Chapter Ten
The stars were just starting to punch through the ink of evening sky when Ezra found Ricky sitting on the low stone wall behind the Ridge’s operations shed. A half-drunk bottle of water dangled from his fingers, and his eyes tracked something invisible in the darkness.
Ezra didn’t speak right away. The air smelled like cut grass and distant rain, and something about the quiet made it feel like breaking it would be a sin. He lowered himself onto the wall beside Ricky, close enough to touch, but not quite.
“You okay?” Ezra finally asked.
Ricky let out a breath that didn’t quite qualify as a sigh. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
Ezra let that hang. Then, carefully, “About Marsh?”
Ricky’s head turned just slightly. The lamplight caught the edge of his cheekbone, and for a second, Ezra could see the walls trying to go up.
He didn’t let them.
“I noticed something, that’s all,” Ezra said gently. “There’s distance. Between you and Marsh. There wasn’t before.”
Ricky didn’t speak at first. He tipped the bottle to his lips, swallowed. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.
“You want to know what happened.”
Ezra nodded once.
Ricky’s laugh was short and humorless. “Yeah. So do I, some days.” He set the bottle down between his feet. “It was the night you disappeared.”
Ezra stilled. “From here?”
“Yeah.”
Ricky’s voice was steady, but Ezra could hear the echo of something rough beneath it.
“You had left me, and although I get it now, back then it gutted me. And to say I didn’t take it well would probably be an understatement.”
A pause and Ezra felt that familiar edge of guilt roll through him.
Ricky sighed, reaching for his hand. “Ezra, baby, don’t.
It is in the past and I am over it, and we are together, and all is well, but at the time, I was not in a good space.
He found me after a particularly brutal session in the gym.
It was past midnight. I’d been beating the hell out of the heavy bag for hours.
Hands were bleeding through the wraps, and I didn’t even care.
I showered and left and ran into Marsh as he came out of the comms and innovation center. ”
Ricky shifted, as if remembering the weight of that night in his bones.
“He tried to get me to talk, because I hadn’t been. I was just walking around, apparently like the undead, and he was sick of it. He told me the truth, laid it out and bitch-slapped me with it.”
Ezra’s breath hitched. “Tell me you didn’t believe that.”
“I did. Then. Because fear lies in your ear and pretends to be logic.” Ricky ran a hand through his hair. “I said some awful shit. And he fired back without thinking. Told me ... maybe I wasn’t Pathfinder enough to handle the field.”
Ezra’s jaw tightened. “That’s not true.”
Ricky smiled without mirth. “It didn’t matter. Marsh was the one who taught me how to belong. So, when it came from him ... it hit like a hammer. Marsh was the first guy who said I was more than just a body with a past.”
“He was your anchor,” Ezra said quietly.
“Yeah.” Ricky looked down. “And he cut the line. Just for a second—but that was all it took.”
Another silence passed. This one gentler.
“I left that night,” Ricky said. “No confrontation. No yelling. Not even a goodbye.”
Ezra’s heart ached. “You thought the team agreed with him.”
“I didn’t know,” Ricky admitted. “I didn’t ask. I was already halfway gone, and I didn’t want the answer.” He turned to look at Ezra then, eyes solemn. “It really wasn’t just about what he said. It was that he said it. He knew my fault lines. And he used them.”
Ezra’s hand found Ricky’s on the stone wall. “He regrets it.”
“I know.” Ricky’s voice was soft. “He told me. In his way. But it doesn’t erase it. Just ... explains it.”
Ricky let his breath out slowly and said, “You want to know why it hurt so bad? It wasn’t just because he said it. It was because of Khasham.”
Ezra turned toward him, waiting.
“2018,” Ricky said. “Mission went sideways. We got caught in the crossfire. Bad intel. I hesitated to kill these two women who were brainwashed and hell bent on killing all of us. Marsh ended up killing them both, close wet work with knives while I stood there, bleeding. We got separated from the rest of the team, and that big son of a bitch dragged me out of the fire. Literally. I was shot in the thigh, couldn’t see straight from blood loss.
“We holed up in a bombed-out med station. No power. No medics. Just Marsh, me, and a shitload of enemies outside. Rounds and mortar fire trying to rip us a new one, and me, feeling sorry for myself. And I was so fucking sure we were going to die. Marsh had to kill two women to save me, and now we were going to die in that godforsaken place.”
Ezra’s breath stilled.
“I told him, that night, that I felt like I didn’t belong, that I felt like an imposter That I wasn’t like the rest of the team—wasn’t made for this life.
And he...” Ricky’s voice faltered. “He sat with me all night, held my hand, and told me I mattered. Said if anyone made me feel like I didn’t belong—including my own fucked-up brain—they were wrong. ”
A beat.
“I limped out of that warzone because of him. Because he believed in me. And then, years later, he threw that same blade into my chest.”
Ezra’s heart cracked wide open.
Ricky stared out into the dark. “I left that night. Because he knew where my cracks were. And he used them against me.”
Ezra touched his knee gently. “But you came back.”
“I did.” Ricky’s voice was quiet. “Because I believed in this place. In the Pathfinders. In what we are building.”
Ezra squeezed his hand. “You came back. You forgave.”
“Still working on that last one,” Ricky said with a crooked smile. “But yeah, I did.”
They sat in silence, hand in hand, the sky yawning wide above them.
Inside the Ridge, people were healing. Together. Even when it hurt.
