Epilogue
Kayla
Three months later
Saturday mornings in our yard had a rhythm now.
Not our yard, technically. My yard and Ben’s yard, two separate properties with two separate mailboxes and two separate front doors. But the fence between them was down to its last four standing slats.
Neither of us had seen the point in maintaining a boundary that didn’t mean anything anymore. Ben’s back door opened onto the same grass as mine. His grill sat ten feet from my deck. Jolly’s water bowl lived on my porch, and William’s muddy sneakers lived on Ben’s.
We hadn’t moved in together, and that was fine. More than fine. He came over every morning for coffee. Cooked dinner in my kitchen most nights with the intensity of a man who’d discovered a new mission, methodical, precise, slightly overambitious.
He fell asleep in my bed and usually woke up there. His clothes were still in his closet next door, his footlocker still in his bedroom, and that was okay too. This worked for us.
Two houses, no fence, one life spread across both.
I sat on the deck with my coffee and my sketchbook, not working, just watching, Ben going through emails across from me. William was at the base of what he called The Hill—despite our yards being relatively flat—throwing a tennis ball, and Jolly was bringing it back.
They never got tired of it, even now. Jolly’s tail was going, his mouth open in that permanent grin, already turning before William’s arm finished the throw because he knew where the ball was going before the boy did.
Ben had made it official last month, filing Jolly’s retirement paperwork with Citadel. His working harness hung on a hook at Ben’s house, not thrown away, not hidden, just set in its place with the respect it had earned. The three of us had taken Jolly to the pet store to pick out a new collar.
A regular collar. The kind any kid’s dog would wear.
William had walked the aisle twice, considered every option with the gravity of a surgeon selecting instruments, and chosen a blue one with little silver stars.
He’d looked up at Ben. “This means Jolly’s mine now?”
Ben nodded solemnly. “It means he’s yours.”
William had put it on Jolly himself, right there in the store, his small fingers working the buckle with careful concentration. Jolly had stood perfectly still for it, tail going, that permanent grin aimed up at the boy fastening the collar around his neck.
I could see it now from the deck, that blue collar with the silver stars catching the light every time Jolly sprinted after the ball.
The tennis ball sailed wide. William laughed and chased after it, Jolly trotting beside him, and they disappeared around the side of the house in a tangle of boy and dog. Ben and I grinned at each other, until we heard a car parking in the driveway.
Ben looked up toward the sky like he was begging for help from above. “Here we go.”
I smothered my laugh as we both walked around front.
Briggson climbed out. He was carrying a bag from the hardware store and wearing the expression of a man who was here under duress and wanted that on the record.
“Hey, Briggson.”
“Garrison.” He held up the bag. “You said you needed a three-quarter-inch socket wrench. The hardware store had one, so.” He thrust the bag forward. “Here.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Don’t appreciate it. I was already there.”
These two. The love/hate relationship was strong. Constantly communicating like men who’d rather chew glass than admit they actually cared about each other.
Briggson stood in the driveway with his hands in his pockets, not leaving but not committing to staying, and his eyes tracked across the yard to where William and Jolly had appeared.
Jolly was on his back in the grass. William was rubbing his belly with both hands and narrating a story that seemed to involve pirates.
“Dog looks good,” Briggson said.
“He’s doing great. Retirement suits him.”
“Obviously.” The word was dry but not sharp. He watched William for another second. “Kid’s good for him.”
“For sure.”
I barely refrained from rolling my eyes. Brevity as a love language.
Briggson nodded once. He was turning back toward his car when Ben said, “How’s Mia?”
The pause was small. Barely there.
“Better. She’s in a program. Thirty days in, got sixty more.” He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. “She and my sister have been talking almost every day.”
“That’s good, Seth.”
The first name landed between them. Briggson looked at Ben for a moment, and whatever passed in that look was the kind of thing neither of them would ever discuss and both of them would remember.
“Yeah,” Briggson said. “It is.”
He left with as little fanfare as he’d arrived.
The afternoon wound down the way Saturday afternoons did now.
William and Jolly in the yard until the light started to change.
Me on the deck with my sketchbook, half working, half watching.
Ben moving between whatever project he’d assigned himself and the kitchen, where dinner was slowly taking shape.
His phone rang while he was at the stove. He checked the screen, and that slight lift appeared at the corner of his mouth. The one reserved for Donovan.
He put it on speaker while he worked the stove. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself. How’s civilian life? Have you started wearing khakis? Please tell me you haven’t started wearing khakis.”
“I’m not wearing khakis.”
“Cargo shorts? Crocs? One of those aprons that says something about kissing the cook?”
Ben glanced around to make sure William wasn’t in earshot. “Fuck right off.”
Ben stirred whatever was in the pan. Chicken, garlic, something green. The results of his cooking had been ranging from surprisingly excellent to educational, and tonight was looking like it might fall on the right side.
“How’s the Kenya prep?” Ben asked.
“Fine. Ethan’s got me doing advance work on the threat assessment before the team deploys.”
“Who’s running logistics on the ground?”
“Don’t know yet. It all has to do with some large animal vets and issues with poachers.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“You know me, man. Party all the time.”
Ben looked over at me. I tilted my head toward the yard, asking if he wanted me to go out. He shook his head and reached his hand out toward me. “You good?”
