Page 63 of The Shield
The room was a cocoon of heat, the storm outside a distant echo, and as we lay there, tangled in the sheets, her head on my chest, I realized something profound. No matter what came next—threats, mysteries, the shadow of my father—I hoped to never go another night without her, the thought a quiet vow etched into my soul.
29
NATALIE
After, the house had gone so quiet I could hear the rain ticking itself smaller on the window. We lay there, my ear on the thick drum of his chest, his palm spread over my ribs.
I tipped my head back and found his eyes. “For the record,” I said, voice scratchy and content, “that was very, very good. And also—two days ago it might’ve killed me. Good thing you vanished.”
His laugh shook under my cheek. “I was thinking the same thing halfway through,” he said, and the corner of his mouth crooked. “Pearl would’ve walked in and shot me.”
“She’d have used a penlight as a weapon,” I said. “Non-lethal, but humiliating.”
We were grinning like fools, and then the grin folded into something steadier. He tucked a damp curl behind my ear, thumb pausing at my temple like a question. “How’s the head?”
“Quiet,” I said. “No drum solo. No fireworks. Just one very bossy metronome that sounds like a nurse I know.” I breathed in, caught the clean after-sweat of his skin and the lingering hintof his soap, and let the breath out slow. “Don’t disappear like that again without giving me more warning.”
“I left because of you,” he said simply. “And I came back because of you.”
“I know.” I let that sit between us, true and heavy and not a chore to carry. “Still. Next time, leave a breadcrumb. Or a bear claw.” I lifted the pendant where it lay on my sternum and knocked it gently against his dog tags.
He nodded once, the kind of agreement that sounded like habit forming. For a minute, we didn’t talk. We just learned the new quiet of sharing air in my little house as if it had always been ours.
“Okay,” I said at last, because my brain, rested and fed and slightly ruined in the pleasant way, wanted to make a plan. “Next steps.”
He cut his eyes toward me, amused. “Are we in a staff meeting?”
“Always,” I said, then softened it with a kiss to his collarbone. “What does life look like, if I win?”
“You mean when,” he said, which made something in my chest purr. He rolled to face me, propped on an elbow. “It looks busy. No, it looks … guarded. Schedules. Security you’ll hate until the first day you’re grateful for it. A thousand people asking you for five minutes. And me figuring out how to be a wall where you need one and a window where you don’t.”
“Windows,” I said. “I like that word.”
“Me, too,” he said. “I don’t want to be a shadow that worries your team. I don’t want to be the story. I want to keep you alive and make a home that makes the job survivable.”
“And be my sex,” I said, very serious. “Don’t forget that bullet point.”
“Duly noted, Madam Mayor.”
I traced the line of his jaw with one finger, the roughness of the day already shading back in. “Reporters asked me today whether Dominion Hall would bankroll me,” I said. “On camera. Like they were hoping I’d flinch hard enough to make a sound bite.”
“What’d you say?”
“That romance doesn’t sandbag streets,” I said, and watched the laugh fight to stay out of his eyes and lose. “That this race is about drains and buses and a city that tells the truth. I didn’t say anything about money. Because I’m not entirely sure yet what the right words are. I’m not looking for a sugar daddy in a Greek Revival. I’m not looking to be anyone’s mascot.”
“They haven’t offered,” he said, voice flat enough to be metal. “Maybe they will. If they do, it won’t be about owning you—it’ll be about testing what kind of Dane I am.”
“And?” I asked quietly.
“The kind who knows the difference between protection and control,” he said. He watched me watch him. “If it comes, we set the terms. We can say no.”
“We’re going to say no when we need to,” I said, half smile. “To everyone. Equally.”
He reached out and tugged the sheet up over my shoulder, an old-fashioned gesture that made me feel new. “There will be implications,” he said. “Whether I like it or not. Whether you do or not. Dominion Hall changes a room just by existing. If you and I exist in it together?—”
“Then we over-disclose,” I finished. “We write it down. We publish who I meet with and why. We recuse where we need to. We take the small ethics class nobody makes us take. And if Dominion Hall wants to give, they give through the channels everyone else uses. No envelopes. No winks. No boys’ club handshakes.”
He nodded. “I’ll say it to them before anyone else asks: I won’t be the reason anyone doubts your decisions.”
