Chapter 19
Nineteen
Silas
The first thing I notice is the ceiling. It’s white. Still. No smoke. No wind. Just the steady, rhythmic pulse of a room that doesn't hold the threat of the mountains.
The second thing is the particular smell of a hospital—antiseptic and recycled air, and the sharp, chemical undertone that signifies a controlled environment.
The third thing is my father's hand resting on my forearm. The weight is firm, anchoring me to the bed.
I turn my head to look at him. It costs more than it should; the movement is sharp against the injury in my shoulder, a dull throb radiating from the site of the surgery.
Dad is sitting beside the bed in a chair he’s pulled close, his reading glasses pushed up into his graying hair, a paper coffee cup going cold on the tray beside him.
"There he is," he says quietly.
My mouth is desert-dry. "How long?"
"Six hours." He reaches for the water on the tray, holding it steady so I can find the straw. "Surgery went well. Shoulder’s pinned. Arm's clean."
I drink, the cool water hitting my throat, then look back at the ceiling. "Ava," I say.
"She's here," he says. "Caleb's with her."
Pressure unknots in my chest that I hadn't fully registered were there, a tightness that had been holding my breath hostage.
Dad sets the cup aside and looks at me. "She kept you alive on that mountain," he says.
"She kept herself alive on that mountain," I say. "I nearly got her killed."
He lets out a slow breath. “This is about the Cascades, isn’t it?”
I swallow, my mouth running dry again. I stare at the ceiling. He knows me better than to speak any more on that. Some wounds cut deeper than physical ones, and he’s always been wise enough to let them sit in the silence.
"Caleb told me what she did with the rifle."
I look at the ceiling, remembering her shooting at the man I was supposed to protect her from.
"Silas."
"Sir."
"Look at me."
Out of respect, I oblige, turning my gaze back to his.
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. It’s the posture he's always used when something matters enough to say carefully.
"Who is she to you?" he says.
The question sits between us, plain and unhurried, the way my father asks everything that counts.
"Too much," I say.
Dad is quiet for a moment. Then he reaches over and squeezes my good arm once. A grounding pressure.
"Says who?" he says.
"She's a civilian," I say. "She's been through enough."
"She picked up a .308 for you," he says. "That's not fragile."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
I shift against the pillow. My shoulder protests immediately, sharp and demanding, and I ignore it.
"The work," I say. "The enemies. The uncertainty. Asking someone to live inside that—"
"Your mother did," he says.
Dad doesn't say it often. He doesn't need to. But when he does, it lands the way it always lands—not as a wound, but as a reminder. She knew exactly what she was signing up for, and she did it anyway, and she never once made him feel like a burden for it.
"That was different," I say.
"How."
“She’s… not Ava.”
Shaking his head, he picks up his coffee cup, looks into it, and sets it back down.
"You've been deciding for her," he says. "Same way you decide for everyone. What they can handle. What they deserve." He looks at me. "That's not protection, son. That's restricting who gets close to you."
I stare at the ceiling, letting the words settle.
"She said the same thing," I say finally.
"Smart woman."
"Don't."
"I'm not." He frowns. "I'm serious. She said it, and you still didn't listen."
"I was a little preoccupied."
The corner of his mouth moves. "Don’t doubt it. She’s a knockout."
“That’s not—”
He chuckles. “Ah, but it helps, though. Explains the fuss Delilah’s been making about her, too.”
He leans back in the chair, crossing one ankle over his knee. "Tell me about her," he says.
I look at the ceiling, thinking of the way she held herself together. “Do we really need to do this now?”
“It’s now or never.”
I grunt. Knowing that if I don’t talk, he’ll find a way to get the information anyway.
"She volunteers at a veterans clinic one night a week," I say.
"She's been delivering donuts to the same homeless community every Saturday since she was a child because her father started the tradition and she never stopped.
" I pause, the memory of her quiet strength clear in my mind.
"She can't cook. She beat me at Scrabble. She’s kind.
Cares. She held herself together for days under circumstances that would have broken most people. "
Dad whistles. "No wonder you’re smitten," he says.
I close my eyes. "Dad," I say.
With a sigh, he pushes out of the chair, picks up his coat from the back of the chair and shrugs into it.
He pauses at the foot of the bed and gives me the same look he gave me the day I shipped out the first time.
"You've spent fifteen years putting yourself between danger and everyone else," he says. "Nothing wrong with that. It's who you are." He picks up his hat from the tray. "But at some point, a man has to decide what he's fighting toward. Not just what he's fighting against."
His expression softens for a fleeting second as he reaches the door. “She’s a beautiful woman, son, with a heart for service. If you don’t wise up, someone else will," he says.
The door clicks shut, and the silence that follows is vacuum-sealed.
I try to shift, and a white-hot spike of agony lances through my shoulder, stealing my breath.
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the shadows to recede, but all I see is Ava’s silhouette against a gray sky, holding a weapon she was never meant to.
My father is right. I’ve spent fifteen years holding the line. But as I lie here, pinned to the bed by titanium and morphine, I realize the hardest fight isn't against the enemy in the woods. It’s against the terrifying urge to let her in.
Ava
Crutches are a sobering thing when you’ve spent twenty years being the person moving fastest through hallways, navigating by momentum rather than balance.
A nurse I recognize from the night shift offers me a wheelchair.
I decline with a clipped "I'm fine," which is pure, stubborn pride, but I don't have the energy to examine my ego right now.
I stop outside the heavy door of the Recovery Wing. Through the narrow, reinforced window, I can see Silas.
His right arm is immobilized in a bulky abduction sling, a stark, clinical contrast to the immovable strength I’m used to.
There are monitors—the rhythmic, electronic blink of sensors I usually interpret with detached logic—and the heavy stillness of a man who has finally stopped moving because his body left him no choice.
