“Let’s go home,” I offered, smoothing my hand over his cheek. He leaned against it, closing his eyes to my touch.
In the car, Beastie Boys came on, “Sabotage” filling the silence as we pulled out of the parking spot. I couldn’t help snorting at the absurdity of it as we drove past my family gathered around Marcus and Holly’s minivan.
“You’re full of surprises, Alexandra,” Finn tossed me a careful smile.
“I could say the same about you, Walker.”
Chapter 20
Operational Status: Fifty-Fifty
Finn
The VA’s secure message notification had come throughduring the twins’ ballet routine. I’d stared at the subject line during intermission—Lab Results Available: Endocrinology—and swiped off my email app without opening it. Through Madison’s jazz performance, Alex’s family detonation, and the next 48 hours, my phone had burned a hole in my pocket while I’d packed, met Dom at the Salt Lake airport, and settled into the seats of our chartered Cessna Citation.
Now, climbing toward our cruising altitude over the Rocky Mountains, I finally opened the message.
The clinical language was familiar territory. Total testosterone: 285 ng/dL. Reference range: 300-1000. Luteinizing hormone elevated at 17.8 mIU/mL. Follicle-stimulating hormone: 21.3 mIU/mL. Numbers that painted a clear picture for anyone who understood the biochemistry.
Primary hypogonadism. Testicular dysfunction secondary to traumatic brain injury.
I read through the endocrinologist’s notes the same way I used to review technical specifications on aircraft. Pituitary disruption from head trauma—common in TBI patients. Hormonal failure cascading through multiple systems. Fertility implications significant. Recommend consultation for treatment options.
Treatment options. Like there was a maintenance manual for this type of equipment malfunction.
Dom sat across from me in the cream leather seat, script pages spread across the small table between us. Every few minutes he’dglance up, catching me staring at the screen or rubbing my brow—responding to his earlier observations about the flight or the ranch with single-word acknowledgment instead of actual conversation.
The numbers kept cycling through my head in loops as if they were pre-flight checks. Two-eighty-five testosterone when I should be producing at least three hundred. Biochemical markers that put me just under normal range and trending downward. The kind of numbers that meant my body was struggling to stay operational.
Another system compromised. Another future lost to eighteen weeks in a hospital and a brain that had been shaken up like an Etch-a-Sketch full of nails.
I caught my reflection in the small window—scars visible along the left side of my face, the slight asymmetry in my left eye that most people never noticed. How many other things were failing that I hadn’t discovered yet? How many more ways would my body find to remind me that Steady was gone, replaced by someone who couldn’t be counted on for basic biological functions?
The phone dimmed and I locked it, watching my reflection in the darkened screen now. Crooked nose. Burn scars down the left side of my neck that continued over my back and the left side of my body. Dom’s pages rustled as he marked dialogue with a pencil—the sound sharp in the cabin’s quiet hum.
Finally, he lowered his script, his full attention shifting to me. “You’ve been staring at that thing since we took off. Bad news or just interesting news?”
The direct question caught me off guard. Dom usually let me process in silence, trusted me to share what I wanted to share when I was ready. This felt different—more pointed. The confined space of the charter cabin made avoiding his gaze impossible.
“Medical stuff,” I responded at length. “VA follow-up.”
“Everything okay?”
I huffed. When was the last time anything had been okay? When was the last time I’d felt like a complete person instead of spare parts held together with desperation and stubbornness?
Alex’s voice echoed in my memory. “It’s not like this is real anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”She’d said it about our fake relationship, about the baby conversation with her family, about us. Like whatever was happening between us was just the performance—easily dismissed when it became inconvenient or complicated.
And maybe that was for the best. Maybe she was protecting herself from getting involved with someone who was slowly falling apart at the cellular level.
“Define okay,” I watched the clouds pass beneath us.
Dom set his script aside completely, leaning back in his seat and crossing one knee over the other. “That’s not really an answer, Finn.”
“It’s not really a simple question.”
“Try me.”
I rubbed my temple where a low-grade headache was building—stress, altitude, or just another reminder that my brain didn’t regulate itself properly anymore. Dom waited patiently.
