Chapter 25
Captain Jonathan
This is worse than interrogation.
I’ve been shot at, blown up, dragged through mud and blood and hell itself, and none of it compares to sitting stiffly on a floral couch in my best friend’s living room while he pretends I don’t exist. I would rather take another round to the shoulder than sit through one more second of this polite, domestic silence where every tick of the clock sounds like an accusation.
Delilah’s dad—Will—sits in the armchair across from me, coffee mug clenched in his hand like he might throw it at my head if I breathe wrong.
The television is on, muted, some late-night news anchor moving her mouth soundlessly in the background.
A clock ticks on the wall. A lamp throws warm yellow light over framed family photos and old wooden shelves and all the proof in this room that I was never supposed to be part of this side of their life.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Every second feels like judgment.
Will doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t tap his foot.
Doesn’t shift. He just sits there in brutal stillness, wearing a T-shirt and old jeans like he’s home, because he is.
I’m the one sitting here in the wreckage of trust, trying not to look at the hallway where Delilah disappeared ten minutes ago like I’m expecting her to come back and rescue me from her father.
King is in the kitchen with her mother under the very specific threat of being “useful or silent,” which, knowing him, means he’s probably flirting his way through stacking mugs and getting warned not to touch anything expensive.
I can hear the low murmur of voices in there.
The occasional clink of a spoon against a cup.
It makes this room feel even more claustrophobic somehow.
Too normal. Too warm. Too far from what any of us actually are.
“So,” I finally say, because silence is going to kill me first. “How’s… work?”
Will doesn’t look at me.
“Retired,” he replies flatly.
No fucking shit. Throw me a damn bone, Will.
“Great conversation.” I grumble.
He takes a slow sip of coffee.
Doesn’t respond.
I rub a hand over my beard, resisting the urge to light a cigar in someone else’s house.
That would absolutely get me murdered. Not metaphorically.
Literally. And honestly, I’d deserve it.
The house smells like coffee and lemon cleaner and whatever vanilla candle his wife keeps burning.
My smoke would stain this place. My presence already has.
“You know,” I try again, because if I stop talking, I’m going to start thinking too hard about Delilah upstairs in her old room wearing one of her college hoodies and pretending she can fit back into a life she outgrew years ago. “I never—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in.
His voice isn’t loud. That’s worse.
“Don’t explain. Don’t justify. Don’t spin it into some heroic story.”
He finally looks at me, eyes sharp and exhausted and heartbreakingly familiar.
The same man I bled with. The same man who once hauled me out of a collapsed stairwell by the straps of my vest and laughed in my face when I puked from the pain.
The same man who trusted me enough to think his daughter was safe near me, even from a distance.
“You lied to me,” he says. “For years.”
“I know.”
“You put my daughter in danger.”
“She put herself there,” I say quietly. “And she earned every inch of it.”
He scoffs, a bitter sound. “She was twenty.”
“She was exceptional.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
No.
It doesn’t.
The truth lands between us and stays there. Heavy. Ugly.
“I can’t undo it,” I admit. “If I could, I would. If I could take every mission back, every night she spent in a field instead of a dorm room, I would.”
That isn’t even entirely true and we both know it. I would take back the pain. The blood. The terror. The part where men like Mikhail got their hands on her. But I would never take away what she became. And that’s the part I can’t say out loud to her father without sounding like a monster.
He studies me, eyes narrowing slightly the way they used to before he made a call in the field. Measuring. Deciding whether I’m worth the next question.
“Do you love her?” he asks suddenly.
The question knocks the air out of me.
Somewhere in the kitchen, a drawer opens and shuts. A chair scrapes softly over tile. The whole house seems to pause.
King freezes. I can’t see him, but I know he does. Probably mid-reach for a cookie he was told not to touch.
I don’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
Will closes his eyes. Not for long. Just long enough that I can see the cost of hearing it. When he opens them again, there’s grief there. Not rage. Not hatred.
Grief.
“That’s the worst part,” he says quietly. “Because I know you do. I’ve seen how you look at her.”
