Chapter 16
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 hummed with 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.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“It's true.”
He studied her a moment. The set of her jaw. The way she scanned the room once every thirty seconds, casual but trained. The way her foot tapped beneath the table, probably unconsciously.
“You’re not relaxed,” he said.
“Neither are you.”
“Yeah, but I fake it better.”
Shannon’s eyes finally cut to his. “Is that what this is? A fake?”
Dante didn’t look away. “You tell me.”
She leaned forward slightly, her hands still wrapped around the mug. “You’re supposed to be my detail. You’re not supposed to meet me for coffee.”
“I’m not your detail anymore,” he said. “Technically, my rotation ended graduation day.”
“Technically.”
“I wanted to see you.” That landed harder than he wanted it to.
She looked down at her cup, then back up. “I asked you to lunch to say thank you. Why are you really here?”
“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
She exhaled slowly. “You always talk like that?”
“Only when I mean it.”
She shook her head, but there was no denial in it. Just a small, exhausted smile. “You’re a terrible idea, Olivetti.”
“Best kind,” he said.
They sat in it then, the honest part. The moment where nothing was a mission anymore. There were no assignments and no call signs. They were just a man and a woman who’d been pretending not to see each other for years.
“Do you always sit like you’re waiting for a sniper?” she asked.
Dante arched a brow. “Do you always scan the door for threats before you speak?”
Shannon shrugged. “Only when I feel vulnerable.”
“And do you?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I do.”
He nodded once, like that answered everything. Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. A couple passed the window holding hands.
“I’m not good at this,” Shannon said suddenly. “The whole... letting someone in thing. I keep people at arm’s length. Sometimes two arms.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Dante said. “You walk like a fortress.”
She smiled, just a flicker. “And yet you keep circling.”
“I’m not circling,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you to stop pretending you don’t want me to.”
She looked away, swallowed hard, then whispered, “And if I stop pretending?”
Dante didn’t move or even blink. “Then I’ll kiss you,” he said, calm as stone. “And we’ll figure it out from there.”
She looked back at him, her eyes open, her breath shallow. But she didn’t stop him.
They talked for hours. About nothing and about everything.
He told her about losing his father. How he’d done it his way, how grief sometimes sounded like silence in a kitchen that used to smell like breakfast. She listened, eyes gentle, never interrupting.
“I owe Ford a lot. He and Julian Dupart tossed me a lifeline. They helped me pick up the pieces and move forward.”
They wandered through a park after lunch. The skies darkened, and a breeze kicked up.
Then the rain came fast, loud, and soaking.
They ran toward the car, laughing like children. Dante’s jacket went over her shoulders. Her hair stuck to her face.
When they reached his hotel, dripping and breathless, neither one hesitated. The door shut behind them with a soft, magnetic click.
Shannon stood just inside, rainwater sliding down her arms, plastering her shirt to her back like a second skin. Her jeans clung to her legs, heavy with stormwater, soaked straight through. She didn’t move. Neither did he.
The room smelled like cedar and ozone. Pale gold lamps hummed to life when the keycard activated the power, casting the king-sized bed and worn leather chair in a soft, inviting glow.
The curtains were drawn against the storm.
Outside, thunder still rumbled low like a warning. Inside, everything was still.
Dante dropped the keycard onto the console. He looked at her, not the way other men had, not like she was some live wire or an unfinished challenge. He looked at her like he’d already memorized every inch of her, and he was trying to forget that fact just long enough to do the right thing.
Her pulse pounded at the base of her throat. She tugged off his jacket with wet fingers, peeling it down her arms. It hit the floor with a soft splatter.
“You okay?” he asked, voice low, coarse from restraint.
“No.” There it was, her vulnerability. Her eyes caught the lamp light and held it. “But I want to be.”
He watched her like a man watching a fuse burn and trying to decide if he should disarm it… or light the next one. Her hair was soaked, curling down the sides of her face. She stepped closer.
“I don’t want to go home tonight.” The words were quiet but certain.
His shoulders rose and fell on a long breath. “Shannon…”
“Don’t talk me out of it,” she said. “Please.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She stepped into his space, rain-soaked, the pulse at the base of her neck flickering with heat. Her hands dug into her jean pockets, and her toe dug into the carpet. “If you don’t want this, say it now.”
“I’ve wanted you for a long time.” His voice deepened. “Every damn day I had to pretend I didn’t.”
A breath escaped her lips.
He stepped forward. One hand rose to brush the wet strands off her cheek, fingers grazing her skin like it might bruise. The first real touch. Not accidental. Not professional. And it landed like lightning.
She didn’t pull away. She leaned into it.
He cupped her jaw, his thumb resting just beneath her bottom lip. She held still. “I need to ask you two things,” he rasped.
“Okay.”
His eyes searched hers like he’d never had the right to look before. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
He inhaled. “Are you on birth control?”
She exhaled steadily. “Yeah. I am.”
He didn’t move for another beat. Then his mouth finally found hers, slow, firm, and devastating. There was no hesitation after that.
His kiss was a question he already knew the answer to. He didn’t rush. Didn’t crush her lips or grope blindly. He learned her, second by second, breath by breath.
Shannon pressed forward, rising onto her toes, fingers gripping the front of his soaked black T-shirt like it might keep her tethered to the ground. The cotton was drenched, hot and cold at once, sticking to the muscle underneath like a second skin.
When he pulled back, barely a centimeter, her lips chased his. “Dante,” she whispered, her voice cracked and low.
His hand slid down her side, reverent, with his palm flat against the curve of her waist.
“You still sure?” His breath brushed her cheek.
She nodded against his mouth. “Yes.”
“You say that like you’re not going to change your mind the second I—”
“I’m not,” she said, firm this time. “I’ve wanted this… you… since the first time you told me I wasn’t broken.”
He lifted her with strong hands, gripping the backs of her thighs, and carried her toward the bed like she weighed nothing. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t flinch. She clung to him, arms looped around his shoulders, mouth at his neck, tasting salt and rain and something uniquely him.
The mattress caught them both in a soft, creaking exhale. She landed beneath him, legs open and arms above her head, still in sopping wet denim and a clinging T-shirt.
He knelt back just far enough to look down at her. “You’re soaked.”
“So are you.” Her eyes dared him to keep pretending he could hold back.
He hooked his fingers under the hem of her shirt and started to peel it upward. The wet fabric clung to her ribs, her chest, every inch of her like it didn’t want to let go.
She raised her arms. He pulled it off in one slow motion, baring her inch by inch.
Her bra was simple, black, lace-trimmed, soaked through and translucent. Her nipples were already hard and dark through the fabric. With a flick of his fingers, he undid the clasp and slid the straps down her arms.
She didn’t cover herself. He didn’t look away.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, voice low like it cost him something.
She flushed. Not embarrassed, just unaccustomed to being seen that way. “Your turn.”
His shirt came off in one fluid pull. He tossed it to the floor. The lamplight caught on the scars that lined his ribs—old ones, thin, like ghost maps.
She reached up and touched one. “What’s this one from?”
“Training op. Shrapnel.”
“This?”
“Fallujah.”
“And this?”
“Something I needed to learn twice.”
She sat up on her knees and kissed the scar just below his collarbone. Then another near his sternum. His breath shuddered. His hands found her hips, still clothed in wet denim, and he began to undo the button.
“You sure?” he asked one more time.
She looked up at him, eyes steady. “I’m not here to be saved.”