I push the door open with the rubber grip of my crutch.
He turns his head the moment the latch clicks.
Slowly, I make my way to the chair beside the bed and lower myself into it with considerably less dignity than I’d like, my injured ankle screaming at the movement.
He watches me the whole way, his gaze tracking every wince with a focus that feels like a spotlight.
"You should have taken the wheelchair," he says. His voice is a gravelly wreck, stripped thin by the intubation tube and exhaustion.
"Probably," I admit.
He looks better than he did on the mountain, but worse than I’d like to see. The color is returning to his face, but it’s a slow, grueling process. There are ugly bruises covering his face, and his right shoulder and arm are a mountain of gauze and padding beneath the starched hospital gown.
I know the contents of his surgical report. I pulled the chart the moment I could limp to a terminal, and nobody dared to tell me I shouldn't. Clean repair. Substantial soft tissue trauma. Good prognosis with diligent physical therapy. Full function is probable, but not guaranteed.
"Probable" is a word doctors use when they're hedging their bets. I’ve been sitting with that uncertainty since I read the notes.
"You'll need physio," I say, my voice retreating into the safety of the clinical. "Committed physio. Not the kind where you decide you're fine after three sessions and stop going because you have a 'mission'."
A flicker of anxiety moves across his face. "Is that a professional assessment?"
"It's a warning."
Outside the door, the Recovery Wing moves through its midnight rhythms. The muffled cadence of footsteps, a supply cart wheeling past, the steady, rhythmic pulse of a monitor in the next room. In here, it’s just the two of us and the suffocating silence of everything we haven't said yet.
"Ava."
"Don't," I say quietly, looking away.
"I haven't said anything."
"I know what you're going to say. You're going to tell me this changes nothing. That you're a danger to me. That I should go back to my 'normal' life."
"No," he says. "I'm not."
I look up, surprised. He holds my gaze the way he holds everything—steadily, without flinching, even now when he’s anchored to a bed by tubes and pins.
“I risked your life taking you to that cabin,” he says.
I frown at him. “You saved my life by taking me there. Reagan was already in my house, Silas. If you hadn't come for me, who knows what he would have done.”
He shakes his head, a grim, pained motion. “I should have listened to Caleb. He warned me I was too close to this.” He swallows, his throat working thickly. “To you.”
I pause, silently praying for the right words. “I’m not going to pretend to understand what leadership has cost you, but I can say that your team trusts you for good reason. As do I.” When he looks set to argue, I shake my head. “You aren’t perfect, Silas. No one is. So stop trying to be.”
The faintest twitch touches his mouth—not a smile, but a concession. I take it as a small victory.
“You told me I was putting myself in the place of God,” he says.
“I did.”
His gaze drifts past me, toward the dark, frosted line of the trees visible through the window. “I don't get the luxury of a second guess. In my world, being wrong is a funeral service.”
I’ve treated enough trauma to recognize the structural damage in a human soul. Silas hides the cracks better than most, but they’re there—deep, and poorly cauterized.
“Who was she?” I say quietly.
The look that crosses his face is so raw it steals the air from the room. Every instinct I have screams at me to reach for him, but he isn't looking for comfort. He’s looking for release.
“It was a rescue mission in the Cascades,” he says after a silence that stretches too thin. “A light plane went down in the high country. The intel was a mess—just that there was a lone survivor, high-value, and we had to extract her.”
He exhales, a slow, controlled release of pressure. “We found her two days after the crash. Huddled in the wreckage. Wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t let anyone near her.”
“What happened?”
“I split my team. Sent the bulk of my unit to sweep the perimeter with Caleb as lead scout.” His eyes close, and for a second, I think he won’t go on.
“I knew better. You don’t isolate in hostile terrain.
You don’t reduce your perimeter.” He swallows.
“I did it anyway. I thought I was controlling the risk.”
My stomach tightens. “But you weren’t.”
“No.” His voice drops, rough at the edges. “As soon as they were out of sight, I knew I’d made the wrong call.”
I don’t breathe.
“She wasn’t what she seemed.” His gaze drifts, unfocused. “She pushed. Tested boundaries.” He pauses. “I let it go on too long.”
His hand curls into a fist. “Long enough for her to take my radio. First chance she got, she signaled our position.”
His voice turns hollow. “We lost two men before the rest of the team could even break contact. Good men. Men who trusted me with their lives.”
The pieces settle into place, heavy and immovable. This isn’t just a mistake—it’s the moment that defined him. Jericho isn’t a monument to strength. It’s a cage built from his guilt for making a peace treaty with the Gibeonites.
“I’ve spent every day since then thinking every person is hiding something, and it’s shaped how I view everyone I meet,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. “But I'm asking you now. Not deciding for you. Asking. Because I trust you, Ava. That isn’t easy for me.”
He is a fortress of a man, yet he’s sitting here completely undefended, waiting for my verdict.
Slowly, I reach out. I don't take his hand yet. Instead, I place my fingers over the pulse point at his wrist. I press them into his skin, feeling the frantic, tachycardic mess of his heart—a rhythm of pure, unadulterated fear.
He expected rejection. He expected me to see a broken commander and walk away.
"I know exactly who you are," I tell him, meeting his haunted gaze. "And nothing about what you just said scares me. Now go to sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up."
The change is instantaneous. Under my fingertips, the frantic, thudding rhythm of his pulse stutters, then slows—the tachycardia finally losing its grip as his nervous system surrenders.
He doesn’t argue. He just closes his eyes, his head falling back against the thin hospital pillow. His hand turns over beneath mine, his palm upward in a silent, vulnerable invitation.
He doesn't have the strength to grab hold, so I slide my fingers into his and silently promise him never to let go.