Logan
Hampton, Virginia
The sun’s setting when I get to her place, casting streaks of orange and pink across the sky, like the world’s trying too hard to be beautiful.
The front door is unlocked like it always is when she knows I’m coming over.
It’s one of those little things I’ve come to rely on—the silent welcome, the quiet reassurance that no matter how chaotic everything else is, I have this.
But the second I step inside, I know something’s off.
The air feels charged.
Lila’s standing just outside the kitchen, arms wrapped tightly around her abdomen, her jaw set like she’s trying to hold something back. Her green eyes sear into mine.
If looks could kill.
Shit.
“Hey,” I say carefully, testing the waters.
She doesn’t say anything back. Doesn’t move. Just stands there, stiff as stone.
My stomach knots. “What’s up?”
“I heard something today,” she starts, her voice sounding strained. “Someone said Alpha and Charlie Flights are deploying soon. Maybe Delta Flight, too if they need all of you.”
I’m part of Alpha Flight within my fighter squadron, the 142nd Phantom Lancers.
There are five flights, Alpha through Echo.
When we deploy, another flight—likely Bravo—will take over as the demo team until we return.
Which means Lila will be watching another pilot skillfully rip the sky in two during practices and demonstrations.
I blink, thrown off by how fast she cuts to it. “What?”
“Is it true?” she presses, her gaze like a spotlight burning into me.
I hesitate. Not because I want to lie, but because I don’t have a real answer.
Bravo and Echo aren’t back yet, and we haven’t been given their redeployment date, so everything is speculation at this point.
Will my deployment happen eventually? Sure.
But that’s like saying it’ll eventually be Christmas.
I’m not putting up decorations now just because it’s inevitable.
I run a hand through my hair, sighing. “I don’t know. Maybe. Nothing’s official.”
Her laugh is brittle, humorless. “So you just weren’t going to tell me?”
I step closer, trying to keep my voice calm. “Lila, it’s not like that. I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing to tell yet. Deployment is part of the job. You know that.”
She flinches, like I’ve slapped her with those words. “I know that, Logan. But I’m not just part of the job.”
Of course she knows. Guilt floods me, hot and fast.
I exhale sharply, trying to rein in the frustration clawing at the edges of my voice.
“I didn’t say you were.” But I can hear the sharp edge in my tone, and so can she.
I curse under my breath and inhale deeply, slower this time, trying to soften it.
“I wasn’t hiding it. I just…I don’t have details.
Why worry you over something that might not even happen? ”
Her arms drop to her sides, fists clenched. “Because it matters to me!” she snaps. “You matter to me. And finding out from someone else that you might be leaving, that matters to me, too.”
The words sit between us like a wound left open, aching and exposed.
I want to say something, to fix this before it spirals further, but my throat is tight.
She’s right. And the worst part? I knew she would be. I knew she’d be upset, and I still told myself it was fine, that I wasn’t keeping anything from her. But maybe I was. Maybe I was keeping it from myself, too.
Because if I said it out loud—if I admitted that I might be leaving—it would make it real.
And if it’s real, then I have something to lose.
Her.
I open my mouth to respond, but she cuts me off, her voice quieter now, trembling at the edges. “You don’t get it, do you? The not knowing…it’s not just about you deploying. It’s the space it leaves—the emptiness it carves out when someone’s just gone.”
I step closer, my heart pounding. “Lila—”
“My brother was a pilot,” she blurts out, her voice cracking like glass under pressure. “He died almost ten years ago.”
The room spins.
My heart stops, then starts again in a way that feels wrong.
Reaper.
The name echoes in my mind, crashing against the walls of my skull.
I can’t breathe.
Lila swipes at her face, like she’s surprised by the tears spilling over. “Lincoln was everything. My best friend. My hero. And one day, he was just…gone. No warning. No time to prepare. Just a folded flag and a letter.”
I stare at her, my throat closing around the words I’ll never say.
I was there.
I was his wingman, the one meant to have his six.
I was supposed to save him.
The guilt is a monster living inside me, clawing at my heart, my stomach, my lungs, tearing me apart from the inside out.
“I’m sorry,” I manage. My voice is foreign in my ears.
She shakes her head, backing away a step.
She takes my face in her small hands and I force myself to look into her eyes.
“You don’t have to be sorry.” She has never said anything less true.
“I think you would have liked him though. He flew F-16s but he wanted to fly Raptors one day. He’s actually the reason I wanted to work with the demo team, to try to feel close to him again.
