Chapter Thirty-Seven
First Date (For Real)
Crew
I’ve planned tactical operations with less precision than this date.
And after dinner—the rooftop. I spent my lunch break hauling blankets and pillows up there, along with a bottle of wine I had to Google to make sure was good, and a Bluetooth speaker loaded with a playlist I made. Yes, I made a playlist. Foster would never let me live it down if he knew.
At 6:45, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and try to remember how to breathe.
I’m wearing dark jeans, a charcoal button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Casual but intentional. I shaved. I put on cologne for the first time in months—something I bought years ago and never used because who was I trying to impress?
Her. I was always waiting for her.
Murphy watches from the doorway, tail flicking with judgment.
“Don’t start,” I tell him.
He meows.
“I know what I’m doing.”
Another meow, deeply skeptical.
“You’re a cat. Your opinion is irrelevant.”
He turns and walks away, which feels like a commentary.
At 6:56, I’m standing outside her bedroom door. My hand is raised to knock. I’ve been standing here for approximately forty-five seconds.
Just knock. You’ve breached buildings. You’ve testified in federal court. You can knock on a door.
I knock.
“Coming!”
Shuffling sounds. A muffled curse. Something falls over.
The door swings open, and my brain goes offline.
She’s wearing a dress. Deep green, the color of pine trees, with thin straps and a neckline that hints at things I’m trying very hard not to stare at. Her hair is down, loose waves around her shoulders. Minimal makeup—just enough to make her eyes look even bigger, her lips slightly pinker.
She’s beautiful. She’s always beautiful. But right now, knowing she did this for me—
And then it hits me.
The dress. The heels. She thinks we’re going somewhere nice. Somewhere that matches how incredible she looks. And I’m about to take her to a gym.
Shit.
“Hi,” she says.
“You look—” I clear my throat. “You look incredible.”
“Yeah?” She does a little spin, and the dress flares around her thighs. “I wasn’t sure about the green, but Sadie said—”
“Sadie was right.” I run a hand through my hair, already feeling like an idiot and we’re only ten seconds into this date. “Emmie, I—I think I messed up. Fuck.”
Her smile falters. “What do you mean?”
“The first part of tonight. I planned—” I exhale. “I should have told you what to wear. I didn’t think. I don’t do this. Planning dates, and, uh—” I’m rambling now, which I never do. “You might need to change.”
“Change?” She looks down at her dress, then back at me. “Where are we going?”
“It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“Crew.”
“The gym. I booked a private room. I was going to teach you self-defense—finish what we started with the contract, but for real this time. And then dinner, and then—” I stop.
“It made sense in my head. Take you somewhere that’s mine, show you that part of my life.
But you’re wearing a dress, and heels, and you look like that, and I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how dates work. ”
I brace for disappointment. Annoyance. Maybe even anger. Something.
Instead, she laughs.
Not at me—with me. Warm and surprised and genuinely delighted.
“You planned a self-defense lesson for our first date?”
“I told you I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Crew.” She steps closer, smoothing her hands down the front of my shirt. “That’s the most you thing you could have possibly planned. I love it.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad? You put thought into this. You wanted to share something with me.” She rises on her tiptoes and presses a quick kiss to my jaw. “Give me five minutes to change. I think I have leggings that won’t completely destroy your concentration.”
“I make no promises.”
She grins and disappears back into her room.
I stand in the hallway, heart pounding, trying to process what just happened. I messed up. I admitted I messed up. And she didn’t run. Didn’t sigh. Didn’t look at me like I was too much work.
She laughed and kissed my jaw and went to change into leggings.
Hm. Maybe I can do this after all.
* * *
Five minutes later, she emerges in black leggings, a fitted tank top, and sneakers. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail now, and she’s scrubbed off the lipstick.
She’s somehow even more beautiful like this. Relaxed. Real.
“Better?” she asks.
“You looked incredible before.”
“And now?”
I let my eyes travel down her body—the curve of her waist, the length of her legs in those leggings.
“Now I’m going to have trouble concentrating.”
“Good.” She grabs her purse—a smaller one this time—and loops her arm through mine. “Let’s go learn how to fight.”
“Defend,” I correct. “We’re learning to defend.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s really not.”
She’s already pulling me toward the door, and I let her, because apparently that’s what I do now. Let Emmie Marshall pull me wherever she wants to go.
I can think of worse fates.
* * *
The Bureau gym is empty at this hour, which is the point.
Emmie looks around as I swipe us through the security doors—the weight room, the cardio equipment, the sparring mats visible through the glass windows.
“This is where you work out?”
“Most days, yes.”
“It’s very… institutional.”
“It’s a federal building.”
“Right.” She grins. “Very on-brand for you.”
I lead her past the main gym to the private training room I reserved. It’s smaller, more intimate—padded floors, mirrored walls, a few pieces of equipment pushed to the corners.
“Okay.” She turns to face me, hands on her hips. “What’s the plan here? Are you going to teach me to fight?”
“I’m going to teach you to defend yourself. Fighting is about offense. Defense is about getting away.” I move to the center of the mat. “The goal isn’t to win. It’s to create enough distance to escape.”
She joins me on the mat, shaking out her arms like she’s preparing for a fight. The tank top rides up slightly as she stretches, revealing a sliver of stomach. I force myself to focus.
“Okay, Coach. What’s first?”
“First—” I position myself in front of her. “We work on breaking holds. If someone grabs you from behind, your instinct will be to struggle. That’s wrong.”
“Struggling is wrong?”
“Struggling wastes energy and telegraphs your movements. Instead—” I step behind her, wrapping my arms loosely around her waist. “You want to drop your weight, create space, then strike.”