The words hit low and ugly. Because he has. Because apparently everyone has. Because whatever I thought I was hiding behind command and distance and bad timing must’ve been showing all along in the places I couldn’t control—my hands, my eyes, the way I moved when she walked into a room.
He shakes his head. “And I still don’t forgive you.”
I nod. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Silence falls again.
This time it’s different. Less sharp. No less painful. Just more honest. The kind that comes after a truth you can’t put back in your mouth once it’s out.
Then movement in the hallway.
I glance up.
Delilah is coming down the stairs, barefoot, hair loose over her shoulders, wearing one of her old college hoodies like she’s trying to fit into a life she outgrew.
She pauses at the bottom, gives her parents a soft goodnight, then starts back up.
She looks tired in that bone-deep way that has nothing to do with sleep.
Softer here. Younger. And still nothing like the girl in the framed graduation photo in the hallway.
She doesn’t look at me.
I don’t call her name.
I just watch her disappear.
And suddenly—
I’m somewhere else.
It’s past midnight on base. Everything is quiet except the distant hum of generators and the dull thud of fists on leather.
The air smells like rain on concrete and old rubber mats.
One overhead light in the gym is out, leaving the far corner in shadow.
The place should be empty this late. It isn’t.
I follow the sound to the gym.
She’s there.
Alone.
Hair in a messy ponytail. Sweat darkening her tank top.
Knuckles wrapped. Breathing hard as she drives punch after punch into the bag like she’s fighting something invisible and refusing to lose.
Her shoulders are taut. Her jaw is set. There’s rage in the way she moves, but it’s clean rage.
Useful. The kind a soldier turns into repetition because repetition is easier than grief.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“Delilah,” I say gently.
She jumps.
“Shit—Jon,” she pants. “Didn’t hear you.”
“Clearly,” I mutter, watching her. “It’s late.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
She shrugs like it’s nothing. Like the dark isn’t getting to her. Like she didn’t come down here to beat herself empty before bed. Her eyes are burning.
Not scared.
Not fragile.
Determined.
“You’re gonna break your wrist,” I say.
“Worth it.”
I step closer, adjusting her stance without thinking. My hand lands on her elbow first, then her shoulder, then the line of her wrist. Familiar. Easy. Dangerous in a way I pretend not to notice. “You’re overextending.”
She smirks, breathless and sweaty and too alive for my peace of mind. “You say that every time.”
“Because you never listen.”
She throws another punch. Perfect this time.
I freeze.
Because in that moment, watching her move with precision and fury and purpose, something hits me square in the chest. Not desire. Not exactly. Something steadier. More ruinous.
She doesn’t need me.
Not to save her or to shield her.
She’s building herself into something unstoppable. Into someone who can survive the kind of world that ate most men I knew alive. Into someone who looks danger in the face and decides to become more dangerous.
And somehow, that makes me want to stay more.
Not to cage her.
To witness it.
To walk beside her while she becomes it.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” I tell her quietly.
She looks at me, sweat-streaked and stubborn and brilliant, chest rising and falling too fast, lower lip caught between her teeth for just a second before she lets it go.
“I’m not,” she says. “I’m just becoming who I am.”
That’s when I knew. I wasn’t protecting her.
I was choosing her.
***
The house settles into silence the way old places do—slowly, reluctantly, as if every wall and hallway needs time to remember it’s supposed to be quiet.
I stand on the small balcony outside the guest room, towel slung low around my waist, forearms braced against the railing.
The night air is cool against skin still warm from the shower, carrying the faint scent of pine and distant rain.
Somewhere inside, King is probably already snoring like a freight train.
Will is likely staring at the ceiling, replaying every word said tonight until dawn pries his eyes shut. And me?
I’m thinking about a girl who just walked upstairs without looking at me.
Again.
Water drips from my hair onto my shoulders, sliding down my back in slow trails. I rake a hand through it and exhale hard enough to fog the dark.
Get it together.
Tonight wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about us.
It was about survival. About truth. About fallout that hasn’t even finished landing yet.
It was about Mikhail in chains, Delilah’s parents finally seeing the shape of the world she disappeared into, and the kind of damage that doesn’t stop just because the gunfire does.
And yet…