Chapter 11
AMELIA
By the time we made it to the shower, I’d stopped pretending this was casual.
My legs still felt shaky when I stepped off the bed. The room smelled like sweat and sex, the air thick with what we’d just done. Levi watched me cross to the bathroom, his eyes dark, his chest still rising and falling a little too fast.
“Don’t even think about staying out here,” I tossed over my shoulder as I flicked on the light.
He huffed out a laugh that sounded wrecked. “Bossy.”
I laughed, too.
The bathroom filled with steam as the water warmed. When I stepped under the spray, it was almost too hot, needling across my skin in sharp prickles that slowly softened into warmth.
I heard him come in before I saw him. Then the curtain moved, and his body slid in behind me, big and solid and familiar in ways I’d spent two years trying to forget.
We didn’t speak at first.
Water rushed over us, drumming against his shoulders, rolling down the curve of my spine. My back pressed to his chest, his hands resting light on my hips, like he wasn’t sure how much he was allowed to hold.
I covered one of them with my own.
He exhaled, a long, quiet sound against the back of my neck.
“You okay?” he asked.
I could have lied. I almost did.
“Not even close,” I said, instead.
He nodded against my wet hair, like that was the only answer he’d expected.
We moved slowly, almost awkwardly domestic for two people who had been trying to claw each other apart a few hours ago. He took the soap, lathered it in his hands, then ran them over my shoulders, down my arms, careful around the places he’d held too tight.
It should’ve felt intimate in a suffocating way. Vulnerable. Exposed.
It did.
And I still let him.
I turned to face him, water flattening his hair, droplets tracking down the new scars on his chest. My thumbs brushed one near his ribs before I could stop myself.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked.
He looked down, then back up. “Wrong end of a door frame,” he said lightly.
“Liar.”
A corner of his mouth ticked. “I’ll tell you, someday.”
“Someday is a coward’s word,” I said, but my voice came out softer than I meant.
His gaze held mine, steady. “Then let’s call it a placeholder,” he said. “Until I can figure out how not to make it worse.”
That was the problem with him. Even when he was infuriating, he still sounded like the man who had once stayed up all night trading stories with me in the desert, the one who’d made me believe there were still people in uniform who gave a damn about more than orders.
I took the soap from his hand before my thoughts could spiral.
“Turn around,” I said.
He did, obedient for once, bracing his hands on the tile. I dragged the bar across his shoulders, over the muscle-corded length of his back, following with my palms. He was mapped in scar tissue, some pale and old, some newer and pinker. I traced one that crossed his spine diagonally.
“You didn’t have this when we …” I started.
“No,” he said. “That one’s part of the last two years.”
I wanted to ask. I didn’t.
Instead, I rinsed the soap away and pressed my mouth to the spot, once, brief and selfish.
He shivered.
“Emerson,” he said, and there it was again—that tone. The one that made my knees go weak even as my brain catalogued every reason I should walk out and never look back.
“We’re going to be late,” I said, stepping out of the spray.
“For what?” he asked.
“Dinner,” I said. “You promised me the most expensive thing on the menu, remember? I intend to hold you to it.”
His laugh followed me as I reached for a towel.
We dressed without the frantic urgency that had marked the last few hours. It felt almost normal. Dangerous word.
But my suitcase wasn’t here.
“Wait,” I said, realizing it. “My clothes are in my room.”
Levi didn’t argue—he just grabbed his card key, and a minute later we slipped down the hall like two people who definitely should not be seen together.
In my room, I tossed open the suitcase that had exploded across the armchair, rummaging through it with the detached precision of a woman choosing armor.
He leaned against the door, watching.
I pretended not to notice.
I chose a simple black dress that hit mid-thigh, a neckline that could pass for modest if no one breathed too hard. I twisted my damp hair into a low knot and swiped on mascara, a little concealer, a hint of lipstick.
When I looked up, Levi wasn’t pretending at all—he was staring like he’d forgotten how to blink.