She’s tense against me, but not from fear. I can feel her breathing quicken, feel the warmth of her back against my chest. “Crew.”
“Yeah?”
“Is this part of the lesson, or are you just looking for an excuse to hold me?”
“Both.”
She laughs, and some of the tension breaks. “Okay. Show me what to do.”
I walk her through the technique—dropping her center of gravity, twisting to create space, using her elbow to strike backward. She’s a quick learner, and after a few tries, she executes the move almost perfectly.
“Good. Again.”
We run through it five more times. Then I teach her how to break a wrist grab, how to escape a chokehold, how to use her body weight against someone bigger.
Every technique requires contact. My hands on her wrists. Her body pressed against mine. The brush of her hair against my face when she twists out of a hold.
By the time we’ve been at it for thirty minutes, I’m barely holding it together.
“Okay,” she says, breathing hard. “I think I need a water break.”
“There’s a water station with cups by the door.”
She pads across the mat, and I watch her go—the sway of her hips, the way the workout clothes cling to her curves. When she bends to fill a paper cup with water, I have to look away.
Get it together, Jensen.
“You know,” she says, walking back toward me, “when you said you were taking me on a date, I didn’t expect a workout.”
“This isn’t the date. This is the prelude.”
“There’s more?”
“Dinner. And after.”
“After?” Her eyebrows rise. “What’s after?”
“You’ll see.”
She stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell her shampoo. Coconut. Always coconut.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re very mysterious, Agent Jensen?”
“Once or twice.”
She’s smiling. That bright, warm smile that makes me feel like I’m standing in sunlight.
“One more technique,” I say. “Then we’ll go to dinner.”
“What’s this one?”
“What to do if someone pins you against a wall.”
Her breath catches. “Show me.”
I guide her backward until her shoulders meet the mirrored wall. My hands bracket her head, my body close but not quite touching.
“In this position,” I say, my voice lower than I intend, “most people panic. They push against the attacker’s chest, trying to shove them away. That’s a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Because it puts you in a power struggle you’ll probably lose.” I lean closer. “Instead, you go for vulnerable targets. Eyes. Throat. Groin.”
“Groin.” She’s slightly breathless. “I don’t know, Jensen. Seems a shame to damage something I might have plans for later.”
My brain short-circuits for a full three seconds.
“Focus,” I manage, though my voice has dropped about an octave.
“I’m very focused.” Her eyes flick downward, then back up. “Trust me.”
I clear my throat. “The goal is to create a moment of distraction, then escape.” My thumb brushes her jaw—not part of the lesson, just because I can’t help it. “Make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
Neither of us moves.
“Crew.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to kiss me, or are you going to keep talking about self-defense?”
I grin, then I kiss her.
It’s soft at first—a question, not a demand. Her hands come up to grip my shirt, pulling me closer, and the question becomes an answer. I press her into the wall, one hand sliding into her hair, the other settling on her waist.
She sighs against my mouth, and the sound undoes something in me.
“We should—” I pull back, breathing hard. “Dinner. We have a reservation.”
“Right.” Her eyes are dazed, her lips slightly swollen. “Dinner.”
“Crew.” She cups my face, forcing me to look at her. “Take me to dinner. But know that I’m going to be thinking about this—” She gestures between us, at the wall, at everything. “The entire time.”
“That makes two of us.”
* * *
The restaurant is everything I hoped—intimate, candlelit, with a menu that makes Emmie’s eyes light up.
She orders three different appetizers just to taste them, and I end up eating half of everything because she keeps pushing plates toward me.
And she doesn’t even seem mad that my planning is terrible and she’s dressed for the gym at a nice dinner.
Though the restaurant is pretty casual, so it’s not like she sticks out in a bad way.
She’s still the most gorgeous woman here.
I wish I could tell her that, that I could say sweet things and be more… I don’t know, just more.
“Try the burrata. Crew. Try it.” She groans around a bite.
I try it. It’s good. Everything’s good. But mostly I just watch her—the way she closes her eyes when something tastes particularly amazing, the way she gestures with her fork when she’s explaining why the pasta is perfectly al dente, the way she laughs when I admit I can’t tell the difference.
“You have a pedestrian palate,” she informs me.
“I know.”
“I’m going to fix that.”
“I know that too.”
She grins and steals a bite off my plate, and I think about how I want to do this forever—sit across from her in restaurants, watch her eat, listen to her talk about food with the same intensity I bring to tactical briefings.
After dinner, I pay the check before she can argue and lead her outside.
“That was amazing,” she says, looping her arm through mine. “Thank you.”
“The night’s not over yet.”
“There’s still an ‘after’?”
“There’s still an after.”
I guide her back toward our building, but instead of going to the apartment, I take her to the service elevator.
“Where are we going?”
“Up.”
The elevator opens onto the rooftop access. I push through the door, and Emmie gasps.
I spent an hour setting this up earlier today—blankets spread across the concrete, pillows piled in a nest, string lights borrowed from Mrs. Clemson in 9B draped along the half-wall, and a bottle of wine chilling in a bucket.
I press a couple of buttons, and the speaker begins playing something soft and low.
“Crew.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “You did this?”
“You said you wanted to see the stars. We’re in Dallas, so it’s not perfect, but on a clear night, you can see—”
She kisses me before I can finish.
This one isn’t soft. This one is heat and hunger and everything we’ve been holding back. Her arms wrap around my neck, pulling me down to her, and I lift her off her feet without thinking about it.
“The blankets,” she murmurs against my mouth.
“What?”
“Take me to the blankets.”
I do.