Chapter 3
AMELIA
By the time I made it back, the Embassy Suites lobby was mostly empty, just the faint echo of footsteps on tile and a concierge giving me a polite nod as I passed. I nodded back, heels clicking as I crossed to the elevator, every muscle in my body aware of how bone-deep tired I was.
I caught my reflection in the elevator doors while I waited—dark hair pinned up, lipstick smudged at the edges, eyes ringed with exhaustion.
The elevator dinged and opened. I stepped inside, jabbed the button for my floor, and leaned back against the wall as the doors slid shut.
The ride was short but felt like it stretched forever. My feet ached. My neck ached. My brain ached with too many impressions—Dominion Hall whispers, soldiers-in-suits, the mayor shining under the lights, the quiet, controlled laughter of men who knew how to pull triggers and strings.
The doors opened with a soft chime.
I made my way down the carpeted hallway, swiped my keycard, and slipped into my room.
Cool, air-conditioned air wrapped around me.
Taupe walls, standard art, a king bed with too many pillows.
Functional. Anonymous. It was the kind of room I’d stayed in a hundred times before in a hundred different cities, except this one smelled like ocean and cleaning solution instead of dust and diesel. It would do.
I kicked off my heels with a groan and padded barefoot across the carpet. The gown came off next, pooled in a puddle on the floor. I tossed it onto the chair by the window, then stood there in my bra and panties, staring at the city lights beyond the glass.
Charleston at night looked soft. Harmless. Warm light spilling from streetlamps, palmettos swaying in a barely-there breeze. Pretty, if you didn’t know better.
It reminded me of the villages we used to drive through before dawn overseas. Quiet. Sleepy. Normal. Right up until the moment something exploded.
I shivered and turned away.
In the bathroom, I washed off the night—foundation, mascara, half-melted eyeliner. The woman in the mirror stripped down to bare skin and tired eyes. More familiar. Less glossy. Better.
I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and stared at my reflection for another beat.
“You’re fine,” I muttered to myself. “It’s just a city. It’s just a story.”
But my chest stayed tight.
I pulled on an oversized T-shirt and a pair of soft cotton shorts, then slid between the sheets. The mattress was too plush, the pillows too high, but the relief of horizontal was almost obscene. My body sighed, muscles unwinding in increments.
I set my phone on the nightstand, plugged it in, and checked the time.
10:42 p.m.
For once, I was in the same time zone as my parents. No middle-of-the-night calls from Syria or Kabul. No calculating whether my mother would be awake, whether my father would be coming off a shift at the mill, whether I’d scare them with the sound of gunfire in the distance.
I could call them now.
I didn’t.
Not yet.
Exhaustion rolled over me like a fog. I closed my eyes for a second, just to rest them, just to breathe—and was gone.
Dreaming. Remembering.
I was back in the heat.
Not Charleston heat—different heat. Dry and endless and sharp, like the sun was a blade pressed flat against my shoulders.
The canvas walls of the tent flapped faintly in the wind. Voices outside, low and tense. The smell of sweat and dust and something metallic that always seemed to cling to forward operating bases no matter how much you pretended otherwise.
“Emerson.”
His voice slid through the dream first. Low. Rough. Familiar in a way that punched straight through my chest.
I turned, and there he was.
He looked like he always did in my memory—taller than he had any right to be, dark hair cropped short, jaw shadowed with stubble. Uniform half unbuttoned at the throat like the rules didn’t quite apply to him.
They never had.
He watched me from the other side of the tent, eyes scanning my face like he was checking for cracks. Like I was one more piece of intel he needed to assess before the world went to hell.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
I did. I shouldn’t have. But I did.
My heart hammered as he stepped closer, feet silent on the packed dirt. The air between us grew tighter, heavier, like the molecules themselves knew what was coming.
“This is a bad idea,” I told him.
He smirked, just enough to flash the edge of a dimple I’d pretended not to notice for weeks. “Which part?”
“You. Me. In here. Alone.”
He stopped right in front of me. The tent felt smaller. My lungs did, too.
“We’re not alone,” he said. “There are guards outside.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
His eyes brushed over my face, my mouth, the neckline of my shirt, then back up—slow, deliberate, like a touch with no contact at all.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know what you meant.”
My body remembered him before the rest of me did.
The way he’d watched me across briefing tables, the way our eyes always seemed to find each other when a door slammed or a helicopter skimmed too low overhead.
