The words reach the center of me. For a second, I can’t speak.
Rhys turns back toward the doorway. Not because he wants the Jeep. Not really. I see that now.
He wants out of this room. Out of my questions. Out of the truth pressing against both of us.
I force my voice steady. “Did he endanger your men?”
His hand tightens on the latch. That’s answer enough. But I need words. I need them because silence has ruined enough of my life already.
“Rhys.”
He keeps his back to me.
“Did Phoenix make a choice that put the team at risk?”
The floorboards squeak, the walls heave, as if the cabin’s suddenly unsteady around us. “Yes.”
One syllable cracks something open inside me. It isn’t grief. That I know intimately. Its texture, its weight, the way it makes rooms feel too large and beds too cold.
This isn’t that. This is the ground moving beneath the grave I’ve knelt beside for two years.
“He said, ‘You weren’t supposed to stop me.’ Then, he told me to leave him.” It comes out slowly, as if he’s fighting for every word.
“You’re lying,” I say. I want it to sound certain. But it doesn’t.
Rhys turns then, slow and grim. “I wish I were.”
My throat burns. “Phoenix wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t know what he was doing.”
“He was my brother.”
“And he was my Marine.” The words land like a thrown blade.
I step back.
Rhys’s face changes immediately, regret flickering through the harshness. But he doesn’t take it back. Maybe because he can’t. Maybe because it’s true.
“He was not yours,” I say.
“No.” His voice drops. “But for those days, his choices were.”
The first tear comes fast, furious, unwanted. I wipe it away before it can fall.
Rhys hesitates, as if he wants to move toward me. But he doesn’t.
Good.
If he touches me now, I might break in a way I can’t afford. “What did he do?” I ask.
Rhys shakes his head.
“What did he do?”
“Not tonight.”
A laugh tears out of me, sharp and ugly. “Of course. Of course not tonight.”
