Chapter Three #2
I had never forgot. The night in Salt Lake, after the third time we’d fucked, when we’d been lying in the dark and he’d been talking about his vineyard, about the varieties he wanted to plant, about the merlot seeds from Belize that were supposed to produce grapes with a depth of flavor.
I’d written it down on my phone the moment he fell asleep, had made a separate trip to track them down when Sterling sent me to Belize City two weeks later.
I shrugged, like it was nothing. Like I hadn’t spent three days tracking down the vineyard, another two convincing the owner to part with a packet of seeds that weren’t for sale.
Like I hadn’t carried them through three countries and two security checkpoints, keeping them safe in my boot the whole way.
“Thought they might do well in your soil,” I said, because I couldn’t say what I really meant: I listen to every word you say. I remember all of it. I would move heaven and earth to give you things that make you happy.
Jackson was still looking at me, the seeds clutched in his palm, the bracelet gleaming on his wrist. “Thank you,” he said, the words simple but weighted with something that made it hard to breathe.
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and reached for my coffee to give myself something to do with my hands.
We finished eating in that same careful quiet, Jackson examining the seeds while I watched him from across the table. When the plates were empty, I stacked them back on the room service cart and checked my watch.
Eight-fifteen. I had to move.
Jackson was watching me, his eyes tracking the movement of my hand to my watch. “You need to go,” he said, not a question.
I nodded. “Flight’s at ten. Need to get through security.”
He stood, the sheet falling away completely, and I forced myself to look at his face, not his body. “I should shower,” he said.
I nodded again, already calculating how long it would take me to get to the airport, to check my bag, to get through security. “I’ll wait,” I said, and watched something flash across his face—surprise, maybe, or relief.
“Okay,” he said, and then he was moving toward the bathroom, naked and unhurried, like he’d forgotten I was there. Or like he knew exactly how much I was looking.
The bathroom door closed behind him, and I stood in the middle of the room, bag at my feet, and tried to figure out how to say goodbye to a man who’d never really been mine in the first place.
I waited until I heard the shower shut off, then counted to thirty—giving Jackson time to grab a towel—before I pushed the bathroom door open.
Steam billowed out, carrying the scent of the hotel’s generic soap and something underneath it that was just Jackson. He stood at the sink, towel slung low around his hips, water still dripping from his hair down the smooth planes of his back.
He didn’t startle when I came in—hadn’t since the second time we’d met, when he’d casually mentioned that he could hear my footfalls from three rooms away.
Another SEAL habit, one I recognized because I had it too: the constant awareness of who was moving where, the automatic cataloging of weight and rhythm and intent.
Instead, he caught my eye in the mirror, one corner of his mouth lifting in that not-quite-smile that still did something to my chest. “Thought you’d be gone by now,” he said, reaching for the hotel’s sad excuse for a hair dryer.
“Flight’s not until ten,” I said, leaning against the counter, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. “Plenty of time.”
He nodded, turning on the dryer and running it through his hair with quick, efficient movements. I watched the muscles in his arm flex with each pass, the water beading on his shoulders, the way the towel clung to the curve of his ass.
There was something about Jackson’s nakedness that got to me—not just the body itself, though God knows that was enough, but the complete lack of self-consciousness with it.
He moved through the world in his skin the way he moved through everything else: with confidence and purpose and the absolute certainty that he belonged exactly where he was.
It was one of my favorite things about him. One of many.
He shut off the dryer and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. In the mirror, our eyes met again—his curious, mine probably giving away more than I wanted them to.
“Where exactly are you headed?” he asked, turning to face me, one hip braced against the sink. “Minsk is... Belarus, right?”
I nodded. “Then maybe Kiev, depending on how things go.” The words were out before I could stop them—operational details I had no business sharing with anyone, let alone someone outside the chain of command.
But this was Jackson, and something about him made my carefully maintained boundaries fuzzy at the edges.
“Security consult?” he asked, using the cover story I’d given him the first time we’d met.
“Something like that.” I hesitated, then added, because I couldn’t seem to stop myself, “Sterling’s running point. Belarusian opposition group with connections to Russian intelligence. They’re moving weapons through Minsk, using diplomatic channels.”
Jackson’s eyebrows went up. “That’s...”
“Classified,” I finished for him. “Extremely.”
He nodded, understanding flashing across his face. “I won’t—“
“I know,” I said, because I did. Jackson had secrets of his own—we all did—but he understood the weight of the ones I carried. Had never once pushed for information I wasn’t willing to give.
The bathroom was still thick with steam, the mirror fogged except for the clear patch where Jackson had wiped it.
