I spot Moe near one of the side tables, half-silhouetted in the dim. The kid’s got his shoulders stiff, jaw locked like he’s trying to chew his way through a memory, and I know that expression a little too well. I’ve worn it. I’ve buried friends wearing it. Arms crossed tight over his chest, he looks like he’s holding himself together by sheer force of will.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
He’s locked in on something—or rather, someone—and I follow his line of sight instinctively. Then I see her.
Raylen.
She’s just as stiff as ever, scanning the area like she doesn’t know how to act in a public setting, or rather, like she doesn’t know what to do now that there’s no immediate threat to neutralize. No firefight. No objective. Just people dancing and bad pop songs. Moe’s eyes haven’t left her since she walked in, and hell, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what kind of storm’s brewing behind that stare.
I weave between a couple of Alpine soldiers mid-conversation, sidestepping a tipsy sniper and a tray of champagne flutes, angling toward him. There’s a second of hesitation when I get close—I don’t want to spook him—but it passes quick. I’ve never been one to dance around a moment.
I step up beside him.
“Stop staring,” I mutter, elbowing him just hard enough to slosh his drink. The glass tips slightly, and he flinches like I just pulled him out of a trench.
His scowl comes next, automatic. “I’m not staring.”
I snort. “You’re burning holes in her skull. People are gonna start thinking you developed laser vision. Or had a stroke.”
He takes a slow sip of whatever’s in his glass—champagne, if I had to guess—and tries like hell to act unfazed. But I can seeit. The way his throat bobs. The twitch of his fingers around the stem. The way his gaze drags back to her like a magnet every time he looks away. The kid looks like longing wrapped in panic and dipped in guilt.
“Appreciate the medical concern,” he mutters.
I lean in slightly, keeping the grin just enough to needle him without pushing too far. “So… you two back together yet, or are you still practicing your professional level emotional constipation?”
He shoots me a glare that could peel paint. “Why do you always sound like you read one therapy book and never emotionally recovered from it?”
“Skimmed a pamphlet once,” I shrug. “Vet’s office. Had diagrams.”
It’s a lie. I sound straight out of a therapy book because of therapy, but he doesn’t need that information right now. I’m not ready to be that version of a father yet—the honest one. For now, he gets sarcasm and half-truths. It’s what I know.
He snorts—but it’s short-lived. His gaze drifts back toward her, involuntary as breath. Like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it anymore.
“I don’t know,” he says after a pause, voice quieter. “She came for the wedding. Not for me.”
The silence that follows is a different kind. The kind made from shared weight. Years of knowing too many goodbyes, too many what-ifs, and all the things that never got said until it was too damn late. The kind of silence where every version of “I’m scared” gets swallowed because no one wants to be the first to say it.
I look at him. Really look.
There’s a crack showing now, just beneath the surface of all that calm. A fracture that wasn’t there before. I could say something. Something decent, even—tell him that the way shelooked at him earlier didn’t scream indifference, that love and fear look damn similar on the face of someone who’s already lost too much.
But just as I start to open my mouth, my phone vibrates against my thigh, cutting through everything like a blade. The sensation yanks me back to reality so fast I almost see stars.
I pull it out, glancing at the screen, and my stomach drops.
Shit. Larkin.
Moe must see it on my face. “Problem?”
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath and press the phone to my ear, turning slightly away as the voice on the other end comes through short, sharp, and so not fucking good. The music and laughter blur into nothing as her words sink in.
“There’s been an issue. Covert mission gone sideways. Most soldiers made it out, but one was taken hostage. Report back to base.”
The words land like a punch. One taken. One left behind. My mind is already spinning through questions—who, where, what assets we’ve got near the grid—but there’s no time for any of it. Duty first. Always. Even when it cuts straight through the thin skin of something soft we were just starting to grow.
I hang up just as King appears out of the night like a damn ghost, a half-eaten cupcake in one hand, a belt knife in the other. It would be funny if it wasn’t us. If it wasn’t real.
“What?” he grumbles around a mouthful of cake.
