Chapter 16
Captain Jonathan
I stay in the supply closet longer than necessary, staring at the closed door like it might swing open on its own and demand something from me.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, then unclench just to curl again, the adrenaline with nowhere to go.
The shelves rattle softly when I drive my palm into the metal, once, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to break skin.
The sound feels good—contained, controlled—unlike everything else right now.
Get it together.
That’s the order I give myself, the same one I’ve relied on for decades, the one that has always worked.
Or at least worked well enough to keep me functional.
I drag a hand down my face, breathing slow until my pulse stops hammering in my ears, until Delilah’s laughter in the dark closet fades into something manageable instead of something that threatens to split me open.
Until the ghost of her pressed into that narrow space with me stops feeling like the only real thing in the goddamn world.
This isn’t the time.
It never is.
I straighten my jacket, square my shoulders, and step back into the hallway wearing the only thing I can afford to show: command.
The fluorescent lights hit too bright after the dark of the closet.
The corridor smells like floor polish and stale coffee and base-issued order.
I head straight for my office, cutting down corridors I know by heart, timing my turns to avoid the med bay, the mess hall, anywhere I might run into him.
Her father.
My best friend.
The man whose trust I’ve been living on borrowed time with.
The closer I get, the tighter my chest feels, like my body already knows what my brain is trying not to. Every step feels like walking toward a firing line with no cover in sight. I push my office door open—and stop.
He’s sitting in my chair like he owns it, boots stretched out, hands folded over his stomach, relaxed in a way that feels like a personal attack.
The sight of him there hits harder than any ambush.
Familiar. Wrong. Too easy. Too normal for a moment that feels like it should come with warning sirens.
I shut the door behind me slowly, my jaw locking as I take him in.
“Jonah,” he says easily, grinning as he looks up at me. “Still haven’t figured out how to knock, I see.”
I snort despite myself, because of course he’d say that. Of course he’d walk into the middle of my unraveling and hit me with something from twenty years ago like no time has passed and no one’s life is hanging by threads I’m holding with bloodied hands.
“You always did hate protocol.”
“And you always loved pretending you didn’t,” he shoots back, eyes sharp and amused. “Been a while since I got to sit in this seat. Feels like yesterday we were arguing over maps and bad intel.”
For a second—just a second—it almost feels like that.
Like we’re younger, bloodied and exhausted and invincible, trading barbs between missions we somehow always survived.
Like the world was ugly, sure, but still simple enough to divide into friend and enemy, truth and lie, duty and everything else. The memory is a knife.
I move around the desk instead of responding, reach for the humidor, and pull out a cigar with hands that are steadier than I feel.
“Still smoking those things?” he asks, watching me like he always has, like he can read the tension under my skin even when I don’t give him a reason to.
“Still annoying me,” I reply, lighting it and taking a slow drag. The smoke fills my lungs, grounding, familiar, ugly in a way I trust. I lean back against the desk instead of sitting, creating distance I didn’t know I needed until now. “What brings you to Greenport?”
He shrugs. “Had some time. Thought I’d check in. Heard you’ve been busy.”
“Always,” I say, noncommittal.
He nods, gaze drifting around the room, lingering on the maps pinned to the wall, the red lines and circles marking places I can’t talk about.
Places Delilah helped me understand without knowing it.
Places Mikhail is probably already slipping out of while I stand here pretending to be casual. “Word is you’re chasing something big.”
“Word talks too much,” I answer, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. “Nothing I can get into.”
He hums, accepting it without pushing, which somehow makes it worse. “You always were tight-lipped when it mattered. Drove command crazy.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at my mouth before I can stop it. “Kept people alive.”
“Damn right it did.”
He looks back at me then, something softer cutting through the easy banter. “You look tired, Jon.”
The comment lands closer to home than I want it to. I shift, scratching at my beard, buying myself time. “Occupational hazard.”
Silence stretches between us, heavy but not uncomfortable the way it should be.
He settles deeper into the chair, clearly in no rush to leave, and I realize too late that lighting the cigar was a mistake.
He takes it as an invitation, just like he always has.
Sit down, stay awhile, tell the old war stories, pretend there isn’t rot under the floorboards.
“So,” he says casually, “how long you think this one’s gonna take?”
I don’t answer right away. My thoughts keep slipping sideways, back to a supply closet and a laugh cut short, to the way Delilah’s eyes looked when the humor faded and reality rushed back in.
To the way my name sounds when she says it.
To the way she looked on that hill, flat on her back in the rain because standing felt like falling.
