Chapter 6
The inn went quiet around ten, the retired couple turning in early after too much wine, the solo traveler retreating to her room with her research notes.
Paige moved through closing tasks on autopilot—locking doors, checking windows, setting the dishwasher running—and tried not to think about the man who hadn't left.
Channel was still here.
He'd followed her inside after their conversation on the porch, and instead of saying goodnight, he'd started helping. Wiping down counters. Putting away clean glasses. Moving through her kitchen like he belonged there, like this was something they did every night.
The domesticity of it should have felt strange. Instead, it felt like something Paige hadn't realized she'd been missing.
"You don't have to do that," she said, watching him fold a dish towel with more care than the task required.
"I know." He set the towel on the counter, those calculating eyes finding hers across the kitchen. "I wanted to."
Three words. Simple. But the weight behind them made her chest tight.
Paige grabbed two more beers from the fridge and gestured toward the parlor. The formal sitting room with its antique furniture and bay windows felt too elegant for this conversation, but it was also empty and quiet and far from the guest rooms.
Channel followed without comment, settling onto the Victorian settee with the easy grace of a man comfortable anywhere. Paige took the wingback chair across from him—distance, she needed distance—and curled her legs beneath her.
"Tell me something real," she said.
He raised an eyebrow. "We've been talking for two days. You know plenty about me."
"I know facts. Smuggling, the club, why you're good at what you do." She held his gaze, refusing to let him deflect with that charming smile. "I want to know something you don't tell people. Something that isn't part of the performance."
The smile flickered and died. For a long moment, Channel just looked at her, something shifting behind his expression. The calculation giving way to something rawer. More exposed.
"You don't pull punches," he said finally.
"Never saw the point."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, the beer bottle dangling between his fingers. The lamplight carved shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp lines of his jaw, the scars on his hands.
"The charm," he started, then stopped. Shook his head. "It's not an act. That's what people don't understand. It's not something I put on—it's something I built. Layer by layer, year by year, until I'm not sure what's underneath anymore."
Paige waited, sensing there was more.
"My mother used to say I could talk my way out of anything.
" A ghost of a smile, bitter at the edges.
"She meant it as a compliment. But what she really meant was that I was good at being what people needed me to be.
Agreeable kid for the teachers. Tough kid for the neighborhood.
Charming kid for the girls. Whatever got me through, whatever kept things smooth. "
"And then the smuggling."
"The smuggling made it worse." He took a long pull of his beer.
"Running operations, you have to read people constantly.
Figure out who's trustworthy, who's lying, who's about to screw you over.
The charm became a tool—the smile that made people drop their guard, the easy manner that got them talking before they realized they'd said too much. "
"You were good at it."
"Too good." He looked up at her, and the vulnerability in his expression hit her like a physical blow.
"By the time Dale died, I'd been performing so long I couldn't remember how to stop.
The club, the brothers—they know the version of me that's useful.
The guy who can talk his way into anything, read any situation, always know where the exits are. "
"But that's not all of you."
"I don't know anymore." The admission came out rough, almost painful. "I don't know if there's anything else left. Maybe the charm is all there is. Maybe the real person got buried so deep I can't dig him out."
Paige set down her beer and moved before she could talk herself out of it. She crossed to the settee and sat beside him—close, deliberately close—and took his hand in hers.
"That's not true," she said quietly.
"How would you know?"
"Because the charm isn't what kept you here.
" She squeezed his fingers, feeling the tension in his grip.
"The charm would have gotten you the information you needed and sent you back to your club.
But you stayed. You're helping me close up my kitchen and trading war stories on my porch and letting me see past the smile. "
Something flickered in his eyes. Hope, maybe, or the beginning of it.
"That's not charm," Paige continued. "That's you. The real you, whoever he is, trying to connect with someone instead of just manipulating them."
Channel was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing patterns on her knuckles. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"Dale would have liked you."
The non sequitur caught her off guard. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. He was the only person who ever called me on my bullshit. Saw through the charm from day one, told me I was exhausting to be around because he could never tell when I was being real." A pause, heavy with old grief. "I think that's why I trusted him. Because he didn't let me hide."
"And now he's gone."
