The crickets wereloud in the Virginia trees. Summer clung to the edges of the night, thick and warm, settling around the old deck with the smell of pine sap and smoke from the citronella candle burning low between them.
Shannon leaned on the railing, arms crossed loosely as she looked out over the backyard she hadn’t stood in for four years.It felt both too small and too vast, like it had waited for her, holding all her silences.
Behind her, the screen door creaked as it slid shut. Ford’s voice faded as he and her father drifted deeper into the house. And now… it was just the two of them.
Dante moved slowly. Not like a soldier anymore, not like a shadow. Just a man standing beside her, his presence heavier than it looked.
She didn’t look at him. “You were there. The whole time.”
He didn’t deny it.
She turned to face him then, the low porch light catching in her eyes. “Four years, Olivo. You watched me like a mission file.”
“It’s Olivetti. I watched you survive,” he said, voice rough. “I was ordered to in the beginning, but after the first moment I met you, you were worth the watch.”
Silence swelled between them.
She shook her head, half a breath, half a laugh. “You were in every hallway I didn’t know to check.”
He stepped a little closer. “I wasn’t allowed to intervene. Not unless you broke. Life and death.”
“But it was,” she said. “And you picked up the pieces.”
“I just found you,” he said. “You’re the one who stood up.”
She swallowed, all too aware of her desire for him and her inability to hide it. “So what now? You disappear again? Fade away like I imagined you?” Her snark came roaring out.
He met her gaze without flinching. “Not unless you tell me to go.”
Something broke open then, something soft and long-buried. She stepped closer, and he didn’t move. Not when she reached up to touch his cheek. Not when her breath caught. Not when she kissed him.
It was slow, not hesitant, but full of everything unsaid. Four years of silence breaking open like a held breath. When theyfinally parted, she stood on tiptoe, her forehead resting against his. Her voice was barely a whisper. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“Back to my hotel,” he said. “For tonight.”
She nodded, jaw tight. “Then the least I can do for the man who saved my life… is take him out to lunch.”
He smiled faintly, eyes still on hers. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow.”
SIXTEEN
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
He shouldn’t have picked her up. He should’ve let time do its thing. Let her adjust. Let her finish healing or given her distance—whatever she needed. But when Ford told him his protection detail was over, he didn’t wait. He wanted to see her.
He pulled up to the curb in a Chase vehicle. It was just him, in civvies, engine idling, hand on the wheel like nothing in the world was unusual.
And when she opened the door wearing jeans and a t-shirt, her hair still damp from a morning rinse, it hit him how much she looked like herself again. Not the cadet. Not the soldier. Just Shannon.
Something in his chest shifted.Wrong move,he told himself. He did it anyway.
The coffee shop was one of those industrial-chic places tucked beneath a condo stack of reclaimed wood. It had steel chairs and a minimalist chalkboard menu that made black coffee sound like an elite event. Mid-afternoon, the place hummedwith laptops and quiet conversations. Nobody looked up when Dante walked in, which told him the patrons were either local or trained not to notice things.
They sat in silence for a beat too long, the air between them still and warm. “You look like someone who doesn’t know how to enjoy a day off,” Dante said.
“I’m trying,” she looked out the window, “but it feels like I’m being hunted by time.”
