He tried to breathe around it. Tried to find the steadiness that usually lived at the center of him, the sniper’s calm, the cold iron inside that never bent or wavered. It slipped from his grasp like water through a fist.
His thoughts scattered and reformed. The mission was done. Marques was alive. The team was intact. But his mind kept circling Blair’s voice, the way she had said masterful, like she saw something in him worth naming. Something beyond violence. Something that frightened him more than the blast that had shaved the air above her spine.
He didn’t know why she moved inside him this way. He didn’t know why his will had splintered the moment she spoke. He didn’t know why the instinct to protect her felt dangerously close to need.
He only knew he had to figure it out.
Because the feeling wasn’t small. It wasn’t passing. It wasn’t a surge of post-combat heat or gratitude. This feeling carried weight and shape, an unsettling sense of importance he could not dismiss or file away like he usually did with anything that threatened his emotional equilibrium.
Blair Brown was becoming an unknown. A variable he couldn’t calculate. A door he couldn’t close. He was starting to understand her in ways he shouldn’t, noticing patterns, micro-expressions, quiet strength, moments of silence where she listened instead of reacted. All of it sent warning signals through him like electric shocks.
His gut tightened. There was a part of him, small, dangerous, reckless, that whispered he could trust her. That she could hold what he had never given anyone. That she saw him without flinching.
He didn’t trust that whisper. Not for a second.
He knew the cost of exposing himself in the wrong moment. He knew what it meant to get burned on a mission. He knew the consequences of getting too close to someone who mattered when bullets were flying. He knew the danger of letting his guard down with one of the primaries.
Hell, he knew the danger of letting his guard down at all.
Getting this tangled up in Blair Brown wasn’t just a risk. It was a detonation waiting to happen. The kind that blew up lives, not buildings.
His body was restless, keyed up, coiled too tight for the small space of the SUV. His mind kept skidding back to the instant before the blast, to the sound she made when he shoved her to the ground, to the look in her eyes when the dust settled, and she realized he was the one holding her safe.
He turned his head slightly. She was watching the treeline, jaw set, calm and composed, unaware she had become the axis around which his entire world was tilting.
He swallowed, the motion rough.
He’d told himself to keep his hands off her.
Out here, with her voice still in his ear and the smell of burnt earth still clinging to them, he wasn’t sure he could.
18
United States Naval Academy, Bancroft Hall, Common Room, Annapolis, Maryland
Fly sat there for a long moment in the dim light of the common room, letting the silence rush back in. Then he stood up and walked back to his room.
The room was quiet, the air thick with the sound of Than’s rhythmic breathing. Fly moved to his bed in the dark, sitting on the edge. He didn't lie down immediately. He just sat, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the floor.
The talk with Joker hadn't healed him. If anything, the wound felt deeper now, exposed to the air. It hadn't relieved his guilt, just reoriented him.
A cold, hard truth settled in his gut, calcifying into a permanent part of him. He would never again believe that skill guaranteed safety. He would never confuse correctness with protection. He would lead from now on, knowing that loss was possible even at his absolute best.
But underneath all that resolve, the guilt remained. It was worse now because it was specific. If he had listened to his instincts, if he had ignored Hollis and gone to shore on the first warning, Mei would be alive. No amount of "correct procedure" changed that equation.
He lay back on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. He would never forget that lesson. In the future, he would follow his instinct, protocol be damned.
But for tonight, he just closed his eyes, knowing he would never stop seeing Mei in the math.
Mei. Sweet and serious at the same time. The quirks that used to make him roll his eyes now cut straight through his chest. The way she hummed under her breath when she worked, unaware she was doing it. The exact cadence of her laugh, quick and bright, like she was surprised by her own humor.
He remembered her mind most of all. Sharp. Relentless. The way she could cut through a problem without raising her voice, slicing cleanly through confusion like bright light through fog. He remembered how easy it was to trust her judgment. How often he’d turned to her without thinking, already knowing she’d see what he saw.
That was the cruel part.
When she was there, she was just…Mei. It was only after she was gone that he understood how rare that kind of presence had been.
What they had couldn’t be labeled. Friend. Confidant. Soul mate. Words fell short and missed the point. It had been real. True. Precious. Her spirit was woven into his life so quietly and so deeply that the emptiness she left behind would always echo.