“I’m always good.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The line went quiet for a beat. Somewhere on Donovan’s end, a door closed. When he spoke again, the banter was still there but thinner. Worn through in places.
“I’m working on it.”
Ben didn’t push. Didn’t fill the silence. I walked over to him, and he wrapped an arm around me, kissing the top of my head.
“Tell the kid I said hi. And tell the hot mom if she comes to her senses and wants a real man…”
Ben rolled his eyes. “See previous comment about fucking right off.”
The lightness was back, snapped into place. “And tell Jolly I expect him to maintain his standards even in retirement. No getting fat on the couch time.”
“He’s not on the couch. He’s on William’s bed.”
“Even worse. Soft living. My condolences to a once-great warrior.”
They bantered a little more before hanging up. Ben stood at the stove for a moment, not stirring, just holding the spoon.
“He sounds the same,” I said carefully.
“Mostly.”
“But?”
Ben turned down the burner. “He’ll get there.” He said it with certainty, and I could hear him deciding to believe it.
We ate dinner. William talked about school and about Theo and about a plan to build Jolly a fort in the backyard that involved cardboard boxes and a tarp and structural ambitions that would have challenged an actual engineer. Ben listened with the steady attention he gave William.
Not pretending to be interested. Actually interested.
After dinner, William went upstairs to get ready for bed. Jolly followed, the way he followed every night, his nails clicking on the stairs behind the boy’s bare feet.
Ben and I sat on the deck wrapped in a blanket, the December air mild.
The mountains were black against a sky full of stars. Three months since Vance had pointed a gun at me on a dark road and everything had changed.
Vance was in federal custody now—the drug syndicate completely dismantled. Jonathan Porter, whose name had threaded through the investigation from the beginning, had been cleared.
He wasn’t dirty. Just a businessman who bought cheap properties without asking why the prices were low. Vance had built the trail toward Porter deliberately, one more layer of misdirection from a man who’d spent months making sure every road led somewhere that wasn’t him.
The town was healing. The department was healing. We were all healing, in our own time, at our own pace.
Ben’s hand found my knee. I leaned my head on his shoulder. The silence between us was comfortable and lived-in.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
My stomach didn’t drop. Six months ago, it would’ve. Any sentence that started with I need to tell you something from a man I cared about would have sent me straight to the worst-case scenario.
But this was Ben. Ben didn’t build up to bad news. He just delivered it.
“Okay.”
“I called Ethan last week. Asked him to make Summit Falls my permanent base, even though I’m wrapping up the K9 training here.” He said it the way he said most important things. Quietly. “I’ll still take missions. But this is where I’ll come back to. Every time.”
I lifted my head from his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He traced a circle on my knee with his thumb. “Which brings me to the part where I go back to that house every morning and get dressed and come back over here. It’s convenient to be next door, but not as convenient as if we all lived here.”
Something shifted in the air between us. I looked at his face. He was looking straight ahead at the mountains, but his jaw had that set to it. The one that meant he was working up to something he’d already decided and wanted to say right.
“I wanted to have the Ethan conversation first,” he said. “Before I asked you anything else. I needed you to know this was permanent before I put my boots next to your door.”
“Ben.” I cupped his cheek. “I love you. William loves you. Move in. The house next door can be your office, your gear storage, whatever you need. But stop going back there to sleep.”
“I don’t want to move in.”
I dropped my hand. “Oh.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ring. Simple, understated.
“Or I guess I should say, I don’t want to just move in. I want to marry you. I want to officially be William’s father, if both of you want that.”
I looked at the ring. I looked at him. Tried to wrap my head around this.
“You’ve been carrying that around.”
“For two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“I was waiting for the right moment.”
“And the right moment is now?”
“Yeah. I was working up to it. I love you. More than anything I’ve ever loved in my whole life.”
He’d said I love you before, of course. Said it nearly every day. But this was more than that.
I took the ring from his hand and slipped it on my finger. It fit. Of course it fit.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I love you and I’ll marry you and you’ll come home to us.”
“Always. I’ll always come home to you. Everything in the world that’s important to me is in this house.”
He kissed me. Slow. His thumb against my cheekbone, his mouth warm and unhurried. A kiss of beginnings.
From inside the house, William’s voice drifted down through the open upstairs window. Talking to Jolly. A soft stream of plans and observations and questions the dog would never answer and didn’t need to.
“Hey, tomorrow, we’re going to the creek, okay? I already decided. And I’m bringing the big stick, not the medium one, because the medium one broke. Remember? You broke it. That’s okay, though. I’ll find a better one.”
A pause. Then, quiet and certain, he said, “Goodnight, Jolly. You’re my best friend.”
Ben’s forehead rested against mine. His eyes were closed. He was listening to the same thing I was. A boy who used to be afraid of his own voice, talking into the dark without a single hesitation.
There were things to plan and do and figure out. But right now, we just held each other in the silence. The stars did what stars did. The mountains held their ground.
And inside the house, a retired K9 with a graying muzzle and a permanent grin kept watch at the foot of a boy’s bed. Not because he was trained to. Because the boy was his, and he was the boy’s, and that was the whole story.
It had been, from the very first pinecone.
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Thank you for reading Duty Unleashed.