13. Crossing the Line #2
Chris Walker.For that night, they stopped fighting what had been building between them.The bedroom door closed.And for the first time, they crossed the line completely.
Much later, the room was dark.Camila slept curled against Chris, her head resting carefully against his chest.One of her hands lay over his stomach.Her breathing was slow.
Peaceful.Chris wasn’t sleeping.Not even close.He stared at the ceiling.He should move.
He should wake her.He should tell her this couldn’t happen again.He should call Sloan.
Jesus Christ.Sloan.Chris closed his eyes.The next briefing was going to be a fucking nightmare.But even that wasn’t what kept him awake.Camila shifted against him.
Instinctively, Chris put his arm around her.She settled closer.Trusting him even in sleep.
His chest tightened.That was the part he couldn’t handle.Not the sex.Not Mateo.
Not even the possibility that the operation could collapse if anyone discovered them.This.
Her sleeping against him like there was nowhere safer.Chris looked down at her.She trusted him.Completely.And she shouldn’t.She thought his name was Chris Roman.
She thought he’d raced cars illegally.She thought he’d worked private security.
She thought he was a criminal who had somehow become her brother’s trusted security man.She didn’t know about the badge.The Bureau.The operation.The staged chase.The surveillance teams.She didn’t know that the first time Mateo decided Chris Roman was worth trusting, the FBI had manufactured the danger.She didn’t know that every day Chris went somewhere secure and told federal agents what he’d learned about her family.
And now—she’d given him something that had nothing to do with Mateo Vargas.
Herself.Chris stared at the darkness.He’d crossed lines undercover before.Lied.
Manipulated.Built friendships he knew he’d eventually destroy.He understood the job.
This didn’t feel like the job.Camila moved slightly.Her eyes opened.“Why are you awake?”
Chris looked down.“Thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“Extremely.”She smiled sleepily.Then rested her cheek against him again.
“What are you thinking about?”Chris swallowed.You.The truth.What you’re going to think of me when you find out.Instead he brushed his fingers through her hair.
“Go back to sleep.”Camila’s eyes closed.
“You’ll be here when I wake up?”The question nearly broke him.Chris stared at the ceiling. “Yeah.”
“You promise?”His throat tightened.Promises were dangerous when your entire existence was built on lies.But he answered anyway.
“I promise.”Camila relaxed.Within minutes, she was asleep again.Chris remained awake.His arm around her.His eyes on the ceiling.For the first time since accepting the assignment, he didn’t know which man he was supposed to be.Chris Walker had been sent inside the Vargas organization to destroy it.
Chris Roman had been created to get close enough to Mateo to make that possible.
But the man holding Camila wasn’t pretending.That was the problem.His feelings weren’t part of the cover.His need to go back for her hadn’t been part of the cover.
And tonight definitely hadn’t been part of the cover.Chris looked down at the sleeping woman against his chest.She trusted him.She shouldn’t.Because eventually Camila Vargas was going to discover that Chris Roman had never existed.And when she did—Chris Walker was going to be the man who broke her heart.
Next Morning, The kitchen smelled like burned coffee and tension.Mateo stood at the counter with his arms crossed, watching Chris the way a man watches a stray dog that just bit someone and then sat down politely.
The espresso machine was in pieces again — third time this month — and Chris had his hands buried in its guts like he was performing surgery.
Cedar and motor oil clung to his shirt. He hadn’t slept.
The bruise along his jaw had turned the color of overripe plum.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Mateo’s voice was flat.
“Already did.” Chris didn’t look up. “Three men. West exit. She’s fine. ”
“She’s fine because you took a tire iron to the ribs.
”Chris pulled a small part from the machine, inspected it, set it on the counter.
His knuckles were split. Dried blood in the creases.
“She’s fine,” he repeated.Mateo uncrossed his arms. He walked to the fridge, opened it, pulled out a bottle of water, and set it on the counter next to the espresso parts.
Not an offering. A test. Chris ignored it.
“You could’ve left.”The words hung in the kitchen like smoke.Chris finally looked up.
His eyes were steady, that same unreadable calm that made Mateo uneasy — not because it was cold, but because it was too warm for what it was.
The man had been hired six months ago. Temporary.
