word costs more than I want to admit.
He nods once. No triumph. No gloating. Just quiet approval.
He slides soundproof headphones over my ears. The world dulls immediately, muted, distant.
He fires once.Twice.Three times.
Even though I’m braced for it, the sound cracks through my ribs like a punch. I flinch. My heart jackhammers. The concrete beneath my feet feels too hard, too far away. Like my body might drift off if I stop trying to hold it here.
He removes the headphones slowly. Steps behind me. Guides my hands to the gun.
“It’s loaded but safe,” he says. “You squeeze. You breathe. You listen to me.”
I nod.
“Don’t look at the target. Look at me.”
I do.
He stares into me like he can hold me there with just his gaze.
“Nothing out there is scarier than the sound of me behind you,” he murmurs.
It’s meant to comfort. But it chills.
He fixes my stance. Straightens my arms. Adjusts my grip.
“You ready?”
No.
But I nod anyway.
I fire.
The kick is violent. It rattles through my bones.
The sound pierces the quiet like thunder in a tunnel.
I drop the gun with a scream.
The panic is instant.
The walls close in.
My lungs seize. My knees buckle. And then I’m on the floor…kneeling, heaving, gasping for a breath I can’t seem to find. My body trembles violently, stomach clenching as bile rises in my throat. I lurch to the side and throw up on the polished concrete.
My chest caves in.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
“Camille.”
Kane’s voice…low, but sharp. It cuts through the spiral.
His hands are on me. One steadying my back. The other gripping my jaw, forcing my eyes to his.
“Breathe,” he says.
I can’t.
“You’re not in danger. You’re not alone. Look at me.”
I do. Barely.
His face is close, his eyes burning, not with anger, but with fear he won’t say out loud.
“I shouldn’t have brought you down here today,” he says quietly.
“I wanted to,” I choke out. “For you. For us.”
“This isn’t something you do for me,” he says, almost angry now. “It’s something you do when you’re ready.”
I sob once, and he catches it pulling me into him, my face buried against his neck. He kneels with me on the floor, uncaring of the mess, of the shaking.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” he says, lips against my temple. “You’re already the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
I clutch his shirt in both hands.
“I don’t feel brave,” I whisper.
“You’re still standing,” he murmurs. “That counts for everything.”
***
I fall asleep for a while.
Not deeply. Not peacefully. But enough.
The panic faded sometime after Kane carried me back upstairs, after he undressed me with patient hands and lowered me into the bath he ran without saying a word.
Warm water, lavender oil. No instructions.
No pressure. Just Kane, kneeling on the floor, pouring water over my shoulders like he was rinsing off something I hadn’t asked to carry.
He didn’t speak much.
But he didn’t leave me either.
And when I emerged, quiet and wrung out, he wrapped me in his robe and tucked me into bed.
I wake again after dark, the room dim, the air still, the scent of bergamot and wood smoke lingering on the sheets.
Kane’s not beside me.
But I hear movement down the hall.
I get up slowly, wrapping the robe tighter around myself, and pad barefoot through the quiet. The house is silent, too silent. Everyone’s gone. Every window’s locked. Every shadow still.
I find him in the library.
At the chessboard.
The overhead light is low, golden, casting sharp angles across his cheekbones. He’s sitting in the leather chair with a glass of something amber in one hand, the other absentmindedly shifting a pawn forward.
He looks up when I enter.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks softly.
“Not really.”
He gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit.”
I do.
He resets the board silently.
And for a long moment, we just sit there, moving pieces, matching each other step for step.
“I didn’t mean to push you,” he says eventually. “At the range.”
“I didn’t mean to fall apart,” I reply.
He makes his next move. The bishop. Sharp. Clean. Intentional.
“You didn’t fall apart,” he says. “You showed up. That’s more than most.”
I stare at the board. My hand hovers over a rook. “I hate feeling weak.”
“You’re not.”
I glance up. His expression is unreadable, but something in his voice cracks through me. There’s no arrogance. No hard edge. Just conviction.
“You could’ve told me no,” he says. “You could’ve said you weren’t ready. I would’ve respected it.”
“I wanted to be enough,” I murmur.
“You are,” he says, instantly. “You are so much more than enough.”
My breath catches.
The board fades away between us. The game forgotten.
Kane stands.
He walks around the table, slow, deliberate, and crouches beside me. His fingers brush my cheek, his thumb catching the edge of my jaw.
“You scare me sometimes,” he admits.
I blink. “Me?”
He nods. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted and still questioned if I deserved to keep.”
The silence is full of something heavier than fear. Bigger than want.
It’s us.
Messy. Honest. Real.
He presses his forehead to my shoulder, arms sliding around my waist.
We don’t kiss.
We don’t fuck.
We just stay, entangled in the quiet, wrapped in silk and fear and fragile tenderness.
He pulled me into hell.
But now?
He’s trying to give me something else.
Not safety.
But sanctuary.