38
Julia
The transport lifted off with a low, chest-deep roar that rattled my bones.
I stood there longer than I should have, watching the shrinking silhouette until it was nothing but a flicker against the pale sky.
He’s coming back, I told myself.
He promised.
So had a nineteen-year-old version of him once, in a dusty driveway that smelled like cut grass and motor oil. His mother told me he said he would be back.
He hadn’t broken that promise on purpose. Life had dragged him away, chewed him up, and spit him out wearing a different name on his chest and scars no one could see.
This time is different, I told myself. We know each other, and we love each other.
This time, he has more reasons to come back.
This time, I’m one of them.
Boone stepped up beside me, hands in his pockets, watching the sky like it might give us answers.
“He’ll be all right,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“He loves you,” Boone added.
My head snapped toward him. “How did you—”
He gave me a look. Pushed his black cowboy hat back from his eyes. “I might be less touchy-feely than some of the guys, but I’m not blind. Man looks at you like you’re the only thing keeping him from walking into oncoming traffic for fun.”
A shaky laugh escaped me. “That’s a specific image.”
“Accurate, though.” Boone shrugged. “He’ll come back. If only because I’d kick his ass if he didn’t.”
“Get in line,” I muttered.
Logan jogged up, breath puffing in the cooler air. “Bird for Quantico leaves in twenty. Are you riding with us, or are you planning to relocate to Missouri permanently?”
“I’m coming,” I said.
I took one last look at the empty sky.
Then I turned and walked away.
Quantico looked exactly the same.I’d only been here once, but it looked the same as it did then.
The glass. The concrete. The security badge readers that always beeped half a second too late. The smell of old coffee that never quite left the hallways.
It was almost offensive.
How could everything look unchanged when I’d watched a man die in a column of light? When I’d felt the heat of an AI’s last breath on my skin? When I’d nearly lost the man I loved to a machine designed to eat his guilt?
I hugged the guys goodbye and boarded another plane for Copper Cove, where this all started.
My captain met me in a conference room lined with frosted glass. He hugged me once, quick and hard, then pretended we were just colleagues again.
