“You planning on running off without me?” I ask. My tone is light, but only barely. There’s too much truth sitting underneath it.
His grip tightens slightly around my fingers. “Not a chance.”
For a moment, it feels like the world narrows to just this bed, this small cut, this quiet space carved out of chaos. I can hear the soft rustle of sheets from the recovery bay, the hum of the air system, someone laughing too loud three curtains over. But it all feels far away.
The soldiers’ voices swell again in the background, talking about deployments and intel and strategy. The war isn’t over. It never really is. There will always be another name on a board somewhere, another corridor, another ghost.
But something inside me feels steadier.
More certain.
Jon leans in slightly, his voice low enough that only I can hear it. “You were never just something I needed to protect,” he says. “You were something I needed to grow toward.”
My throat tightens. It’s such a Jon thing to say—unexpectedly beautiful wrapped in language rough enough to pretend it isn’t.
“And now?” I whisper.
“Now I’m trying to figure out how to build something that doesn’t require us bleeding for it.”
I glance down at his bandaged hand. “You’re bad at that so far.”
He smirks. “Working on it.”
A call comes over the intercom for a tactical briefing, sharp and impersonal and perfectly timed to ruin whatever this almost became. His name isn’t said, but it doesn’t need to be. Men like Jon hear responsibility the way other people hear their own names.
He releases my fingers reluctantly.
“I’ll let you get back to saving the world,” he says.
“Try not to trip again,” I reply.
He stands, pauses and looks at me like he’s standing at the edge of something bigger than either of us. Something he wants and fears in equal measure.
Then one corner of his mouth lifts. “If I do,” he says, voice low and warm and devastatingly amused, “can I fall into you?”
The grin that follows is brief, almost boyish in a way that always catches me off guard because it only ever seems to exist for me. Then, just like that, he turns and leaves, swallowed by the sliding doors and the hum of the base and the war waiting beyond them.
And for the first time since everything began—
Since captivity. Since secrets. Since war tore open every fragile piece of us—
I don’t feel like I’m waiting for something to explode.
I feel like I’m standing at the start of something new.
And maybe… Just maybe—
This time we get to choose how it ends.
Chapter 30
Captain Jonathan
There are firefights that are easier than this.
I’ve been shot at on three continents. I’ve walked into rooms rigged to explode. I’ve negotiated with men who would’ve skinned me alive for sport and smiled while they did it. I’ve stared down gun barrels and dictators and grieving families and my own reflection after missions that should’ve killed me twice over.
None of that compares to sitting across from Will Kennedy in my office with a cup of cold coffee and the full weight of his disapproval hanging in the air like smoke.