He stood by the window, khaki pants, pale blue button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms. The shirt pulled across his chest and shoulders in ways that should have been illegal.
“Say something,” I said, suddenly, stupidly nervous.
He didn’t move for a second. Then he let his gaze travel from my bare feet up, slow and thorough, lingering at my knees, the hem of my dress, the slope of my shoulders.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “We’re definitely ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, because they’re throwing us out as soon as they see you.”
Heat climbed my neck. “That was almost charming,” I said. “Did it hurt?”
“Like hell,” he said. “Ready?”
No. Not even a little.
“Let’s go.”
Verandelle sat on a quaint street downtown, all wraparound veranda and soft lantern light, the kind of place that felt built to be photographed at golden hour.
Ceiling fans turned lazily overhead, stirring the heavy Charleston air.
Couples and groups filled the tables, a low hum of conversation underscored by clinking glassware and the sizzle of something cooking in butter.
We were seated on the veranda, just inside the railing of wrought iron. From here, I could see the street—tourists strolling by, a horse-drawn carriage rolling past, the driver’s patter floating up like background noise.
Candlelight flickered between us on the small table, catching on the cut crystal of Levi’s water glass, throwing shadows across his jaw.
“Reporter in the wild,” he said, picking up his menu. “How’s it feel, eating something that’s not coming out of a hotel buffet or a conflict-zone canteen?”
I scanned the options—local fish, shrimp and grits, a steak that probably cost more than my first car.
“Suspicious,” I said. “This many adjectives on one page is never a good sign.”
“Adjectives?”
“‘Hand-foraged.’ ‘Line-caught.’ ‘Heritage grains.’ It’s word salad with a side of actual salad.”
“You say that like you’re not about to order the hand-foraged heritage something,” he said.
I sighed. “I am absolutely ordering the hand-foraged heritage something.”
He grinned.
The waiter came, all practiced charm and Charleston drawl, and rattled off the specials. Levi ordered a bourbon he’d never be able to pronounce in uniform. I chose wine from a list long enough to occupy a grad seminar.
We picked mains, something with scallops for me, something with more meat than plate for him.
When we were alone again, he leaned back, studying me over the candle.
“This is weird,” he said.
“Which part?” I asked. “The part where you flew in on a mysterious private jet tied to a shadowy security empire? Or the part where we’re on something that suspiciously resembles a date?”
“Both,” he said. “But I was going to go with the part where you’re letting me buy you dinner without interrogating me mid-entrée.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I fully intend to interrogate you. I’m just pacing myself.”
The bourbon came, deep amber in the glass. My wine followed, garnet-dark. We clinked, a soft chime in the humid air.
“To what, exactly?” I asked.
He considered. “Surviving long enough to do this again?”
My throat tightened.
“Ambitious,” I said, tipping my glass toward his. “To surviving tonight, first.”
We sipped.
For a while, we talked around the obvious.
He asked about Canada, about the small town I’d grown up in.
The endless winters, the way the snow swallowed sound, the smell of woodsmoke and wet wool.
He remembered details I’d half forgotten telling him—my dad’s old hockey jacket that smelled like cold and coffee, the way my mom always put too much cinnamon in her Christmas cookies.
I asked about Montana, about the brothers I’d heard about in fragments. His voice softened when he spoke of them, of wide sky and long drives and a house that always had one more chair at the table.
“You could have gone back,” I said, tracing the rim of my glass with one finger. “Two years ago. You could’ve left it all behind.”
He shrugged, staring out toward the street for a moment. “Maybe,” he said. “But I’ve never been good at walking away from unfinished business.”
“You walked away from me,” I said, before I could stop myself.
His head turned back slowly. The hurt in his eyes was raw, unhidden for once.
“I thought I was finishing something,” he said.
I let out a breath that felt like it had been stuck in my chest for twenty-four months.
“By disappearing?” I asked. “By cutting me off like I was an operational risk instead of an actual person?”
“Amelia,” he said quietly. “If I’d stayed in your orbit, you would’ve been an operational risk. To people who don’t mind making examples out of civilians.”
