14
CAP
Dusk sanded the edges off the pines as the search fanned wider.
The woods kept their breath that night. No wind, no frogs, just the long, patient heartbeat of the trees. Ariel slept a few feet from the coals, her hand tucked under her cheek, hair spread like it was trying to catch the firelight. I should’ve slept too. Instead, I sat on the porch with my rifle across my knees and let memory work its way out, slow as sap.
You can tell yourself it’s quiet because you earned it. Truth is, quiet just means the world hasn’t noticed you yet.
I used to be good at this part, the waiting. When the noise stopped after a firefight, that’s when I felt most alive. But this kind of quiet was different. It didn’t hum with the next mission. It hummed with her breathing.
I rubbed my thumb over the rough edge of the trigger guard, a rhythm as old as my bad habits. The cabin behind me smelled of smoke and old pine and her shampoo. The kind of smell that made it easy to forget we were just one bad step from being hunted again.
When the door creaked, I didn’t flinch. She moved slow, barefoot, wrapped in one of the blankets we’d found in the chest.She leaned against the post beside me, eyes on the same line of dark horizon I’d been guarding.
“You keep watching like the trees might tell you a secret,” she said, voice soft, rough from sleep.
“They already did,” I said. “They said not to trust them.”
Her mouth tipped toward a smile. “Do you ever stop being military?”
I looked down at my boots, at the mud drying in old patterns. “Tried once. Didn’t stick.”
She sank down beside me, pulling her blanket tighter. “Tell me what happened,” she said quietly. “The unit. You never say their names.”
I exhaled through my nose. I hadn’t planned on telling her anything, not yet. But she looked at me like the truth was oxygen and she was done holding her breath.
“Thirteen of us,” I said. “Recon team out of Bragg. Second tour. Command said hold the valley and wait for extraction. Local militia said the same thing, different words.” I rubbed a scar along my forearm; one I never remembered getting. “I called the order to hold. Storm came down, and the comms went with it. By morning it was four of us left. By noon, it was just me.”
She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t reach for me either, not yet. Just listened.
“When they found me three days later, they said it was bad luck. Said I’d done right.” I shook my head. “That’s the part that eats you. When good orders get good men killed, and people call it right.”
Silence stretched out, full but not empty. The fire popped once, soft as a sigh.
“You’ve been trying to pay for it ever since,” she said. “That’s what all this's. Getting people out. Making sure somebody gets to walk away this time.”
“I don’t believe in redemption,” I said. “Just math. Even the score where you can.”
She turned then, one hand finding mine on the rifle stock. Her palm was small and warm and very human against all the ghosts I carried. “Maybe that’s what redemption is,” she said. “Not forgetting the math.”
For a while, we just sat there, listening to the forest adjust to morning’s first hint of light. The world was still dark, but less so.
“You ever stop missing them?” she asked.
“No.” The answer came easy. “But I stopped asking for it to hurt less.”
She squeezed my hand, thumb tracing the edge of the scar on my wrist like she was reading Braille. “They’d be proud of you.”
I huffed a laugh that didn’t sound like one. “They’d call me an idiot for still picking fights.”
“Maybe. But they’d be proud.”
I turned my head then, met her eyes. There was no pity in them, just the same fire I’d seen since the basement, fear braided with defiance, bright enough to see by. For a second, the noise in my head eased up. The ghosts stood down.
“Get some sleep,” I told her. “We move before sunup.”
She didn’t. She leaned her head against my shoulder instead, watching the sky open a little more. “Just for a minute,” she murmured.
