Fly choked. “Please,” he said, coughing, “tell him that in stages. Preferably not all at once and while I’m in earshot.”
She laughed, then sobered. “You’re wondering why I haven’t said anything.”
“I was,” he admitted.
“What we have, the three of us, it’s rare,” she said. “I didn’t want to break it.”
“And now?”
“We’re leaving Annapolis.” She shrugged. “You’re about to freeze your nuts off at BUD/S, and I’m shipping out.”
“Unforgettable image,” he said.
“Sorry.” She smiled faintly.
Fly lifted her chin gently with his knuckle. “We don’t get many moments where timing actually lines up. He deserves the truth.”
“Why?” she asked, searching him.
Fly didn’t smile this time. “I think he feels the same way about you, and because pretending otherwise will cost him more than the risk.”
She held his gaze, then nodded once. “Okay.”
As she walked away, Fly let the moment settle.
He wasn’t giving anything up.
He was clearing the space for something that had been waiting longer than he had.
After Mei left Fly, her heart raced, not from fear, but from the sudden clarity of it. He had seen what she could no longer hide, and the words he’d given her still reverberated in her chest.
I think he feels the same way about you.
The truth of it pressed down as she crossed the lawn, heavy and undeniable. Silence was no longer neutral. Avoidance was no longer kind. Whatever she was afraid of saying now would cost Than far more if she didn’t say it at all, and that was unacceptable.
She let the realization settle as the Charles Carroll House rose around her, its pale stone glowing under lantern light. The old sycamores threaded the terraces with soft halos, shadows stretching and overlapping like held breath. Beyond them, the river whispered against the shore, steady and patient, carrying the sounds of the evening with it, low music, laughter, the quiet clink of glasses.
The Severn moved as it always had, indifferent and enduring. But tonight the world felt suspended, as if time itself had paused to give her this one, narrow window.
Then she saw him.
Nathaniel Locklear stood near the edge of the lawn, one hand resting lightly at his side, the other adjusting the cuff at his wrist as if he were still getting used to the feel of it. The tux fit him beautifully, broad shoulders filling the jacket, clean lines emphasizing his height and strength without trying to tame it. The black fabric made his skin glow warmly under the lights, his hair silky black, temple cut, but shorter in the back was just barely within Annapolis standards, with the year coming to a close and graduation finally in sight. It was the first time she had ever seen it natural, untouched by product or combed back from his face, the strands thick and dark enough that her fingers ached to slip into them.
His ancestry lived in the planes of his face, but the uncontained spirit of the Lakota lived in his hair.
This man carried warrior blood passed down through generations who had fought for their very right to exist, for their land, their people, their culture. That history lived in him, quiet and lethal and enduring. He struck her like potent electricity, straight to the deepest place in her, the place that recognized truth before thought ever caught up.
In secret, she had studied his culture. She had learned where he was born, read what she could about his people, their history, their endurance. She had fallen in love with all of it, and with him, in a way that felt different from anything she had ever known. She was aware of him down to her marrow, to her roots.
He was so damn sexy, and the most endearing part was that he had no idea.
He thought she loved Fly.
She lost her breath.
Her mind followed right after.
For the first time, Mei didn’t turn away from what she wanted.