The way his hand had covered mine once when I’d nearly dropped a camera during a surprise mortar test.
That first touch had been nothing. Accidental. Forgettable.
I hadn’t forgotten it.
Now, the space between us felt like it was pulsing.
“That story you want,” he murmured, stepping closer, the front of his body brushing the heat of mine. “You’ll get it.”
“You promised me access,” I shot back, even as my voice softened. “I’m not here to be … entertained.”
His fingers closed gently around my wrist, heat searing my skin. “Is that what you think this is?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the words melted when he lifted my hand and pressed it flat against his chest.
His heart was pounding.
So was mine.
“You’ve been looking at me like that for weeks,” he said softly. “I’m not the only one tempted here, Amelia.”
I hated that he was right. I hated that the tent suddenly felt like it had no air. I hated that my body leaned into his like it had been waiting for this exact second.
“It’s unprofessional,” I managed.
He huffed out a laugh. “Out here, unprofessional is letting your guard down. I’m not doing that.”
“You are right now.”
“Am I?”
He dipped his head, lips skimming my jaw, my breath catching in my throat. Every nerve in my body lit up. His hands bracketed my hips, fingers digging in just enough to remind me how strong he was.
And then he kissed me.
It was not a polite, “we shouldn’t be doing this” kiss. It wasn’t cautious. It wasn’t careful.
It was hungry.
His mouth slanted over mine, taking, testing, his stubble scraping my skin, his taste—coffee, dust, some dark thing that was all him—flooding every sense I had left.
I clutched at his uniform without meaning to, fingers knotting in rough fabric. Heat rolled over me, through me, under my skin. The world outside the tent—radio chatter, boots on gravel, the far-off thump of artillery practice—faded into a dull roar.
All I felt was him.
He pressed me back until my shoulders hit the central support pole, his body pinning mine there. Solid. Heavy. Unyielding. It should’ve made me feel trapped.
Instead, I felt anchored.
His mouth left mine to trail down my throat, teeth grazing the sensitive spot just under my jaw. My knees went weak. His hands slid beneath my shirt, callused palms on bare skin, and a shiver streaked up my spine.
I gasped. “We can’t—”
“We already are,” he murmured against my skin.
I could’ve stopped him. I should have. I didn’t.
The dream blurred, details slipping, but the sensations stayed sharp: my back arching, his hands mapping me, the delicious drag of his body against mine, the low sound he made when I tugged his hair. The way he whispered my name like a curse and a prayer all at once.
God, the way he touched me.
The memory did this thing in my chest—splitting it wide open and filling it at the same time. Like he’d found every spot I’d kept hidden and claimed it without asking.
We didn’t make it to the cot at first. My thighs hit the edge of a metal trunk, his body crowding mine, his breath hot against my ear as he told me exactly how badly he’d wanted me from the second I’d stepped off the helicopter. His words were low, filthy, devastating.
The heat built and built until it snapped, pleasure slamming through me in a blinding rush. My fingers clawed at his shoulders, my head dropping back, his name spilling from my lips like I’d been holding it in for my whole life.
It was the best sex I’d ever had.
It still was.
Even in the dream, my body remembered every second of it. Every sound, every shudder, every unguarded moment when I’d let myself believe that maybe, for once, I could have both the story and the man.
Then the dream shifted.
It always did.
One second, it was heat and skin and his mouth on my neck. The next, I was standing outside a nondescript concrete building, camera bag slung over my shoulder, sun beating down.
Waiting.
He was supposed to meet me.
I checked my watch in the dream, the numbers blurring.
He didn’t come.
Radio chatter crackled in the background. A door slammed. Somewhere, an engine revved.
I waited.
He still didn’t come.
And when the door finally opened, it wasn’t him walking out—it was a stone-faced captain who told me there’d been a change of plans. That I didn’t have clearance. That no one had promised me anything.
The betrayal hit like a sandstorm. Stinging, disorienting, getting into places it had no business being. I remembered arguing, my voice rising, my heart cracking in real time.
“He said—” I had started.
But he wasn’t there to confirm it.
He wasn’t there at all.
He’d disappeared.
“You journalists always think you’re owed something,” the captain had sneered.
The dream folded in on itself. Heat turned to hurt. Desire turned to fury.
I opened my mouth to scream at him, but no sound came out.
I jerked awake in the dark, heart jackhammering against my ribs.