“I’m a war correspondent,” I said. “Civilians is a stretchy term.”
“It’s a line they don’t care about,” he said. “All they’d see is leverage.”
I swirled my wine, watching the red cling to the sides of the glass. “You think you’re the only one who gets to decide what risks I take?”
“No,” he said. “I think I’m the only one who knew the details you didn’t.”
That landed like a stone in my stomach.
“What details?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Things I still can’t tell you without dragging you into exactly what I was trying to pull you out of.”
I hated that. Hated classified. Hated operational need-to-know. Hated that the man in front of me was a wall I could only climb so high before the barbed wire started.
“I would’ve gone with you,” I said, the words slipping out before I could throttle them. “Back then. If you’d said the word. If you’d asked.”
His fingers tightened around his glass. “I know.”
“Do you?” I asked. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you decided for both of us.”
He dropped his gaze to the tablecloth, jaw working.
“Every scenario I ran ended with you dead or disappeared,” he said. “There wasn’t a version where you got to keep writing and I got to keep doing what I was doing and we both walked away clean.”
“You don’t get to protect me from my own choices,” I said.
He looked up again, and the shine in his eyes made something in my chest crack.
“You think I don’t know that?” he asked. “You think I haven’t replayed that night a thousand times, tried to find the version where I stay, where I tell you everything, where we leave together and figure it out from there?”
I held his gaze. The candle threw shadows across the fine lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“What happens in that version?” I asked, voice low.
He let out a breath, slow. “You hate civilian life,” he said.
“We fight every time we see something on the news I can’t talk about.
You resent me for turning your work into mine by proximity.
We try to build something on a foundation that’s half lies and half rules I can’t break. Eventually, one of us walks, anyway.”
“That’s very dramatic for a man who complains about adjectives on menus,” I said, but it came out softer than I meant.
Our food arrived then, a small mercy. Scallops, golden and seared, nestled on a bed of something creamy and clever. His steak, thick and charred just right. For a few minutes, conversation narrowed to forks and flavor, the familiar ritual of sharing bites, trading opinions.
“Okay, that is offensive,” I said around a mouthful of whatever magic Verandelle had done to my plate.
He pointed his fork at me. “See? Adjectives have their place.”
We ate, and the sharp edges dulled just enough to let other words in.
“What about your version?” he asked eventually, cutting into his steak. “The one where I don’t disappear. What does it look like?”
I thought about it.
In my version, the war ended. The story didn’t, but the place did. We got on a plane together, not as soldier and embedded journalist, but as something messy and undefined. We landed somewhere with fewer checkpoints. Maybe Canada. Maybe Montana. Some place with more trees than concrete.
“You come home with me,” I said slowly. “Not to my parents—they’d have fallen over dead at the sight of you—but to a small apartment that smells like takeout and deadlines.
You learn to sleep through sirens instead of artillery.
I write about politics instead of bombs.
You pretend civilian clothes don’t itch. ”
He smiled, faint. “You think I’d do well at dinner parties?”
“You’d terrify the donors and charm the interns,” I said. “It would be a service to democracy.”
“And us?” he asked softly.
I looked down at my plate, then back up.
“We’d fight,” I said. “I’d push. You’d retreat.
We’d circle the same argument about secrecy vs.
safety until we both bled from it. But we’d also go for groceries and argue over cereal brands.
We’d watch bad TV and make fun of plot holes.
We’d learn what it’s like to touch each other without wondering if it was the last time. ”
Silence.
The sounds of the restaurant swelled and receded around us—laughter from the next table, clink of dishes, the distant clip-clop of a carriage passing outside.
“You still could,” he said finally. “Have some version of that. Without me screwing it up.”
The idea of a life without him in it made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with old wounds and everything to do with the man across from me tracing the rim of his glass as if it were the only thing keeping his hands steady.
“I don’t want the version that never had you,” I said quietly. “I just wish the version that did hadn’t come with so much collateral damage.”
His throat worked. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”