Chapter 20 #4
"This will get you access in and out of Jericho," I say. My voice is steadier than I feel. "And anything you want to know that I can tell you without putting you in danger—you ask, I’ll answer." I pause, let the weight of the words settle. "I don’t want any secrets between us. Not anymore."
She picks it up slowly, turning it over in her hands as if it’s made of glass. "Silas—"
"Let me finish," I say, cutting her off gently.
Her eyes meet mine, and for a second, I’m back in the field, navigating by the stars because the GPS failed. She’s the only fixed point I have.
"This is who I am," I say. "This is what I do. As long as God allows me, I will keep using the skills He gave me to help others. I can’t promise you quiet. I can’t promise you’ll have it easy.
" I hold her gaze, refusing to look away.
"But I can promise you that everything I am and everything I build from here forward—I want you to be a part of it. "
I take a breath. The next part is the hardest maneuver I’ve ever executed.
I lower myself onto one knee. It costs me considerably more than I let show; my knee pops and my shoulder has loud, angry opinions about the shift in weight.
I’ve rappelled down a cliff face with a dislocated finger and a failing rope.
I’ve held a pressure dressing on my own thigh for six hours in a ditch outside Mosul, waiting for extraction.
I’ve been waterboarded twice in SERE training and asked for the next round just to prove a point. I know how to endure.
But I have never been as undone as I am right now, looking up at this woman in her oversized sweater in the middle of my own office.
"Ava Morrison," I say, my voice scraping against the silence. "Will you marry me?"
Ava
I can’t breathe. My brain, which has spent years categorizing trauma, risk, and probability into neat, manageable boxes, abruptly refuses to function.
The security pass is still in my hand, its plastic edges sharp against my palm—a cold, artificial weight that feels heavier than it should. My fingers have gone numb around it.
Despite the pain he’s in, there’s a deliberate set to his jaw and absolute, terrifying steadiness in his eyes. There isn't a flicker of doubt there. Not a single "maybe."
"You're serious," I say, my voice barely a whisper, thin and reedy in the quiet office.
"Deadly," he says.
My heart is a jagged rhythm. It’s not tachycardia; it’s completely overwhelmed.
"You brought me to Jericho," I say, the weight of the thousand-mile journey finally settling into my bones.
"Yes."
"You gave me a security pass."
"I don’t have an engagement ring," he says. His voice is low, unyielding, but I catch the slight strain in it—the physical cost of kneeling. "This is the next best thing."
I swallow, my throat dry. "You brought me to your father," I say, the list of his actions running through my mind like a chart. I pause, my eyes stinging. "Your entire team. You let me see behind the curtain."
"Yes."
I look down at the pass, focusing on the photo.
My own face looks back at me—pale, a little tired, but already framed by the Hightower logo.
I’m already belonging to something I haven't even said yes to yet.
He didn't just bring me here to show me his world, to let me see the shadows he inhabits.
He brought me here because he had already decided the shadows were mine to share.
"Silas." My voice is fragile. "Baltimore is my home. My mother is there. My job—"
"I know," he says. Simply. No negotiation, no "but."
"Your life is here. This office, this... it's all here."
"Jericho is here,” he says, his gaze locking onto mine with a force that makes it hard to look away. "My life is wherever you are."
I search for the crack in the facade. The "trauma response." "You've been through a crisis," I say, grasping for a logical exit. "Major surgery. Significant blood loss. You're on high-grade pain medication—"
"I skipped the last dose," he says, his tone brooking no argument.
"You can’t afford to," I snap, the doctor in me flaring up because it's safer than the woman in me.
"Ava."
"I'm serious, Silas. This is exactly the kind of impulsive decision people make when their neurochemistry is—"
"I have been thinking about this," he says quietly, cutting through the static, "and it has nothing to do with neurochemistry and everything to do with how I feel about you."
My stomach flips. Silas is not an impulsive man. He is a man who counts the cost of every bullet, every mile, and every life.
