The silence that followed had its own weight.

Camille’s chest rose on a deeper breath than the ones before it. The golden light from outside caught the curve of her collarbone where the cropped hoodie had slipped sideways. Her brown skin flushed darker across her neck and up toward her jaw, the specific physiological response of someone whose body was answering a question her mouth refused to ask.

"You think you know what I want."

"I don’t think. I watched you choose that hoodie. I watched you reapply cardamom. I watched you walk in here and sit in my chair with your knee pulled up like a shield and then stand and stretch so I could see the four inches of skin above your waistband. Nothing you do is accidental, Camille. That’s what makes you terrifying and attractive in equal proportion."

She took a step toward me. Then stopped herself. She visibly caught her own momentum mid-motion. The war playing out across her features was not between desire and resistance. It was between pride and the unbearable vulnerability of wanting something from someone who could see through every defense she’d spent her life building.

She wanted me to kiss her. She wanted me to reach for her. She wanted me to be the one who made the decision so she could stop making it herself.

I could see all of it.

"So do it," she said. Her voice came out rough. Lower than her usual register, the sharp Ortega edge scraped raw by whatever was running underneath it right now. The fake defiance barely masked the real request underneath. "If you’re so sure about what I want. Stop talking and do it."

I stayed seated on the edge of my bed. I didn’t move. I didn’t stand. I didn’t close the distance she’d left open for me. I just held her gaze and said the thing I knew would hurt and needed to say anyway.

"No."

The word landed between us like a brick through a window.

Camille’s expression fractured. Surprise first. Then hurt. Then something that hardened fast enough that I could see the walls rebuilding in real time, brick by emotional brick, the same defenses going back up that I’d watched her tear down over the course of our conversation.

"Not because I don’t want to," I said, before the walls finished closing. "Look at you. Of course I want to. I have functioning eyes and a pulse and the memory of what your mouth tastes like from thirty feet away still lives in my head rent-free."

The wall-building paused. Her brown eyes held mine, uncertain for the first time since she’d walked into my room.

"Then why."

I stood from the bed. Not toward her. Just stood, because I needed the physics of the moment to shift, needed to be on my feet for what I was about to say.

"Because not just any woman can handle being with me, Camille."

Her eyebrows rose. "Excuse me?"

"I don’t mean that the way it sounds. Or maybe I do. But the point stands." I held her gaze without flinching because flinching would communicate weakness and Camille Ortega respected nothing less than absolute conviction. "What you’re asking for isn’t a hookup. You don’t do hookups. You do or you don’t, full commitment, maximum intensity, consequences be damned. You brought that energy to every training session, every sprint, every rivet you’ve ever fired. You are the most all-or-nothing person I have ever met, and I grew up with Sloane Fitzgerald, so that bar is genuinely difficult to clear."

Camille’s arms unfolded from their defensive position across her chest. The hoodie shifted again. I kept my eyes on her face.

"If I lock that door and put you on that bed, you will not walk out of this room the same person who walked in. That’s not arrogance. That’s a fact about who I am and what I do to women who get close enough. Ask anyone who’s spent enough time near me to understand that proximity has consequences."

The room felt like it was shrinking. Camille stood five feet away, her breath visible in the rhythm of her chest, the golden campus light painting her in amber, her brown eyes processing what I’d said with the same analytical intensity she applied to structural weaknesses and firing solutions.

"You’re telling me no."

"I’m telling you not tonight. Not like this. Not as a transaction for votes."

Her jaw worked. "Then when."

"When you walk through that door because you’ve decided you want to be here. Not because you need a framework to justify it. Not because the election gives you cover. Not because Petra showed up and turned it into a competition. When it’s just you, making a choice, with your eyes open and your pride intact." I paused. "That Camille can handle what comes next."

She stared at me for what felt like a very long time. Her tail of warm brown hair fell across one shoulder and caught the lamp light. Her lips, still carrying that faint trace of cardamom, pressed together in an expression I’d never seen from her. Not anger. Not desire. Something quieter and more dangerous than both.

"You’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever met."

"Camille, you tell me that at least once a day. It’s becoming our thing."

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. Not the full version. Not the Camille Ortega grin that could light a room on fire. Just the edges of it, a sketch rather than a painting, something she was still deciding whether to commit to.

She walked to my door and opened it. Stood in the threshold with one hand on the frame and her back to me, the cropped hoodie riding up just enough to reveal the dimples above her waistband where her spine met the curve of her lower back.

"I’m voting for you," she said. Not turning around. "But not because of this conversation."

"Then why."

Now she looked back. One shoulder. One eye. One corner of her mouth pulled up in something that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite a promise and somehow functioned as both.

"Because you told me no, Belmont. Nobody tells me no."