"Now he's gone. And I've spent six years wondering if the person he saw was ever really there, or if he was just the one who wanted to believe hard enough to imagine it."
Paige shifted closer, until her shoulder pressed against his and she could feel the heat of him through his shirt. "What did he see?"
"Someone who cared too much to admit it.
Someone who planned everything because losing people hurt too much to leave anything to chance.
" Channel turned his head, and suddenly their faces were inches apart.
"Someone who was terrified of letting anyone get close because then they'd be another variable he might fail. "
"And now?"
"Now I'm sitting here telling you things I've never told anyone, and I have no idea why." His free hand came up to cup her jaw, the touch gentle despite the intensity burning in his eyes. "Except that you see me. The way Dale saw me. And it scares the hell out of me."
Paige's heart hammered against her ribs. Every instinct she had—the soldier, the investigator, the woman who'd learned to protect herself—screamed that this was dangerous. That letting someone in was how you got hurt.
But she'd spent four years building walls, and all they'd given her was isolation.
"You want to know why I really bought this place?" she asked.
Channel's thumb traced her cheekbone, a whisper of sensation that made her breath catch. "Tell me."
"Afghanistan broke something in me. Not the combat—I could handle the combat.
It was what I became to survive it." She forced herself to hold his gaze, to not look away from the understanding in his eyes.
"I was good at my job. Too good. I could read threats before they materialized, anticipate violence, put myself in the mindset of people who wanted to hurt us.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to turn it off. "
"The hypervigilance you mentioned."
"It was more than that." Her voice dropped, the confession scraping raw. "I started enjoying it. The hunt. The takedown. The moment when everything clicked into place and I knew exactly how to destroy someone. I looked in the mirror one day and I didn't recognize the person looking back."
Channel's hand stilled on her face. "So you ran."
"I ran." The word tasted like failure, even now. "I told myself I was choosing peace. Building something gentle. But the truth is, I was terrified. Of what I'd become. Of what I might become if I kept going."
"You think hiding here changed you?"
"I think it let me pretend I'd changed." She laughed, bitter and soft.
"Then smugglers show up, and all it takes is one threat to bring the soldier back.
One burned dock and a dead cat and suddenly I'm running surveillance, mapping operations, feeling that old thrill in my blood when I identify patterns. "
"That doesn't make you a monster."
"Doesn't it?" She searched his face, looking for judgment, for revulsion. Finding only understanding. "What kind of person misses that feeling? The hunt. The violence. The part of war that's supposed to be trauma, not nostalgia."
Channel was quiet for a moment, his expression thoughtful. When he spoke, his voice was steady.
"The kind who was good at it. The kind who found meaning in being capable when everything was chaos.
" His thumb resumed its gentle motion along her cheekbone.
"You're not a monster for being shaped by what you survived.
You're just... different. Like me. Like anyone who's walked through fire and come out the other side. "
Paige felt something crack open in her chest—a dam she'd been shoring up for years, finally giving way. "I don't know how to be both. The innkeeper and the soldier. The woman who wants peace and the woman who comes alive when there's a threat."
"Maybe you don't have to choose." Channel leaned closer, his forehead almost touching hers. "Maybe the point isn't to bury one or the other. It's to find somewhere both can exist."
"And you think I can do that here? With you? With your club?"
"I think you've been doing it for the past two days." His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile—too real, too vulnerable. "And I think maybe I can do it too. If I stop hiding behind the charm long enough to try."
The kiss that followed wasn't a choice so much as an inevitability.
His mouth found hers, soft at first, questioning—and Paige answered by fisting her hand in his shirt and pulling him closer. The kiss deepened, turned hungry, all the tension that had been building between them finally finding release.
Channel's hands slid into her hair, angling her head to take the kiss deeper. She could taste beer and want and something that felt dangerously like honesty. His body was warm and solid against hers, and when he groaned low in his throat, the sound vibrated through her bones.
They broke apart gasping, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling in the small space between them.
"This is a terrible idea," Paige whispered.
"Probably." His voice was wrecked, rough with want. "You going to stop?"
She answered by kissing him again.
Not tonight. Whatever consequences were coming, she'd face them in the morning. Right now, all she wanted was this—two people who'd hidden behind competence, finally letting themselves feel something real.
Finally showing each other what was underneath.