To the fact that she was just a hallway away from him and had to hide like a fugitive in her own life.
I take another drag, let the smoke burn, and keep my face neutral. “As long as it takes,” I say finally.
He studies me for a beat, like he’s weighing something. “You’ve always carried things alone,” he says quietly. “Don’t forget you don’t have to.”
If he knew. If he had any idea how deep in it I am, how tangled this has become, how every instinct in me is split down the middle between duty and something I don’t have a name for yet because naming it would make it real. Would make it unforgivable.
I nod once, because it’s safer than speaking. “I won’t,” I lie.
He smiles, satisfied enough, and launches into another story from a mission years back, laughing at a moment that nearly got us killed.
I listen, respond where I should, keep the rhythm of an old friendship alive on the surface.
I even laugh once or twice where he expects me to.
But underneath it all, my mind is elsewhere, caught on the image of his daughter disappearing down a hallway, on the weight of a secret I can’t afford to drop.
I wish I could turn it off.
I wish I could be just a captain again, just a soldier with a mission and a target and nothing else muddying the water. Just a man who can sit across from his best friend without tasting guilt at the back of his throat.
Instead, I stand there with smoke curling around my head, nodding along to memories of a past that feels simpler than it ever really was, wondering how long I can keep all of this from detonating right in front of me.
He keeps talking, drifting the way he always does when he’s comfortable, when the past feels close enough to touch. His voice fills the office, steady and familiar, and I let it, because interrupting him would mean thinking too hard about why my pulse still hasn’t settled.
“My wife’s already planning,” he says with a tired chuckle, shaking his head. “You know how she gets. Birthday’s coming up and suddenly it’s an event. Country club, of course. Reserved the whole damn place.”
I grunt, taking another pull from the cigar. “Of course she did.”
He smiles at that, fond and a little exasperated. “She wanted it special this year. Said Delilah’s always had stars in her eyes when it comes to Greenport. The people, the stories, the legacy of it all. So she worked some favors and got it opened up just for vets and retirees. Families too.”
That gets my attention whether I want it to or not. I shift my weight, ash tapping softly into the tray. “That so.”
“Yeah,” he says, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. “Figured it might make her feel… closer. Even if she’s not around much anymore.”
The words sit heavy between us. Distance. That’s the polite version of it. The one he uses so he doesn’t have to say lost, or unreachable, or gone in ways that have nothing to do with geography. It’s also the kindest version of what I’ve helped build.
“She’d like it,” I say carefully, because it’s true. I’ve seen that awe up close, seen the way Delilah watches soldiers move, listens to stories like they’re sacred texts, stores the mythology of this place in the same heart she uses to question it. “Means something to her.”
“That’s what I thought.” He brightens a little, then looks at me sideways. “You should come.”
I arch a brow. “Me.”
“Yeah, you,” he says, like it’s obvious. “It’d appease the missus for one. She still thinks you’re a bad influence, by the way.”
I snort. “She’s not wrong.”
He laughs, a real one, the sound easing some of the tightness in my chest even as it makes the guilt worse. “If you show up, she’ll be too busy bragging to be mad at anyone. And I’ll handle getting Delilah there. She won’t argue with me about that.”
My stomach knots before I can stop it. The image of Delilah in that setting flashes through my head uninvited, sharp and bright and completely inappropriate—dressed up, half-smiling, pretending she isn’t carrying a war under her skin, while I stand in the same room trying not to watch her too hard.
I keep my face neutral, give him a shrug that costs me more than it should.
“I’ll see if I can slip away for a bit to celebrate,” I say.
“Fair enough, busy man,” he replies, nodding. “God, I miss this damn place.”
I huff a laugh despite myself. “That makes one of us.”
He stands then, finally, straightening his jacket like the conversation hasn’t just cracked something open in me.
He steps toward the door, pauses, and turns back, his expression shifting into something quieter, heavier.
The amusement drains out of him, leaving behind the version I know too well—the one that sees more than he says.
“Jon,” he says, voice lower now. “I know she doesn’t call. I know she keeps everyone at arm’s length. But… thank you. For keeping an eye on her. Even from a distance.”
The words hit harder than any accusation could have.
I swallow, the cigar burning forgotten between my fingers, and meet his gaze. “Always,” I say, and this time it’s not a lie.
Because I have. Because I do. Because that has become the problem.
He nods once, satisfied, then opens the door and leaves, his footsteps fading down the hall.
I stand there long after he’s gone, smoke curling around me, the weight of his trust settling squarely on my shoulders, heavier now than it’s ever been.