Even when the ghosts spoke louder than the living.
****
The Ridge breathed.
After years of fighting, of missions that blurred into gunfire and grief, of saying goodbye and never knowing who’d make it back, this place finally made it easier to breath.
Ricky stood on the edge of the training field, the early morning light slanting gold across damp grass.
Somewhere behind him, a rooster crowed like it had a personal grudge against civilization.
Sophia’s laughter echoed from the stables, where Ryan was apparently giving her a crash course in how to bribe ponies with apples and marshmallows.
Celia toddled after them with a crayon in one fist and a suspiciously empty juice pouch in the other.
It felt ... good.
And somehow, in the middle of all that growth and order, they still had chaos. The kind that smelled like burnt toast and kid shampoo. The kind that meant family.
But Ricky had a meeting. And a conversation had in the past that needed to be closed.
Marsh was working in the server room—because of course he was. Multiple screens glowed around him, some showing Ridge security feeds, others pulsing with lines of code and threat detection patterns Ricky didn’t bother pretending to understand.
“Got your message,” Ricky said, arms crossed. “Figured it was time.”
Marsh didn’t look up right away. “It’s overdue.”
Ricky nodded. “Yeah.”
Silence stretched between them like taut wire. Marsh finally turned, his jaw tight, eyes underslept and guarded.
“I was a dick,” Marsh said.
Ricky blinked. “You? Never.”
Marsh snorted. “I said something I shouldn’t have. Back then. Before you left.”
“You said a lot of things,” Ricky said evenly. “But yeah. There was one line that stuck.”
Marsh’s expression flickered. “About you not being stable enough for fieldwork.”
“About not being Pathfinder enough,” Ricky corrected.
He didn’t have to raise his voice. The words landed like a knife between them.
Marsh exhaled. “I was scared, man. You were spiraling after that night Ezra disappeared. Fuck, I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can take a pretty strong swing and hit something. You wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t let anyone in. I said the one thing I knew would push you.”
Ricky snorted, “Yeah, push me away.”
“Push you somewhere, man!” Marsh snapped. “Anywhere other than standing in the dark with your bleeding fists clenched and your eyes empty.”
That stopped Ricky cold.
He hadn’t realized.
For a long moment, all he could hear was the quiet whir of the server fans.
“You should’ve just told me,” Ricky said softly. “I know what spiraling is, hell we all do.”
“I didn’t know how,” Marsh admitted. “And when I figured it out, you were gone.”
“I carried that for a long time,” Ricky said. “Felt like I wasn’t enough. Like maybe you all thought it, too. That I didn’t belong.”
“You’ve always belonged, Ricky,” Marsh said, stepping closer. “You were always one of us. I just didn’t know how to say it without sounding like a goddamn Hallmark card.”
Ricky let the weight fall off his chest. Not all of it. But enough.
“I’m here now,” he said.
Marsh nodded. “And better than ever.”
They shared a look. Not perfect. Not all healed. But closer.
Then Marsh muttered, “I still think it’s bullshit that you took down two guards with a clipboard.”
Ricky grinned. “Weapon of opportunity.”
“You are never living that down.”
“Didn’t plan to.”
When, a little while later, he wandered into the ops lounge, he was surprised to see Dev was already there, propped up against the counter with a box in one hand and a five-pound bag of sugar in the other.
“You runnin’ a bakery now?” Ricky asked, grabbing two mugs from the shelf.
“Finn’s idea,” Dev said, dropping the sugar dramatically onto the table. “Apparently Bateman said we were out, and Finn took that as a personal mission.”
“So, you’re his mule.” Ricky asked as he passed Dev a black coffee
“I have been called worse.” Dev said with a shrug.
They sat quietly for a moment, sipping coffee. Dev wasn’t usually around these days. He worked peripherally, drifting in and out with classified missions and tech prototypes that cost more than Ricky’s childhood home. But when he was here, he had a knack for showing up at exactly the right moment.
Ricky glanced sideways. “You ever think about Veracruz?”
Dev didn’t look surprised. “Sometimes.”
“It didn’t break me,” Ricky said. “It bent me, sure. But I still trust. I still ... believe. In people. In love. That matters.”
Dev nodded. “That’s rare. And valuable.”
“I want Sophia to grow up with that,” Ricky said. “Not with fear. Not with silence. I want her to know that even when the world goes to hell, there are people worth trusting.”
“You’ll give her that,” Dev said simply.
Ricky looked over. “You always that sure about things?”
“Nope,” Dev said, rising to his feet. “But I’m never wrong.”
He handed over a USB drive. “For Bateman. Secure training footage. Don’t lose it, or Marsh will implode.”
Then, with a smirk, “Tell Ezra to stop hogging the gym mats. Some of us need them for actual training.”
And just like that, he was gone.
Later that night, Ricky stood on the back porch, watching the sunset bleed across the hills in crimson and fire.
Sophia was asleep, curled into a nest of pillows and fleece. Ryan had read her three stories and then fallen asleep himself, face-down in the middle of a coloring book.
Celia had wandered into the laundry room and declared it her “fort.”
Blake had a pizza in the oven and Dale was arguing with Marsh about the correct amount of garlic for breadsticks.
The Ridge felt full.
Whole.
And for the first time in a long time, Ricky let himself believe they were safe.
But somewhere deep in his chest, something stirred.
Not fear. Not yet.
Just awareness.
A shift in the wind.
The kind of quiet that came before the storm.