Chapter 15 - Nico
The silence after she closed her door is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
Hours pass without counting, without applying tactical precision to my own failure.
I sit in the dark living room, her confession still ringing in my ears, before finally retreating to the guest room that’s become mine, my monk cell in her chaos.
The room’s clean lines and bare surfaces satisfy something in me—I’ve shoved the crystal vases and porcelain figurines under the bed where their fussiness can’t intrude on the emptiness I need.
She gave me everything tonight. Her secrets, her guilt, and she asked for one thing in return. Tell me something real. And I said, "You should rest."
I sit on the edge of the bed, head in my hands. My fingers dig into my skull like I can physically extract the memory of her face when I failed her. That moment when she realized I wouldn't, couldn't, give her what she'd given me.
I need to protect her, keep my darkness contained. Standard operational security.
But even I struggle to believe that. The self-loathing tastes gritty, like Afghanistan dust that never really cleared.
At some point I must have changed into sleep clothes.
Sweatpants, t-shirt, the automatic routine of a soldier even when his mind is elsewhere.
Sleep drags me under into familiar nightmares, exhaustion finally winning despite the rage at myself.
My body goes down fighting, muscles twitching with phantom combat readiness even as consciousness fades.
Afghanistan, Helmand Province. 0300 hours. The compound squats in the darkness, concrete and shadows. Sixty pounds of kit on my back, rifle ready, team in position. The breach point marked, charges set on the east wall where intel suggested civilians might be.
"Collateral is acceptable," my CO's voice in my ear, tinny through the comm. "Mission priority."
Breach sequence initiated. Four seconds to detonation. The weight of the detonator in my hand. Three. The taste of cordite already in my mouth. Two. Desert cold cutting through my gear. One. Contact.
The explosion tears through concrete, the wall coming down in a cloud of dust and rubble.
The sound, not like movies show it, but a deep percussive force that hits your chest before your ears.
I'm through the gap, rifle up, scanning sectors, dust coating my throat, making everything taste like chalk and copper.
There she is.
A woman clutching her child, half-buried in the rubble from the wall I destroyed.
Maybe thirty years old, though the dust makes everyone ancient.
Her hijab torn, face bleeding, one arm bent wrong.
Her eyes find mine through the dust, dark and accusing and begging.
The child is limp, three years old maybe, that terrible stillness that means already gone or close to it.
She's saying something. Pashto words I don't understand but recognize anyway. Every mother in every language sounds the same when their child is dying. Please. Help us. Save him.
I should stop, dig them out, but gunfire erupts from deeper in the compound. My team is moving and the mission is priority. "Rosetti! Move your ass!" The command crackles through my earpiece.
My boots crunch on rubble. I'm standing over them now. Could reach down. Could try.
I step over them.
Complete the objective.
Earn a medal for decisive action.
A fucking medal for letting a woman and child die in rubble I created.
I wake gasping, shaking, something that hasn't happened in years.
My trigger finger twitching with phantom muscle memory, trying to fire a weapon that isn't there.
Sweat soaking through my shirt, salt stinging my eyes.
Heart rate elevated to combat levels. The room is dark but I can still taste the dust, still smell the explosives and blood.
Through the door come footsteps. Soft, hesitant. Then her voice: "Nico?"
She shouldn't be here, not after I failed her. I hear her pause outside my door, five seconds, ten, like she's fighting herself. The doorknob turns slowly, reluctantly.
She comes anyway.
She's in those silk pajama shorts, the ones that barely cover her ass, tank top thin enough I can see she's not wearing a bra. Her hair is messy, eyes puffy like she's been crying again or just lying awake. She looks like she hasn't slept either.
She crosses to me, sits on the bed's edge. The mattress dips under her weight, and I catch her scent. Vanilla, coconut. Her hand finds mine, still shaking like I'm some fucking recruit on his first deployment.
"Breathe," she says softly. "You're here. You're safe."
The same words I gave her during her panic attack, returned when I need them.
She doesn't push or demand, just anchors me to the present with her warmth.
This woman I've hurt, who I pushed away, couldn't leave me drowning.
The tactical part of my brain notes her breathing is elevated too, her pulse visible at her throat. She's scared but staying anyway.
The shaking slowly stops, though my shirt still clings with cooling sweat. She waits, patient, her thumb tracing small circles on my hand.
The walls crumble completely. The last defensive position falls.
"Afghanistan." The word comes out cracked.
She doesn't speak, just shifts slightly closer. I can feel the heat from her bare thigh near mine.
"Seven years ago. A mission in Helmand Province. We were…" I stop. Swallow. Start again. "There was a compound. High-value target inside."
The words come in fragments, broken: "Intel said there might be… fuck. Civilians. A family in the east wing."
My free hand clenches into a fist. "I placed the charges. Shaped explosives. On the east wall. Fastest entry point. I knew, I KNEW, if anyone was on the other side…"
"But you did it anyway." Not a question. Not judgment. Just understanding.
"I did it anyway."
I force myself to continue, though each word feels like swallowing glass: "When the wall came down, I saw them. A woman. A mother. With her… Christ. With her child."