Outside, Billings was coming awake—the distant sound of traffic, the occasional shout from the street below, normal Friday morning noises that had nothing to do with the mission waiting for me or the man standing in front of me.
I moved before I could talk myself out of it, stepping into Jackson’s space and fisting my hand in his damp hair. He went still, his eyes on mine, waiting. I tilted his head back until we were looking directly at each other, close enough that I could feel his breath on my face.
“What?” he asked, the word barely more than a breath.
What moved across my face then wasn’t desire, though God knows that was there too—a constant, humming presence whenever Jackson was near.
It was something rawer, closer to anger: at the mission, at the timing, at the fact that I was very good at my job and my job required me to walk out of this room in the next ten minutes.
I kissed him hard enough to say all of that without saying it, my free hand coming up to grip his jaw, holding him in place. He made a small, surprised sound against my mouth, then his hands were on my waist, pulling me closer as he kissed me back with equal force.
I could feel him going taut against me, his body responding to mine the way it always did—immediately, completely, like we were tuned to the same frequency.
His towel slipped lower, and my hand moved from his jaw to his chest, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his breath, the steady beat of his heart under my palm.
I pulled back before either of us lost the thread entirely, my hand still in his hair, his still on my waist. We were both breathing hard, the small bathroom suddenly too warm, too close, too much.
“I should go,” I said, not moving.
He nodded, his eyes still on mine. “Probably.”
Neither of us moved.
The moment stretched between us, charged with something I wasn’t ready to name. Outside, a car horn honked, the sound oddly distant through the fogged window.
“I’ll be back,” I said finally, the words coming out rougher than I’d intended. “End of the month, probably. Maybe sooner, depending on how things go.”
He nodded again, his expression carefully neutral. “Okay.”
I took a breath, then asked the question that had been sitting in my chest since the night before: “Can I text you? Just to talk. While I’m gone.”
I kept my voice deliberately even, like it didn’t matter what his answer was.
Like my lungs weren’t frozen, waiting for his response.
Like the thought of two weeks without any contact—without knowing if he was thinking about me, if he missed me, if he was counting the days until I came back—wasn’t making it hard to breathe.
Jackson’s eyes widened slightly, surprise flashing across his face. “Yeah,” he said, the word small and a little surprised, like the question had caught him off guard. “Yeah, of course.”
Something in my chest loosened—relief so sharp it was almost painful. I kissed him again, lighter this time, because I was genuinely delighted and couldn’t help it. His mouth curved under mine, that not-quite-smile becoming a real one as he kissed me back.
When I pulled away, he was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read—something between curiosity and wonder, like he was seeing me for the first time.
“I should go,” I said again, and this time I meant it. I had forty-five minutes to get to the airport, check my bag, get through security. Any longer, and I’d risk missing my flight.
Jackson nodded, stepping back to give me room. “Yeah.”
I moved past him, through the bathroom door and into the main room, where my bag was waiting by the door. I grabbed it, slinging the strap over my shoulder with practiced ease, then turned back to find Jackson watching me from the bathroom doorway, the towel now secured firmly around his waist.
“Be safe,” he said, two words, nothing remarkable.
They followed me out the door, down the hallway, into the elevator. They sat beside me in the taxi to the airport, whispered in my ear as I handed my ID to the TSA agent, echoed in my head as I made my way to the gate.
Be safe.
As though he cared whether I came back in one piece. As though my safety mattered to him. As though I was something more than a convenient fuck, a weekend distraction, a body to share a hotel bed with when the timing worked out.
I found an empty seat at the far end of the departure terminal, my bag between my feet, and stared out at the tarmac where my plane was being fueled.
In my pocket, my phone weighed nothing and everything, Jackson’s number saved under a contact name that was just his initials—the same way I saved all my operational contacts, as though what we were doing was just another mission.
Maybe it was. Maybe that was the problem.
I thought about the bracelet on Jackson’s wrist, the seeds in the wooden box, the way he’d looked at me when I’d asked if I could text. Thought about the fact that he’d said yes—had seemed almost surprised that I’d wanted to—and wondered if that was enough. If it would ever be enough.
For now, it would have to be.
My phone buzzed in my pocket—a text from Sterling, confirming the meet in Frankfurt—and I stood, shouldering my bag as the gate agent called my boarding group.
I had a job to do, a mission to complete, a world to keep safe.
I had responsibilities that didn’t include a man with a vineyard in Montana and eyes that saw too much.
But as I handed my boarding pass to the agent and made my way down the jet way, I was already counting the days until I could text him. Already planning what I would say. Already wondering if he’d be counting too.