Chapter 26
We’re halfway through the chocolate mousse when there’s a knock at the door.
Aiden and I both freeze.
I whisper, “Maybe if we’re quiet, they’ll go away.”
Another knock. Harder. Then a voice, muffled with sobbing, yelling, “Aiden!”
We’re already on our feet.
He rushes to the door and swings it open, just in time to catch Quinn as she practically falls inside, tears pouring down her face, makeup streaked.
“You have to talk to Markus,” she gasps out.
I step forward. “What happened?”
Then she sees me.
“Oh. Kate. You’re here.” Her face crumples further. “I’m so sorry, I… I interrupted your date.”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly, guiding her toward the couch. “Sit down. What happened with Markus?”
Aiden hands her a glass of water. She takes it with shaking hands, gulps a few sips, then manages to speak between hiccups.
“Markus… he wants to go back.”
Aiden blinks. “What?”
She nods, breath catching. “His enlistment ended with this last tour. That was supposed to be it. He was done. He was home. I thought…” Her voice wavers. “I thought we were finally safe. But tonight, he told me he wants to re-enlist. To go back.”
She breaks off with a sob, the kind that hits deep in the chest, like it’s echoing through the bones. “I just…” her voice splinters. “I can’t do it again. I can’t sit here and watch the man I love walk straight back into hell. And the worst part is, he says he needs it.”
She looks at us, wide-eyed and unravelling. “I don’t know how to love someone who’d choose that again. This last tour, when he went missing… it nearly broke me. And now he wants to do it again. ”
Quinn breaks. Full-on, gut-wrenching sobs that shake her whole body.
She curls in on herself, hands clutching at the fabric of her jeans like she’s trying to hold something inside from spilling out.
I slide in beside her without thinking. Wrap my arms around her and pull her into me.
She doesn’t resist. Just sinks into the hug like she’s been holding herself up for too long and finally let go.
“I’ve got her,” I say softly, meeting Aiden’s eyes. “Go.”
He hesitates. “You sure?”
“Yes,” I nod, firm. “Now go . Beat some sense into him if you have to.”
Aiden nods once, jaw tight, already halfway to the door. No hesitation now. Just the quiet fury of someone who’s not about to let the man he considers a brother jump back into the fire.
The door shuts behind him with a quiet finality. Quinn keeps crying, and I just hold her. One heartbeat at a time.
More than an hour later, I get a text from Aiden: Can you talk?
I don’t text back. I just walk into the bedroom and call. He answers on the first ring. “What happened?”
He exhales, slow and heavy. “Well… I talked to him. And there’s no convincing him.”
“What the hell is he thinking? His wife just cried herself to sleep on the couch.”
He’s quiet for a beat. Then, “Yeah. Well, he drank himself to sleep here.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, gripping the phone tighter.
Aiden goes on. “He said this last tour was supposed to be it. His send-off. But after what happened, going MIA, losing more than half the guys he trained with. He said it doesn’t feel finished. He says he needs closure. He’s not re-enlisting long-term. Just… one more tour.”
I close my eyes. “Come on, Aiden. You know the number of times Quinn called me this past month. Before he came back. After. He’s barely present as it is, she’s barely holding it together. If he leaves again…”
Aiden doesn’t answer for a moment. Then: “I know. He’ll either come back whole… or…”
“Or he won’t,” I finish for him, my voice breaking. “What do we do?” I ask. It’s not rhetorical.
He sighs. “The only thing we can. Hold them together. I’ll try again once he’s sober.”
“I don’t think Quinn can take another tour.”
“I know.”
“No, I’m saying-” I pause, words thick and heavy. “I don’t think they’ll stay married if he does this.”
Silence.
Then Aiden says, quiet and heavy, “Yeah. I think you’re right.”
And for a minute, we both sit there, not speaking. Just breathing into the space where love and pain and impossible choices live.
I ask, “Where are you right now?”
Aiden’s voice comes through the speaker, low and tired. “Markus passed out on the floor. I dragged him to the bed, but… I think I should stay. Just in case. So he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.”
I sigh, rub my temple. “Maybe the army won’t take him back.”
“They will,” Aiden says immediately.
“Why are you so sure?”
A pause. Then, “He told me what happened.”
I sit up straighter. “I don’t think he even told Quinn.”
“He was drunk. He never answered when I asked before.” Aiden mutters, like it explains everything. Maybe it does.
He exhales hard, then continues, “He said they were on their way back from a safe house, keeping watch on a target. Their Humvee overturned. He doesn’t know if it was an accident or intentional.
But when it flipped, a couple of the guys, his friends, got trapped under it.
And he just… he watched them die, Kate.”
I press a hand to my mouth.
“Local militia found them,” Aiden says. “Instead of helping, they stripped what they could, restrained the ones that could walk. Blindfolded them. Markus thinks… he thinks they executed the rest.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper. “He thinks ?”
“He couldn’t see,” Aiden says quietly. “Not really. Just heard things. They were locked up and the next thing he knew, they were rescued by American forces. Flown to Landstuhl Medical Centre in Germany.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
“He said all the unanswered questions are driving him insane. He keeps replaying it, wondering who made it out, who didn’t, what he could’ve done. Kate… not only is he going back. He wants to go to the same region . Same outpost.”
My breath catches. “He said that?”
“He wants answers,” Aiden says. Then, after a beat: “But I think what he really wants… is revenge.”
I don’t say anything for a while. Just listen to Aiden breathe on the other end. It’s steady. Anchoring.
“Get some rest,” he finally says, softer now. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.” A pause. “Love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, then hang up and set the phone on the nightstand.
I lie there staring at the ceiling for a long time.
Trying to make sense of it all, Markus, Quinn, the things people carry that we can’t always see.
Eventually, exhaustion wins. I slip out of my clothes, grab one of Aiden’s shirts off the chair, and fall asleep to the smell of my husband and the hollow ache in my chest.
In the morning, soft light spills in through the open curtains.
I walk out into the living room, still in Aiden’s shirt, having slipped on some boxer shorts underneath.
Quinn’s curled on the couch under the throw blanket; knees hugged to her chest. Her hair’s a mess.
Eyes puffy. She doesn’t even pretend to not be heartbroken.
Sitting down beside her, I say softly, “Aiden talked to him.”
She doesn’t lift her head, but I see her eyes flicker. Her face is the look of someone who’s already given up. “He’s still going.”
I nod, exhale. “He said he needs closure.”
Quinn’s voice cracks, almost a whisper. “I can’t do it again. I can’t.”
I rub her back gently, slow circles between her shoulder blades. “I know, sweetie. I know.”
She leans into my touch, just a little. Like the comfort hurts and helps at the same time.
“I thought it was over,” she whispers. “The nightmares. The waiting. The not knowing if he’d come home in one piece or at all.”
I don’t say anything. What can I say?
“I begged him,” her voice cracks. “I said, ‘Pick me this time.’ But he looked at me like I didn’t understand anything at all.”
I swallow hard. “It’s not about you, Quinn. He’s… broken in places we can’t reach. He thinks going back will fix it. Or make sense of it.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just pulls the blanket tighter around her. Then, finally: “I don’t want to be brave anymore.”
I lean back against the sofa. “You don’t have to be. Not today.”
And we sit like that, two women in a quiet apartment, holding the pieces of a man neither of us can fully save.