Page 24 of Guarded By Ghost
"Try me."
Silence. Long, heavy silence.
Lock shifts behind me. Diesel cracks his knuckles — not subtle, not trying to be.
"She's not yours," Harris says finally. But his voice is weaker now. The delusion cracking. "She'll never be yours. She belongs to the spotlight, to the stage, to?—"
"She belongs to herself. And she chose me." I hold his stare. "I love her. You just wanted to own her."
The word hangs in the air. I didn't plan to say it. Didn't know I was going to until it came out.
But it's true. Has been true for weeks, maybe since that first night when she looked at me like she actually wanted to know what was underneath.
Harris stares at me. Something in his expression shifts — not defeat, not yet, but the beginning of it. The realisation that he's lost. That he was never going to win because he was fighting for something that was never real.
"Get him out of here," I tell Lock. "Quietly. Make sure he understands the terms."
Lock nods and grabs Harris by the arm, hauling him toward the loading dock exit. Diesel follows, a shadow at their backs.
I stand there for a moment, breathing. The adrenaline is still pumping, but underneath it there's something else. Relief. Certainty.
It's over.
I find Nate first.
He's in the wings, watching the stage crew break down, phone in his hand like he's been waiting for news. When he sees me coming, his whole body tenses.
"Well?"
"It's done. He's gone."
Nate lets out a breath. His eyes close for a second, and when they open again, something in his expression has shifted. Relief, but more than that. He looks at me the way he used to when we were kids — like I'm the one person in the world he can count on.
"How gone?"
"Gone enough. Lock's making sure he understands the terms."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then I'll have another conversation with him."
Nate nods slowly. He doesn't ask for details. He knows better. "Thank you. For all of this."
"You asked. I came. That's how it works."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he steps forward and pulls me into a hug — brief, hard, the kind we don't do often. When he pulls back, he claps me once on the shoulder. Then the corner of his mouth twitches.
"So. You and India."
"Don't."
"I'm just saying — I asked you to protect her. Didn't expect you to be quite so thorough."
"Nate."
He holds up his hands, but he's grinning now. "She's in her dressing room. Go tell her."
India's alone when I walk in.
