Page 23 of The Medic (Dominion Hall #6)

SLOANE

I ’m not the girl who calls a man repeatedly when he isn’t answering. I don’t chase. I don’t linger. I don’t wait.

Except—apparently, I do.

My phone sat heavy in my palm, screen blank, call history damning. Nine missed calls to Charlie Dane. One voicemail. And a text I deleted as soon as I sent it.

This wasn’t me.

I didn’t unravel over men. I didn’t cling or panic or sit in my childhood bedroom like a shell of the woman I’d fought like hell to become. But ever since Charlie walked out that door, all I could think about was the look in his eyes when he learned the truth about my mother and Byron Dane.

He’d looked gutted.

Maybe I felt gutted, too.

It wasn’t just the way he kissed me or held me or pulled me out of that hellscape of a country club. It was the way he saw me—past the polish, past the pedigree. It was the way he made me want to see more clearly in return.

Which was exactly why I found myself downstairs instead of hiding out upstairs like a coward.

Quentin stood in the front hall, posture impeccable, presence quiet but unmistakable. It seemed like he’d always been there. A fixture in the house.

Polished. Silent. Professional.

And invisible.

Until now.

I almost walked past him—the way I always had. A nod. A brief smile. That’s all anyone ever gave Quentin. That’s all I ever gave him.

But something about Charlie’s voice, that low rasp when he said I didn’t realize she needed protection , stopped me cold. And so did the way Quentin had looked at him—not with deference, but with something closer to kinship.

Maybe I’d been wrong to overlook Quentin.

Maybe I’d been wrong about a lot of things.

I turned toward him.

"Quentin?"

He straightened, surprised. "Yes, Miss Carrington?"

I hesitated. Then: "Can I ask you something?"

His expression didn’t shift, but I saw it—the flicker of curiosity beneath the calm. "Of course."

I gestured toward the sitting room. "Would you sit with me? Just for a minute."

Another surprise. He followed me in, anyway, settling carefully into one of the tufted armchairs, posture still perfect.

I sat across from him. The silence stretched.

"I realized today," I said slowly, "that I don’t know your last name."

A beat. Then he smiled. Not polite. Real.

“Harris,” he said. "Quentin Harris.”

I nodded, turning the name over in my mind. "And your family? Where are they from?"

His gaze flicked toward the window. "Georgia originally. Macon. Military on both sides. My grandfather was a decorated Marine. My mother’s father served in Korea."

I blinked. "And you?"

"Army. Intelligence," he said evenly. "Then, the Agency. Special Activities Division. Until I came to work for you.”

The floor tilted slightly beneath me. "You were CIA?"

He gave a small, almost apologetic nod. "Among other things."

"And now you guard—us."

"I protect people," he said. "That’s what I’ve always done."

I studied him then. Really studied him. The precision. The way he moved. The quiet control.

"You’re more than I thought."

He met my gaze. "So are you."

Something in my chest squeezed.

I’d looked right through him for years. And I thought about how many others I’d overlooked the same way.

Quentin. Charlie. Myself.

Maybe it was time to stop. Maybe it was time to start seeing what was right in front of me.

Quentin didn’t shift under my gaze. He didn’t fidget or clear his throat or hide behind polite silence the way people often did in this house. He just sat there, steady and unflinching, like he’d been waiting years to be seen.

I leaned back slightly, something softer threading through my voice. “Do you have a family, Quentin?”

A flicker crossed his face—so fast I might’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching so closely.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “A daughter. She’s eleven.”

I blinked. “You have a daughter?”

He nodded once, like it was a fact of the weather. “Her name’s Layla. She lives with her mother in Atlanta.”

My stomach turned a little. “I didn’t know.”

“You weren’t supposed to.” He gave a small, knowing smile. “This job requires discretion. Distance. I never wanted my personal life to interfere with your family’s.”

Something about the way he said it made my throat go tight.

“Do you see her?” I asked, my voice gentler now.

“Every chance I get,” he said. “Which isn’t often. Her mother and I—we were never married. She didn’t want this kind of life touching Layla’s.”

“This kind of life?” I echoed.

He met my eyes. “Danger. Secrets. What I did before. What I still do, in a different uniform.”

The room felt smaller then. Not in a claustrophobic way, but in the way a theater quiets right before a pivotal scene.

“Do you miss her?” I asked.

His smile turned a little sad. “Every day.”

I sat with that.

How had I lived in the same house as this man and not known a thing about the world he carried in his chest?

“Does she know?” I asked. “About what you do?”

“She knows I keep people safe,” he said. “That’s enough for now.”

I nodded, the lump in my throat getting harder to swallow.

“Quentin, I’m sorry,” I said, surprising even myself. “I’ve never really spoken to you before. Not like this.”

“You were never unkind,” he said. “Just busy being who you thought you had to be.”

I looked down at my hands, then back at him.

“Charlie says I didn’t realize I needed protection.”

Quentin’s gaze was steady. “He’s right. But not in the way you think.”

“What way, then?”

