Adrian let go but kept his hands on Alon’s shoulders, grounding both of them in this moment. “I don’t want to leave like this,” he admitted, voice heavy with exhaustion, with regret. “Alon, you’re my brother. I love you. I care about you.”
“Half-brother,” Alon remarked silently, not meeting his eyes, clinging to the one piece of distance he had left, as if it could protect him.
“No,” Adrian said quietly. “Not that half-brother shit. You’re my little brother. That’s it.” Adrian took a breath. “I am sorry. I’ve failed you, I should have talked to you sooner, to try and understand. I should have seen it, and I am so damn sorry, Alon.”
Alon didn’t say anything, but something flickered in his expression—something raw, something close to breaking.
Adrian hesitated. He had spent so many years looking forward, trying to survive, that he had forgotten to look back. To remember. But now it hit him—hard, sharp, like a blade twisting in his ribs.
He remembered when they were kids, when Alon was just four or five, clinging to Adrian’s every move. Back then, it had felt natural, his baby brother following him around, asking endless questions, tugging on his sleeve, wanting Adrian to play with him. He had loved it. Loved having Alon there, a tiny shadow always at his side. They played catch, ran wild at the park, and spent entire days at the beach. Because Dean had been a consistent part of Adrian’s life since he was six, he accompanied them on most of those adventures. Back then, the three of them had been inseparable.
But then, slowly, things began to change. Alon started pulling away.
At first, it was little things: choosing to stay home instead of joining them, keeping to himself, and rolling his eyes at Adrian’s jokes. Then it became something more, something colder. The distance between them stretched year after year, widening until Adrian barely recognized the boy who had once followed him around.
And now, standing here, Adrian saw what he had been too blind—or too distracted—to see.
Had he missed the way Alon used to look at Dean? The way his face lit up when Dean entered the room? The way he blushed when Dean gave him attention, or how small he became when he didn’t? Had Adrian overlooked the way Alon’s admiration had twisted into something deeper? Something quieter. The way that unspoken affection festered, year after year, when Dean always came for Adrian… and never for him?
It hadn’t just been their parents who overlooked Alon.
Dean had, too.
And so had Adrian.
And maybe—just maybe—Alon had been resenting him all along.
Adrian swallowed hard. “I never meant for this to happen,” he said softly, meaning so much more. “I should’ve seen it, Alon. I should’ve been there for you.”
Alon’s throat worked like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded.
The night wrapped around them like a vast, endless ocean, deep and dark and unknowable. The air was thick with salt and cigarette smoke, the remnants of old battles fought in silence, words swallowed like seawater, choking but never spoken.
Adrian held his brother’s gaze, searching for something, anything, that told him they weren’t still adrift in the wreckage of all the years between them.
“Are we good now?” His voice was quiet, holding too much weight behind it.
Alon’s lips twitched, a flicker of something fragile, before he gave a small nod. “Yeah.”
A single word. So simple, so insufficient, and yet it held multitudes. But Adrian hesitated, lingering in the silence that stretched between them. Just in case. Just in case Alon needed to say something more. Just in case this was the last time they would ever stand together like this.
Because Adrian knew.
Even if no one else was brave enough to say it out loud, he knew. The ocean was calling him back, but not to the waves—to the abyss. There was no coming back from this. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones, in the quiet certainty that settled in his chest like an anchor dragging him deeper, deeper. This might be the last time he got to look his baby brother in the eye, the last time he got to hear his voice, to touch his shoulder, to feel, even for a fleeting moment, the bond that time and grief had nearly severed.
A man can only be given so much in a lifetime before fate comes to collect its debts. And Adrian? He had already stretched his luck thin, had already taken more than he had ever deserved.
His life had never been kind, not in the way stories promised, not in the way children dream. He had lost his mother too young, had grown up in the shadow of grief, had learned too quickly that love did not make a homesafe, that money did not stretch far enough, that no one was coming to save him, that not everyone came back home.
And yet, there had been light, too.
Tammi, who had chosen to love him, though she never had to. His little brother, who followed him around and was a constant source of cuteness in his life. Brothers who had flown across oceans to stand by his side, who had lifted him from the depths when he had nothing left but the ghosts of war clinging to his skin. He had found purpose in the army, had thrived in the fire of it, had felt, for the briefest time, like he was whole. Even when it took everything from him—even when it broke him, shattered him, spat him out into the world as something lesser—he had never regretted it.
And then there was love.
Real love.
The kind that poets wept over, the kind that bent the laws of time and logic, the kind that no man, no matter how broken, ever truly believed he would find. Four months of chasing waves and stolen kisses and laughter that echoed across continents. Four months of waking up to gray eyes that felt like home, of knowing—deep in his soul, in the very marrow of him—that he had found the other half of himself.