It’s the only way I’d get to be around an F-22 as a civilian, you know?
So I wanted it. Worked for the last six years to be ready to apply once a position opened up.
I thought it’d bring me back to him and I think it has, but it also brought me back to you, too.
Or maybe he did. And seeing how much you love it, well, that reminds me of him, too. ”
I feel sick. I feel like a fucking coward. I want to tell her the truth, but I’m frozen—trapped between the man I am and the mistakes I can’t undo.
Instead, I pull her into my arms. She resists for a second, fists against my chest, but then she breaks, crumbling into me with a sob that rips straight through my heart.
I hold her like she’s the only thing tethering me to the earth, burying my face in her hair, breathing her in like she’s oxygen.
“I’m here,” I whisper, the words hollow with everything I’m not saying. “I’m right here.”
But part of me is still there—in the sky, in the cockpit—watching Reaper’s jet disappear in a flash of fire, knowing I couldn’t save him.
Knowing I can’t save myself from this.
Lila’s sobs taper off, fading into the ragged, uneven sound of her breathing muffed by my T-shirt.
But I can still feel it—the way her grief lingers between us like smoke after a fire.
My arms are wrapped around her, holding her tight, but it feels like I’m trying to contain something too vast, too broken, slipping through the cracks of my fingers no matter how hard I hold on.
She pulls back slightly, just enough to look up at me. Her eyes are glassy, rimmed with red, but there’s this defiance in them—like she’s daring herself not to fall apart again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her voice hoarse. “I didn’t mean to unload all of that on you. I just—” She cuts herself off, pressing her lips together, like if she says any more, she’ll shatter completely.
My heart clenches. I want to tell her. I want to get it out, rip it open, bleed the truth between us.
But the words stick like barbed wire in my throat.
What would it even change? It wouldn’t bring him back.
It wouldn’t make her grief any less. It would only add another layer of betrayal—a fracture splitting through already broken bone.
So I don’t say it. I swallow the truth like poison, letting it settle in the pit of my stomach where all the other things I’ve buried live.
Instead, I brush a strand of hair from her face, my fingers lingering just a second longer than they should. “You don’t have to apologize,” I say softly. “I’d rather you tell me everything than hold it in. I’m here, Lila. I’m not going anywhere.”
The words feel like a lie, knowing my potentially going somewhere is what started all of this. The sky has never been a promise of permanence. It’s always been fleeting.
She nods, her bottom lip trembling slightly before she bites down on it, trying to keep it together. She steps out of my arms, wiping her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
I let her go, even though every instinct in me screams to pull her back.
Lila moves into the kitchen, absently fiddling with a glass of water she doesn’t drink. When she speaks, her back is to me. “I just wish it didn’t feel like I’m always waiting for the next loss.”
I resonate with that more than she could ever know. I’ve lived with it for almost a decade—waiting for grief to find me again, like it’s got my name on a list somewhere.
I step closer, my hands curling into fists at my sides because if I touch her again, I might not be able to let go. “I don’t want to be another loss for you,” I say quietly.
She turns, her eyes meeting mine. “Then don’t be.”
It’s such a simple answer, but it’s not simple at all.
I nod, even though I don’t deserve the comfort of that promise.
She doesn’t smile, but something in her face softens, just a little. Enough to let me breathe again.
I stay. Because it’s all I can give her right now—my presence, even if my soul is still stuck somewhere ten years ago, burning in the wreckage of Reaper’s jet.
We don’t talk much after that. She curls up on the couch, wrapping her arms around me as she snuggles in close, and lays her head on my chest. The TV is playing something neither of us is really watching.
I wonder if she can hear my racing heart, feel my pulse galloping as I fight my shameful demons threatening to pull me back to the day he died.
To the briefings and the reports where I had to relive the moment that I let my brother-in-arms—her brother in life—take my place.
And then when I was promoted to first lieutenant because even though I lost my wingman, even though I didn’t do my literal damn job to have his six—the mission was ultimately deemed a success because the two others in our flight were able to neutralize the target with the drop of a missile. Eliminate the threat to American lives.
What was it my commanding officers spewed to ease their guilt?
The needs of the many…
A necessary sacrifice for the greater good.
The price of duty.
All bullshit used to pretend my squadron didn’t lose a hero to save a coward.
As Lila eventually drifts off, I stare at the ceiling, feeling my secret pressing down on me like gravity.
I’m sorry, Reaper.
But the words are as useless now as they were then.