He leaned forward just slightly, his voice low. “You needed someone who saw you. Not just the Carrington daughter. Not just the polished version.”

I felt like the air had been knocked out of me.

“Do you think that’s what Charlie sees?”

“I think,” he said gently, “that Charlie Dane sees more than most people want him to. And that scares them.”

I sat back, absorbing the weight of everything I hadn’t known.

Outside, cicadas buzzed, loud and relentless. Inside, the silence held something new.

Respect. Truth. Maybe even the start of something like trust.

“I’d like to know more about her,” I said after a moment. “Layla.”

Quentin smiled then, full and proud.

“She’s got a mind like a steel trap,” he said. “Loves books. Obsessed with the stars. Thinks she’s going to be an astronaut.”

My lips curved. “She sounds like a force.”

“She is,” he said, with quiet reverence. “Like someone else I know.”

For the first time in a very long time, I felt something close to proud. Not for how I looked or what I wore or how well I’d played the game.

But for sitting down. For seeing. For asking.

Quentin’s words lingered in the quiet like a balm and a warning all at once.

I traced the rim of a crystal coaster on the end table beside me, then looked up, hesitant.

“Did you hear what my mother said?” I asked. “About Byron Dane?”

His expression didn’t change, but the air around him seemed to shift. Still, alert.

“I heard enough.”

“What did you think of her reaction?”

Quentin leaned back slightly, his gaze narrowing—not with suspicion, but with caution. “I think your mother knows more than she’s willing to say. And I think she’s spent the last thirty years pretending she doesn’t.”

A chill ran over my skin. “You’re saying it’s not just an old fling?”

“I’m saying,” he said slowly, “that people in my line of work aren’t hired just for their resumes.”

I blinked. “What does that mean?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then gave the faintest shake of his head. “It means your father didn’t bring me in just to keep the gates locked and the press away. He brought me in because of who your mother used to be connected to. Who she might’ve stayed connected to.”

I sat up straighter, pulse rising. “Connected how?”

He hesitated. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know for certain. But back when I was recruited for this job, Byron Dane’s name was still showing up in classified files. Ones that weren’t supposed to exist. And your mother—she was one of the only people who ever walked away from him.”

My heart thudded. “She walked away … or she was let go?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “But whatever it was, it still haunts her.”

A voice cut in from the doorway. “It should.”

I turned, startled, to see my father standing there, a glass of bourbon in one hand and a gaze sharp enough to cut stone.

He walked into the room like he’d been listening for longer than I’d realized.

“Daddy—” I started, but he held up a hand.

“I didn’t know,” he said calmly, eyes on Quentin. “About how serious it was with Byron. She told me she’d dated him briefly. That was it. That was always it.”

Quentin stood as a sign of respect, but my father waved him back down, then sat on the armrest of the nearest chair.

“But I did know enough to hire someone like you,” he continued. “Not just for show. Not just to protect the gates.”

He looked at me then. “There were things I didn’t want you exposed to. Not because you couldn’t handle them, but because once you open a door like that, it doesn’t shut again.”

“Then why now?” I asked.

He sighed, swirling the bourbon in his glass. “Because Charlie Dane blew the damn door off its hinges.”

Silence fell again, but this time it crackled.

I stared at him. “So you’ve always known there was more to this than Momma let on?”

“I’ve suspected. But I respected her privacy, and the deal we made when we got married.”

“What deal?”

He met my gaze squarely. “That the past stays buried.”

My throat tightened. “Except it’s not buried. Not anymore.”

“No,” he said. “Not with Charlie around. Not with the Danes circling back into our lives.”

I sat back, stunned.

Charlie hadn’t just shaken things up. He’d unearthed something.

Whatever it was—it didn’t just belong to him. It belonged to me, too. Whether I liked it or not.

The air inside the house felt heavy now—too polished, too curated, like the truth didn’t know how to breathe in it. I stood, murmured something that could’ve passed for goodnight, and slipped out the side door before either of them could stop me.

The porch creaked beneath my bare feet as I stepped into the humid Charleston night. The sky was still dusky blue, stars beginning to puncture the velvet dome overhead.

I made my way to the edge of the garden path, past the boxwoods and moonlit hydrangeas, stopping beneath the willow tree I used to hide under when I was little. Back then, the worst thing I had to worry about was whether my ballet shoes would fit or if the girls at cotillion would laugh at me.

Now?

Now there was a man out there with my heart in his hands, and a legacy unraveling beneath my feet.

I wrapped my arms around myself and looked up at the stars. Charlie was somewhere out there. And I didn’t know if he’d call tonight or tomorrow or ever again.

I wanted him to.

Not for comfort. Not even for clarity.

I wanted him because he made me feel more like myself than I ever had before. Because he wasn’t afraid of what he saw when he looked at me—and he made me want to be brave enough to look back.

I pulled out my phone again. Nothing. Just the same blank screen, same silence that made my stomach twist.

I didn’t call this time. Didn’t text.

I just stood there under the willow, arms crossed, heart open, and whispered to the breeze, “Come back to me.”

I sure as hell hoped he would.