“She doesn’t need to,” he said. “She already knows.”
I glanced up at him. “Does she?”
He nodded once. “Yeah. Parents like that—they read the room. Your dad’s been watching me like I’m carrying unexploded ordnance, and he still handed me a second glass of wine.”
“A high honor in this house,” I said solemnly.
We reached the small clearing at the edge of the lake. It was frozen over, but the ice wasn’t thick enough to skate on yet. The surface reflected starlight in fractured patches where the snow had blown clear.
I had stood here a thousand times in my life. After exams. After breakups. After nights where the news was too heavy and I needed to remember that the world was bigger than my laptop screen.
I’d stood here before my first trip to Afghanistan, breath puffing white in the air, phone clutched in my gloved hand as Derek’s voice crackled through with last-minute instructions. I’d promised myself then that I would always come back. That there would be a version of me who stood at this shoreline knowing how the story turned out.
Now here I was, and the story was stranger than anything I’d imagined.
Levi let go of my hand long enough to shove his own into his pockets and look out over the ice.
“This place suits you,” he said. “Quiet. Cold. Stubborn.”
I bumped my shoulder into his. “Did you just call my childhood home stubborn?”
He smiled. “I meant you. But if the shoe fits …”
“Oh, I’ll show you stubborn,” I said, but the words were soft.
We stood in silence for a minute, breath hanging between us like tiny clouds. I could feel him thinking beside me, thoughts layered and heavy. The same way they got when he was planning something.
My heart tripped.
“Levi,” I said carefully, “if you’re about to tell me you’re going after Victoria alone, I’m going to push you into that lake and let the ice finish the job.”
He huffed out a laugh, vapor curling in the air. “I’m not going after anyone tonight,” he said. “Except you.”
I turned fully toward him.
He was still staring out at the lake, like he was drawing courage from the dark. Then he shifted, facing me, and the look in his eyes nearly took my legs out from under me.
I’d seen him in battle mode. In protect-Amelia-at-all-costs mode. In bed, undone and unguarded.
This was different.
“I’ve been trying to find the right time,” he said. “And the right place. Somewhere that isn’t a hotel hallway or a war room.”
My pulse thudded in my throat.
“We’re going back to Dominion Hall after this,” he said. “We’re going to tuck ourselves into that suite down the hall from my brothers, and we’re going to pretend it’s normal to live in a fortress while someone with a vendetta circles the perimeter.”
“Your sales pitch needs work,” I said, but my voice was barely a whisper.
“We’re going to build something of our own when we can,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “A place that’s ours. Somewhere between my world and yours.”
A smile tugged at my mouth despite everything. “That’s a lot of logistics for a walk by the lake.”
“I’ve had time to plan,” he said. “Ever since I saw you in that stupid hotel lobby in Charleston, looking like you’d just survived a war and still had room in your head to worry about everyone else.”
He reached into his jacket pocket, and my heart did something wild and painful in my chest.
“Your parents are worried,” he said. “They look at me and they see danger. Guns. Secrets. The kind of life they never wanted for you.”
