Chapter 17
Delilah Barrinheart
I stay in my room long after there’s no reason to hide.
Two days since my dad left. Two days since the base slipped back into its normal rhythm, boots on concrete and radios crackling like nothing inside me is still splintered.
Two days since I told myself I’d step out tomorrow, then tomorrow again, until the word loses meaning and the silence starts to feel like something alive.
My quarters are small enough that I can touch three walls without moving my feet.
The bed is too narrow, the ceiling too low, and every night I wake up tangled in sheets, heart racing, lungs burning like I’ve been running instead of sleeping.
The nightmares don’t bother easing me into them.
They drop me straight back into metal and darkness and hands I can’t see, voices I can’t place, the echo of my own breathing bouncing off walls that don’t care if I’m afraid.
Sometimes it’s the cell. Sometimes it’s the corridor outside it.
Sometimes it’s just the feeling—helpless and pinned and watched.
You’re safe, I tell myself over and over, pressing my palm flat to my chest like I can hold my heart still. You’re here. You’re fine. You’re not there anymore.
My body doesn’t listen.
I’ve already talked to my dad. I answered the call because avoiding it would’ve made it worse, because I’m tired of running from people who love me.
He talked about the party like it was something solid and good, like it might anchor me back to a version of myself that still fits in a dress and smiles on cue.
He sounded hopeful in that careful way he gets when he thinks he’s being subtle, like if he keeps his voice light enough I won’t hear the wanting underneath it.
I told him I’d think about it, which was the nicest lie I could manage.
For once in my life, I’m dreading it.
The quiet presses in until it feels like I’m breathing through cotton, so when the base finally settles into its late-night hush, I pull on my jacket and slip out before I can talk myself out of it.
I don’t tell anyone where I’m going. I don’t need permission for this.
I’m not about to start asking for it now.
The shooting range smells like oil and cold air, familiar enough that my shoulders loosen the second I step inside.
The overhead lights are dimmer this late, leaving most of the space in shadow except for the lanes and the dull metallic shine of the benches.
This is supposed to help. This is supposed to be normal.
I load the magazine with practiced ease, line up my stance, and lift the weapon like it’s an extension of my arm instead of something heavy and loud and unforgiving.
The first shot goes wide.
I frown, adjust, try again.
Wide.
Again.
The crack of the gunshot ricochets off the walls, too sharp, too close, and suddenly the sound isn’t here anymore.
It’s everywhere else. My vision tunnels, flashes of dim light and restraints and the way my hands shook no matter how hard I tried to control them.
The recoil bites into my shoulder and my brain turns it into something else entirely.
Something ugly. Something I don’t want to name.
I fire again.
Miss.
My grip tightens until my knuckles ache, and my breathing turns shallow without me noticing. Every shot rings like a bell inside my skull, each one dragging something ugly to the surface. I don’t stop. I can’t. If I stop, I’ll have to feel it. If I stop, I’ll hear myself thinking again.
“Delilah.”
The voice comes from behind me, low and calm, and I almost drop the gun out of sheer shock. Hands settle over mine before I can react, large and steady, grounding me in a way that makes my breath hitch. Familiar weight. Familiar heat. Familiar danger.
“Easy,” Jon says, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth like this is the most normal thing in the world. Smoke curls lazily between us. “You’re spiraling.”
I swallow hard, nodding even though my chest feels too tight to move.
He adjusts my grip, shifts my stance with a touch that’s all instruction and no pressure, his presence solid at my back.
His hand at my wrist is firm without being forceful.
The other rests at my elbow, guiding instead of controlling. It should feel clinical. It doesn’t.
“In through your nose,” he murmurs. “Out through your mouth. Slow. You’re here.”
I follow his lead because I always do, because my body recognizes him as something safe even when my mind is still clawing its way back.
The next breath goes a little deeper. The one after that doesn’t burn as much.
The range starts to feel like the range again instead of a tunnel toward somewhere worse.
“What’re you doing out here so late?” he asks quietly.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I admit, staring downrange. The target is a blur for a second before it sharpens again. “Needed… this.”
He hums like he understands more than I’m saying.
For a second, neither of us moves, the space between us charged and fragile, and all I can think about is the kiss and how it cracked something open I don’t know how to close again.
The slap before it. The apology after. The way he looked at me like he hated himself for wanting me and hated me a little for making him feel it.
