She's thinner than the last photos I have. Harder, too.
The softness I remember from when she was eighteen has been carved away, replaced by sharp angles, watchful eyes and a way of holding herself that says she's been through things that would break most people.
She didn't break.
She never does.
I drink her in.
Dark hair pulled back from her face.
Shoulders squared, spine straight.
Five foot six, one hundred twenty-three pounds—down from one thirty-five before her last deployment.
I know her body better than she does.
Know every scar, every injury, every pound she's lost and gained over eight years of service.
I have files. Medical records. Photos she doesn't know exist.
I know about the shrapnel in her left thigh from the IED outside Kandahar.
The hairline fracture in her right wrist from hand-to-hand combat training.
The nightmares that wake her at 0300, gasping, reaching for a weapon that isn't there.
I know about Sergeant Reyes, the one she couldn't save.
I've read the incident reports, the counseling notes, the emails she sent home that she thought were private.
I know the guilt lives in her chest like a second heartbeat.
I knoweverything.
And yet knowing has never been enough for me.
I've spent eight years starving for her, and photographs are nothing but crumbs.
She doesn't know I'm watching. Not yet.
She's focused on Gracie, accepting a hug, pulling her duffel from the trunk.
Her movements are efficient, economical. No wasted energy.
The military taught her that. Taught her a lot of things.
How to kill. How to survive. How to hold a man while he bled out and then get up the next morning and do it all again.
War made her into something like me. She just doesn't know it yet.
And I want her more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.
Gracie hugs her one more time, then heads back to her car.
Liberty watches her go. I see the moment her body shifts—weight redistributing, feet spreading wider, shoulders rolling back. A soldier scanning for threats.
She turns toward the main house.