"How long?" I ask.
He doesn't answer immediately. The silence stretches, filled only by the sound of my own pulse in my ears.
"Long enough," he says, "to know that a Baltimore office makes more sense than asking you to give up everything you've built. I'm not here to take things from you, Ava."
I stare at him, stunned. The air leaves the room. "You're setting up a Baltimore office?"
"I will," he says. “I’ll hire an assistant, work out of it, and fly to Jericho when I'm needed.”
I take a ragged breath, trying to steady the shaking in my hands. "My mother," I say. "She’s... she won't be easy."
"Another reason why you need me with you," he says.
He’s not just asking to be my husband; he’s asking me to let him stop this from ever happening to my mother or me again.
"But what about your team?" I ask. "Jericho. Everything here that depends on you being here."
"I'll be there whenever I can," he says. He takes a breath, and I see the wince he tries to hide. "I love you, Ava. It’s simple. Either you can love me back, or you can’t.”
The very idea that he thinks I’m capable of not loving him dissolves the last of my doubt.
My throat tightens until it hurts. "Yes," I say, the word catching on a sob I refuse to let out. "Yes, you stubborn mule. I will marry you."
He closes his eyes. For a second, he looks completely spent. His lips move in a silent prayer, and then a faint, genuine smile touches his mouth.
"Since you're listening," he says quietly to the walls, "someone come help me up before I pass out."
I'm still trying to process how fast this is moving when the office door swings open with a bang and Caleb and Delilah tumble inside.
“Everyone!” Delilah shouts into the hallway, her voice booming. “Dr. Barbie said yes!”
Silas
Caleb gets me to my feet with the practiced efficiency of a man who has pulled me out of burning Humvees and muddy trenches and will never see the need to mention this specific extraction again. I lean into him for a split second, long enough to find my center of gravity, and then I straighten.
The doorway is suddenly full.
Every one of them has bled for the name on the door.
They have trusted me with their futures, their worst nights, and their best ones.
I’ve led them through things I wouldn't wish on my enemies, and they followed because that’s the culture we built.
Because—Lord help me—that’s the man I’ve spent my life trying to be.
I turn back to Ava. I pull her close and I kiss her the way a man kisses a woman when he has finally run out of reasons not to. Every careful, logical defense I ever built to keep her at a distance has collapsed. There’s nothing left between me and what I want except the space I’m now crossing.
She doesn't hesitate.
Her hand finds my chest, then slides up to my jaw, and the office—the maps, the contracts, the battles—simply ceases to exist. There’s only her and the bone-deep certainty that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I don’t pull back until the room starts to feel too small.
When I finally do, Ava looks up at me, breathless, her glasses fogged at the edges. She’s wearing an expression that isn't in any manual I’ve ever read, and for the first time in my life, I’m fine with not knowing.
I turn to face my team. My family.
Every one of them is looking back at me with the knowing expression of people who have been waiting a very long time for their commanding officer to figure out what the rest of them already knew.
I clear my throat, trying to regain some semblance of the status quo, even if the air in the room has changed permanently.
Delilah clamps her hands over her eyes, laughing through the tears. “I’m blind! I’m blind! My eyes are burning!”
Zack just chuckles, a low sound in his chest, while Caleb stands there grinning like the absolute meathead he is.
My father catches my eye from the back of the corridor. He nods once—a silent, finished gesture—and then slips out the door. He’s probably on his way to call my mother before I can even get my bearings.
"Back to work," I say. My voice is gravelly, lacking its usual command.
Nobody moves. I didn’t expect them to.
I’ve spent ten years believing that what I built here and what I wanted were inherently incompatible. I believed the work was life, life was work, and there was no room left for anything that mattered the way this woman matters.
I was wrong.
I don't make a habit of being wrong twice.
"Back to work," I say again. This time, the commander is back in the room. Firmer. Final.
This time, the team moves.