I look away, can't meet her eyes. "They were against the wall. Right where the explosion… she was alive. Buried in rubble, bleeding, but alive. The child…" My voice breaks. "Three years old, maybe. Not moving. That kind of still that means…"
She squeezes my hand. I continue, words tumbling out fast now, needing to be said: "My team was moving. Gunfire ahead. If I stopped to help her, I'd compromise the objective. Men would die. My brothers would die."
The silence stretches. I force myself to finish: "I stepped over them. I kept moving. I completed the mission. They… they didn't make it. The woman and child. Collateral fucking damage. Me? I got a commendation. A medal. Fuck."
The tears come then, not sobbing, I'm not capable of that, but silent streams down my face. The first tears since my father's funeral, salt tracking down cheeks I haven't let be wet in years.
"That's what I am," I tell her, voice raw. "A monster who steps over dying children for objectives. Who chooses the mission over…"
"Stop." Her free hand comes up, touches my face, thumb wiping away a tear. "You're not a monster."
"You don't know…"
"I know you held me while I cried about covering up a death.
I know you've been protecting me even when I make it impossible.
I know you came for me on that yacht when you could have let me self-destruct.
" She shifts closer, and I'm aware of her body, the silk against her skin, even through my breakdown.
"You made an impossible choice in an impossible situation.
That's not being a monster. That's being human. Broken, like the rest of us."
I shake my head, but she continues: "You were at war. Following orders. Protecting your team. That doesn't erase what happened, but it doesn't make you evil either."
"I should have…"
"What? Compromised the mission? Let your team die?
There was no right choice, Nico. Only choices that hurt different people.
" She pulls me close, my face against her neck, and I breathe her in.
That vanilla sweetness cutting through the phantom smell of dust and blood.
"You've been at war so long you forgot how to stop fighting. Even with yourself."
She holds me while more tears fall, a lifetime of control dissolving against her skin. I feel her pulse against my cheek, rapid but steady, alive and real and here. Her hand strokes my hair with unexpected tenderness.
"I've got you," she whispers. "I'm not going anywhere."
The words crack something open, the last fortification crumbling.
When the tears finally stop, I pull back enough to see her face.
Her eyes are wet too, crying for my pain or maybe both our pain tangled together.
The air shifts between us, heavy with shared vulnerability but something else too.
Awareness of our bodies, close and barely dressed, the heat between us that never fully goes away.
"You came for me," I say, voice rough.
"Of course I did." She bites her lip, and my body responds despite everything, blood heating at the simple gesture. "I heard you through the wall. Heard the nightmare. I couldn't leave you alone with that."
I lean in slowly, giving her time to pull away.
She doesn't. Our lips meet, not desperate or hungry but tender, a question and answer both.
I see you. I see you too. The kiss is soft, careful, but I can taste the promise of more beneath it.
Her tongue touches mine gently, and I groan low in my throat, the sound surprising us both.
She shifts, moves to straddle my lap, the silk of her shorts sliding against my sweatpants. I'm getting hard despite everything, my body's reaction to her unstoppable even in emotional ruin. She feels it, presses slightly against me, drawing another sound from my chest.
"Marisol," I breathe against her mouth.
"Stay with me tonight," she whispers, lips brushing mine with each word. "Not just your body. All of you. The soldier, the man, the monster you think you are. Really stay."
Something in my chest cracks open, the last wall falling, leaving me exposed and terrified and desperate for what she's offering.
For once, I don't calculate tactical implications or measure risks. I don't think about tomorrow or consequences or all the ways this could go wrong.
"Yes."
The word barely leaves my mouth before she's kissing me deeper, her hands sliding under my shirt, nails dragging across my chest. The touch sends fire through my veins, makes my cock throb where she's pressed against it.
"Good," she breathes against my lips, grinding down against me through the thin barriers between us.
The friction makes us both gasp, her heat evident even through silk and cotton.
"Because tonight, I'm going to make you come while you're still inside me.
While I can see your face. While you let me watch you finally, finally let go. "
Her words hit like a tactical strike, precise and devastating. She knows exactly what she's promising, not just sex, but the thing I've never been able to give her. The vulnerability of losing control with someone watching, someone who matters.
"I don't know if I can…"
She rolls her hips again, and my protest dies in a groan.
"You can," she says, voice certain and hot against my ear.
"Because this time you're not performing.
You're not counting thrusts or maintaining tactical distance.
This time you're going to be inside me, and I'm going to feel you shake apart, and you're going to let me see every second of it. "
My hands grip her hips, probably too hard, but she just presses closer. "Marisol…"
"No more walls," she whispers, biting my earlobe gently. "No more locked doors. Just you and me and whatever sounds you've been hiding from me."
The promise in her words, the heat of her body, the way she's taking control when I've lost mine, it's everything I've been terrified of and desperately need. My cock is fully hard now, straining against my sweatpants, and she knows it, uses it, grinds against me with purpose.
"Say yes again," she demands softly, her mouth moving to my neck, teeth grazing the pulse point. "Say yes to letting me have all of you."
"Yes," I growl, the word torn from somewhere deep, somewhere I've kept locked for seven years. "Fuck, yes."