I shift my weight, the floor cool beneath my boots, and force myself to focus on the target instead of the way my pulse is still skidding along my ribs.
Jon’s breath brushes my ear when he exhales, slow and deliberate, like he’s anchoring himself just as much as he’s anchoring me.
His chest is close enough to my back that I can feel the heat of him through both our clothes.
“Muscle memory’s there,” he says after a beat, voice low. “Your head’s just louder than your hands right now.”
I huff out something that might be a laugh if I had more air. “That’s one way to put it.”
He eases back a fraction, not leaving entirely, but giving me just enough space to prove to myself I can stand on my own.
The cigar glows faintly when he takes a drag, the smell of smoke cutting through the sterile tang of oil and metal.
It shouldn’t be comforting. Somehow, it is.
Maybe because it always means he’s here.
Maybe because his presence has become a habit my body picked up before I knew it was learning.
I lower the weapon, resting the barrel toward the ground, and finally turn enough to look at him.
Up close, the lines around his eyes look deeper in the low light, carved by years of command and sleepless nights.
He looks tired. Not the bone-deep exhaustion I know too well, but the kind that comes from carrying too many people and too many secrets at once.
His jaw is rough with stubble. His uniform shirt is wrinkled at the collar.
He looks less like a captain right now and more like a man who forgot to stop being responsible for everyone else.
“Nightmares?” he asks, like he already knows the answer.
“Yeah,” I say, because lying feels pointless. “Among other things.”
He nods once, jaw tight, and for a moment it feels like he wants to say more.
Like there’s something sitting heavy on his tongue that he’s choosing not to give voice to.
Instead, he reaches out and taps the side of my helmet lightly, a familiar gesture from a hundred training sessions before everything went wrong.
Before everything became too loaded to touch without consequence.
“Don’t force it,” he says. “Bad nights aren’t the time to prove anything.”
“That’s rich,” I mutter. “Coming from you.”
A corner of his mouth lifts, just barely. “Fair.”
Silence settles again, but it’s different now. Not suffocating. Not sharp. Just… there. The kind that lets me hear my own breathing without wanting to claw my way out of my skin. I lift the gun once more, adjust the way he showed me, and take a careful shot.
This time, it lands closer.
Not perfect. Not clean. But close enough that my shoulders drop a little, relief sneaking in where panic used to live.
“There you go,” Jon murmurs. “See?”
I swallow, nodding, and set the weapon down on the bench.
My hands are still shaking, but not uncontrollably anymore.
I peel off my gloves and tuck them into my jacket pocket, suddenly very aware of how quiet the base is, how alone we are out here.
How easy it would be to step closer. How stupid that would be.
“I should probably head back,” I say, even though the idea of returning to my room makes my chest tighten again. The walls in there always feel closer after dark.
“Yeah,” he agrees, too quickly. “You should.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The air between us feels stretched thin, fragile as glass, and I can almost see the moment from earlier replaying behind his eyes—the argument, the slap, the kiss neither of us planned for and both of us felt too deeply.
The one he apologized for like it hurt him to want it.
The one I haven’t stopped feeling since it happened.
I turn my head toward him before I can stop myself, searching his face for something I don’t have the words to ask for. Permission, maybe. Honesty. Proof I didn’t imagine the heat in it. Proof I didn’t imagine us.
He just looks at me, expression soft and unreadable, like he’s standing at the edge of a line he’s already crossed once and refuses to cross again tonight. Like restraint is the only thing holding the rest of him together.
Then he steps back.
“All right, soldier,” he says gently. “Get some rest.”
“Are you coming to my party?”
The question slips out before I can dress it up or take it back, raw and unguarded.
It feels stupid the second it’s in the air, like I’ve offered him something fragile without checking if he knows how to hold it.
Like I’ve admitted I want him there in a way that has nothing to do with my parents or the event or any excuse I could hide behind later.
Jon’s mouth curves, just slightly, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Have I ever missed one?”
He turns and walks away, boots crunching softly against the gravel, the glow of his cigar bobbing once before disappearing into the dark.
I stand there a moment longer, listening to my own breathing even out, to the quiet hum of the base settling around me again. The target still hangs downrange, marked but not ruined. Kind of like me, I think, and then immediately hate myself for thinking it.
When I finally head back toward my quarters, my hands are steadier than they were an hour ago.
And for the first time in days, the silence doesn’t feel quite so alive.