Contract. A body to fill a gap while the real team was restructured.
“She was my responsibility,” Chris said.It was such a simple sentence.
No drama in it. No heroics. Just a fact, delivered the same way he might say the machine needed a new gasket.
And that was the problem — because Mateo understood, in that moment, that Chris meant it literally.
Not contractually. Not professionally. She was his responsibility the way a heartbeat is the heart’s responsibility.
Involuntary. Non-negotiable.Mateo exhaled through his nose.
“You’re not temporary anymore.”Chris blinked.
“You’re hers. Permanent. Personal detail.
Whatever she needs, wherever she goes — you’re there.
” Mateo picked up the water bottle and pushed it closer.
“Drink something. You look like hell.”Chris took the bottle.
Twisted the cap. Drank. His eyes drifted toward the hallway that led to the east wing, where Camila’s bedroom was, and something shifted behind his expression — something he killed before it could fully surface.
“Understood,” he said.Mateo left the kitchen without another word.The mansion was too quiet in the early morning.Camila had been in her room for two hours, sitting on the edge of her bed with her phone face-down on the comforter, staring at the grain in the hardwood floor.
The attack kept replaying — not the violence itself, but the sound of Chris’s body hitting the pavement.
The grunt he’d tried to swallow. The way he’d gotten up anyway, put himself between her and the third man, and ended it with two hits that left blood on his cuff.She’d seen men fight before.
She’d grown up around men who carried violence like currency.
But Chris was different. He didn’t perform it.
He didn’t enjoy it. He simply did what was required, and then wiped his hands on his jeans and asked if she was okay.She stood up.
Walked to the door. Opened it.The hallway was long and pale, lit by recessed lighting that cast soft pools on the marble.
Chris was there — of course he was there — leaning against the wall across from her door with his arms folded, still in the same clothes.
He straightened when he saw her.“You should be sleeping,” he said. “So should you.”
“I’m working.”She tilted her head. “Mateo talked to you.”
“He did.”
“And?”
“And I’m your detail now. Permanent.”She absorbed that.
Her fingers curled around the door frame.
The silk of her robe shifted against her collarbone.
She watched his eyes — the way they tracked the movement and then deliberately returned to her face.
Always so controlled. Always so careful. “Come inside,” she said.“Camila.”
“Your ribs are bruised. You have a cut on your hand you haven’t cleaned properly.
And I can’t sleep with you standing out here like some gargoyle.
” She stepped back from the door. “Come inside. I have a first aid kit and a bottle of tequila, and I’m not asking again.
”He hesitated. She could see the argument forming — the professional boundary, the protocol, the list of reasons this was a bad idea scrolling behind his eyes like credits at the end of a movie.
But she also saw something else. Something that had been there since the Range Rover, since the afternoon she’d come back from her trip and found him in the garage with grease on his forearms and something vulnerable in the way he’d looked at her before shutting it down.He stepped inside.She closed the door.Her bedroom was warm.
She’d left the balcony doors cracked, and a breeze carried the smell of jasmine and chlorine from the pool below.
The sheets on her bed were rumpled — she’d been lying there earlier, trying to sleep, failing.
A half-empty glass of water sat on the nightstand next to the first aid kit she’d mentioned.Chris stood just inside the door, hands in his pockets, scanning the room out of habit.
Exits. Windows. Angles. She watched him do it and felt something twist in her chest — the realization that this man had catalogued every threat to her safety before he’d even looked at her.
“Sit,” she said, nodding toward the bed.He sat on the edge, careful, keeping distance between them.
She sat next to him and opened the first aid kit.
Antiseptic. Gauze. Medical tape. She reached for his right hand — the one with the split knuckles — and he let her take it.Her fingers were warm against his.
She turned his hand over, studied the damage.
The cuts weren’t deep, but they were dirty.
She pressed the antiseptic pad to his knuckles and he flinched — barely, just a twitch — and she looked up.
“Big tough security guy can’t handle a little sting?”
“Big tough security guy is fine.”She cleaned each knuckle slowly. Thoroughly. Her thumb traced the line of his index finger after she’d finished, and she felt his hand tense in hers. She didn’t let go.“The tire iron,” she said quietly. “When it hit you.”
“It wasn’t bad.”