The woman he’d mourned. The woman he’d loved. The woman whose ghost had haunted every relationship he’d attempted for the past five years.
She was alive. She was real. And he’d just thrown her out of his office like she was nothing.
Reed maintained his rigid posture until the elevator indicator showed it was descending—fifteen, ten, five. When it reached the lobby, something inside his chest exploded.
He stumbled back into his office, closed the door, and let out a sound that came from somewhere so deep inside him he didn’t recognize it as his own voice. It was raw, primal, the howl of a wounded animal that had been shot and left to bleed.
The door burst open almost immediately.
“Mr. Star?” Sarah’s worried voice cut through his anguish. “Sir, are you?—”
“Leave! Now!” Reed shouted without turning around, his hands braced against his desk as he fought to stay upright.
The door clicked shut, leaving him alone with five years of carefully suppressed grief clawing its way to the surface.
No. No. No. This can’t be true.
The memory crashed over him like a tsunami—standing beside that coffin in the rain, watching it disappear into the earth while believing what remained of Elena’s body was inside. The weight of the dirt hitting the wood. The finality of it.
Something inside his soul had died that day and never come back to life.
The wound inside his heart that had finally begun to scar over had been ripped open, and blood was oozing out of him. As a SEAL, he’d been good at compartmentalizing things like violence and death and horrible things. But this... this was different. This was Elena, alive when she should be dead, real when she should be memory.
He put a hand over his heart and began to pace, sucking in deep breaths, trying to use the techniques his team psychologist had taught him years ago. But he wasn’t calm. He wanted to punch the window in front of him, wanted to destroy something, anything, to make the external world match the chaos inside him.
But that was imbecilic thinking.
Reed fell back on his training and dropped to the floor, pumping out push-ups even though it had been years since he’d officially trained for operations. He’d never given up the running, lifting, and push-ups that kept him sane. The physical exertion was the only thing that could quiet the storm in his mind.
One. Two. Three.
Elena’s face when she said she loved him.
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
The way she’d looked at him in his kitchen five years ago.
Thirty. Forty. Fifty.
The sound her voice made when she whispered his name.
After pumping out fifty, he got to his feet, chest heaving, and grabbed his phone. There was only one person who would understand this kind of pain. Only one person who’d seen him at his worst and still called him brother.
Walker answered on the second ring. “Reed? What’s wrong?”
“She’s alive,” Reed said without preamble, voice hoarse.
Silence stretched across the line. Then, carefully, “Who’s alive?”
“Elena. Elena Vasquez. She just walked out of my office.”
More silence.
When Walker spoke again, his voice was cautious. “Brother, Elena’s been dead for five years. You went to her funeral. Maybe you should?—”
“She’s not dead!” Reed exploded, then forced himself to lower his voice. “She was just here. In my office. Using a fake name, but it was her. She’s alive, Walker. She’s been alive this whole time.”
“Okay. I’m listening. What did she say?”
