I stay in the supply closet longer than necessary, staring at the closed door like it might swing open on its own and demand something from me. My hands curl into fists at my sides, then unclench just to curl again, the adrenaline with nowhere to go. The shelves rattle softly when I drive my palm into the metal, once, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to break skin. The sound feels good—contained, controlled—unlike everything else right now.
Get it together.
That’s the order I give myself, the same one I’ve relied on for decades, the one that has always worked. Or at least worked well enough to keep me functional. I drag a hand down my face, breathing slow until my pulse stops hammering in my ears, until Delilah’s laughter in the dark closet fades into something manageable instead of something that threatens to split me open. Until the ghost of her pressed into that narrow space with me stops feeling like the only real thing in the goddamn world.
This isn’t the time.
It never is.
I straighten my jacket, square my shoulders, and step back into the hallway wearing the only thing I can afford to show: command. The fluorescent lights hit too bright after the dark of the closet. The corridor smells like floor polish and stale coffee and base-issued order. I head straight for my office, cutting down corridors I know by heart, timing my turns to avoid the med bay, the mess hall, anywhere I might run into him.
Her father.
My best friend.
The man whose trust I’ve been living on borrowed time with.
The closer I get, the tighter my chest feels, like my body already knows what my brain is trying not to. Every step feels like walking toward a firing line with no cover in sight. I push my office door open—and stop.
He’s sitting in my chair like he owns it, boots stretched out, hands folded over his stomach, relaxed in a way that feels like a personal attack. The sight of him there hits harder than any ambush. Familiar. Wrong. Too easy. Too normal for a moment that feels like it should come with warning sirens.
I shut the door behind me slowly, my jaw locking as I take him in.
“Jonah,” he says easily, grinning as he looks up at me. “Still haven’t figured out how to knock, I see.”
I snort despite myself, because of course he’d say that. Of course he’d walk into the middle of my unraveling and hit me with something from twenty years ago like no time has passed and no one’s life is hanging by threads I’m holding with bloodied hands.
“You always did hate protocol.”
“And you always loved pretending you didn’t,” he shoots back, eyes sharp and amused. “Been a while since I got to sit in this seat. Feels like yesterday we were arguing over maps and bad intel.”
For a second—just a second—it almost feels like that. Like we’re younger, bloodied and exhausted and invincible, trading barbs between missions we somehow always survived. Like the world was ugly, sure, but still simple enough to divide into friend and enemy, truth and lie, duty and everything else. The memory is a knife.
I move around the desk instead of responding, reach for the humidor, and pull out a cigar with hands that are steadier than I feel.
“Still smoking those things?” he asks, watching me like he always has, like he can read the tension under my skin even when I don’t give him a reason to.
“Still annoying me,” I reply, lighting it and taking a slow drag. The smoke fills my lungs, grounding, familiar, ugly in a way I trust. I lean back against the desk instead of sitting, creating distance I didn’t know I needed until now. “What brings you to Greenport?”
He shrugs. “Had some time. Thought I’d check in. Heard you’ve been busy.”
“Always,” I say, noncommittal.
He nods, gaze drifting around the room, lingering on the maps pinned to the wall, the red lines and circles marking places I can’t talk about. Places Delilah helped me understand without knowing it. Places Mikhail is probably already slipping out of while I stand here pretending to be casual. “Word is you’re chasing something big.”
“Word talks too much,” I answer, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. “Nothing I can get into.”
He hums, accepting it without pushing, which somehow makes it worse. “You always were tight-lipped when it mattered. Drove command crazy.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at my mouth before I can stop it. “Kept people alive.”
“Damn right it did.”
He looks back at me then, something softer cutting through the easy banter. “You look tired, Jon.”
The comment lands closer to home than I want it to. I shift, scratching at my beard, buying myself time. “Occupational hazard.”
Silence stretches between us, heavy but not uncomfortable the way it should be. He settles deeper into the chair, clearly in no rush to leave, and I realize too late that lighting the cigar was a mistake. He takes it as an invitation, just like he always has. Sit down, stay awhile, tell the old war stories, pretend there isn’t rot under the floorboards.
