“I know.”
The silence landed harder now, heavier than bodies, heavier than heat. It settled between them like something that had been building for weeks.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell him,” she admitted.
Dante pushed himself onto one elbow, the sheet sliding off his back. The look he gave her was steady and unapologetic.
“Tell him the truth,” he said. “You don’t owe him details. You’re not seventeen. You’re a commissioned officer who’s about to start one of the hardest training pipelines in the country.”
She turned to face him fully. “And you’re the guy he trusted to keep an eye on me. Congratulations.”
A wry smirk touched his mouth. “He assigned me to watch you. Not report on you.”
“You don’t think this crosses a line?”
“No,” he said immediately. “Do you?”
Shannon hesitated, not with fear but thought. “I don’t know what I think yet.”
He leaned in just slightly, voice dropping. “Then I’ll go first. I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
Her eyes searched his. “Even if it costs you your job?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug, unbothered. “I did my job. You’re safe. You’re ready to deploy. You’re not compromised.”
She exhaled slowly. “But I am.”
“No,” he said, gentler but firm. “You’re someone who made an adult decision. You don’t feel compromised to me. You feel… deliberate.”
The word hit her harder than she expected. “What are we doing, Dante?”
“I’m taking you home in a few hours,” he said. “And then we’ll face whatever comes.”
His expression didn’t waver. “I’m not afraid of this.”
She swallowed. “You should be.”
“I’m not ashamed,” he said simply.
Shannon looked away, jaw working. “You will be. When it all blows back on you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve had worse fallout for lesser things.”
She let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t carry so much truth. “This wasn’t lesser?”
“No.” Dante brushed a strand of hair behind her ear with a kind of quiet tenderness that made her chest ache. “Not even close.”
He held her gaze then for the first time without any heat behind it, just honesty. “Shannon, I’m thirty-six. I’m past playing games. I don’t plan on going anywhere.”
Her breath caught, not because she was startled, but because she knew he meant it.
The hotel room was still.Shannon sat at the edge of the bed, hair pulled into a loose knot, T-shirt creased from sleep. She didn’t speak for a long time.
Dante moved slowly, pulling his shirt on, folding the corners into place. Controlled. Respectful. Careful not to break whatever hung in the air between them.
Then finally, her voice cut through, low and even, but not casual. “Why are you in a hotel?”
He blinked once. “That a real question?”
