Chapter 23
DANE
I carry Lila back to bed, her body warm and pliant against mine. She nestles into my sheets like she belongs there, and something in me recognizes the rightness of it. Her damp hair spreads across my pillow, auburn strands catching the dim light from the bedside lamp.
I stretch out beside her, propping myself on one elbow to study her face. Her lips are swollen from my kisses, her pale skin flushed. Those green eyes meet mine, unguarded for once.
"Tell me something," she whispers, tracing a finger along my collarbone. "Was that... I mean, is that as intense as it gets?"
I can't help the low chuckle that escapes me. "Not even close, sweetheart."
"Really?" Her eyes widen slightly.
"Much more," I say, my voice dropping lower. "There's so much more I want to do to you." I pause, correcting myself. "With you."
The fear that flickers across her face doesn't escape me, but there's curiosity there too—a hunger that mirrors my own. Most women would run from the darkness they see in me. Lila leans closer despite everything.
"Like what?" she asks, her voice barely audible.
I trace the curve of her hip, watching goosebumps rise on her skin. "Things that would make you forget your own name. Things that would keep you on the edge for hours until you're begging."
She swallows hard, pupils dilating. "You seem pretty confident."
"I am." No point in false modesty. "But only if you want it too. Only if you trust me."
And that's the crux of it. Trust. Something I've never given or received easily, but that she seems willing to grant me.
I cup her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone. "I've never met a woman like you, Lila."
"Is that your line?" she asks, but there's no bite to it.
"No," I say simply. "That's the truth."
And it is. She's soft where I'm hard, light where I'm shadow. Yet she carries her own darkness, wears her scars without apology. Most people spend their lives running from their demons. Lila and I… we've learned to dance with ours.
I should be more careful. Control has always been my religion, yet here I am, offering pieces of myself to this woman I barely know. The soldier in me recognizes the tactical error. The man in me doesn't give a damn.
I watch Lila's face as she studies me, those eyes seeing too much. The silence between us should feel awkward, but it doesn't. It feels... dangerous. Like standing on a cliff's edge, knowing the fall could kill me but wanting to jump anyway.
"Last night," she says, her voice soft as she traces patterns on my chest, "you said there were things you wanted to share with me."
Something cold slides down my spine. My instinct to deflect kicks in automatically.
"Pretty sure I was talking about sexual positions, sweetheart."
She doesn't smile. Just looks at me with that damn awareness that cuts right through my bullshit.
"No," she says. "It was when we were talking about my past." Her fingers continue their path across my skin, but her gaze holds steady. "You looked like you wanted to say something too."
The moment stretches between us. She's opened her wounds to me. Shown me the darkness someone else carved into her. And now she's asking me to do the same.
Trust. A different kind than the sexual, physical one, a more terrifying kind. The concept feels foreign, like a language I learned once but haven't spoken in years.
What if I tell her about my father? About the bodies buried beneath the foundations of my childhood? What if I admit that I've stood at the precipice of becoming him more times than I can count?
She'd run. Anyone with sense would.
But Lila isn't just anyone. She's seen the monster lurking beneath my skin—the one I let slip during sex—and she didn't flinch. She pulled it closer.
"My father," I finally say, the words feeling like gravel in my mouth, "wasn't a good man."
Understatement of the fucking century.
"He worked for people who hurt other people. And he... facilitated it."
I watch her reaction carefully. This is the shallow end of my darkness. The safe version.
"You think that makes you like him?" she asks, cutting straight to the heart of it.
A bitter laugh escapes me. "Sometimes I think it's inevitable."
She shakes her head. "I don't believe that."
"You barely know me, Lila."
"I know enough," she says with a certainty I envy. "I know what matters."
Her words hang in the air. I know enough. I know what matters. She doesn't know shit, but the conviction in her voice almost makes me wish it were true.
Gianna's face flashes across my mind. Her name was Gee. Gianna Moretti. I see her sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, clutching that stuffed rabbit.
"Are monsters real?" she'd asked me.
Twelve-year-old me had lied through my teeth. " No, Gee. They aren't."
Two days later they found her body. The rabbit was gone. Her innocence too.
Maybe I should tell Lila everything. About Gianna. About how my father had men bring a terrified child into our home, how I tried to help her escape, how I failed. How that failure carved something cold and watchful inside me that's never left.
But I can't. Not yet. Some truths are too fucking heavy to hand to someone who's just starting to trust you.
"My father was a lawyer for the Carvetti family," I say instead, watching her face for the inevitable wave of disgust. "He didn't get his hands dirty directly. Just made sure the people who did stayed out of prison."
Lila's fingers still against my chest. "The mob? Like, actual organized crime?"
"The real deal. Not the Sopranos bullshit." I exhale slowly. "He'd bring work home. Have meetings in our living room with men who'd killed people. I'd serve them coffee, like we were playing fucking house."
"Jesus, Dane."
"Yeah." I give her a humorless smile. "By sixteen, I knew how to launder money through shell corporations. College application skills, right there."
Her eyes soften with something that looks dangerously like compassion. "Is that why you joined the Marines? To get away?"
"Partly." I don't tell her the rest—that I joined to learn how to kill efficiently, that some primitive part of me believed if I'd known then what I know now, maybe Gianna would still be alive. "I wanted to be nothing like him."
"You're not," she says with that same certainty. Where the fuck is it coming from?
The irony twists my gut. If she knew about the surveillance equipment in her apartment, how I've watched her, invaded her privacy... she'd see exactly how much of my father lives in me.
"You can't know that," I tell her, my voice harder than intended.
"I see how you look at me," she counters. "I doubt someone like your father would look at anyone the way you look at me."
She's not wrong about that. My father was a glacier—cold, impassive, grinding everything in his path to dust. Even with my mother.
Even with my sister, Juliet. I don't think I ever saw him touch either of them with anything resembling tenderness.
His idea of affection was the absence of cruelty, and even that was rare.
"What are you thinking about?" Lila murmurs, her fingers tracing the hard lines of my forearm.
I shake my head slightly. "The past. Ghosts." I kiss the top of her head, breathing in the scent of shampoo in her hair. "I'll tell you about my sister. Next time. For now, I just want to watch you sleep."
She raises an eyebrow. "That's not creepy at all."
I chuckle despite myself. "I mean I want you to get some rest. And I want to make sure you're safe." My arm tightens around her. "Here. With me."
Safe. What a fucking joke. I've watched her sleep already, through a camera lens. I'm the last person who should be promising safety.
Yet I meant what I said. I want her safe. I need her to be.
"You think I'm not safe otherwise?" she asks, a small furrow appearing between her brows.
The world isn't safe for anyone, sweetheart. Especially not for women who ask too many questions.
"Force of habit," I say instead. "Marines sleep in shifts. Someone's always on watch."
Her expression softens. She curls into me, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder like it was made to rest there. "So you're on first watch, then?"
"Something like that."
The truth is, I don't want to sleep. Sleep means dreams, and my dreams have teeth. Better to stay awake, count her breaths, memorize the weight of her against me.
Her breathing eventually slows, deepens. I trace nonsense patterns on her bare shoulder, feeling the goosebumps that rise in response.
The city lights paint blue-gray shadows across her skin. In this half-light, the freckles scattered across her shoulders look like constellations. I find myself mapping them, creating new mythologies.
What the fuck is happening to me?
I've been with women before. I'm not some inexperienced kid. But this—this bone-deep need to protect, to possess, to know—this is unfamiliar territory. Dangerous ground. No other woman ever arouse it in me.
Men like me don't get to keep things like her. We're the wolves, not the shepherds. We destroy what we touch.
But as I watch her sleep, her face finally peaceful, I allow myself to imagine. A life without ghost-hunting. A future where the past stays buried.
It's a fantasy, of course. The kind of bullshit happy ending they sell in movies. Real life doesn't work that way. Especially not mine.
Still, I hold her closer, letting her warmth seep into the cold places inside me. For tonight, I'll keep watch. Make sure nothing disturbs her dreams. Tomorrow, reality will reassert itself. The case. Langford. The cameras in her apartment that I need to remove before this goes any further.
But for now, I'll guard what's mine.