Kyler #2
There’s only one thing I haven’t said. The thing that lives in my throat like shrapnel. The truth I’ve swallowed a thousand times because saying it would make it real.
But I’m already losing her. So I say it. “You never really came home.”
She freezes.
Her hands go still on my skin. Her mouth parts like she’s going to speak, but nothing comes out. Just breath. Just pain.
And in that silence, I feel the shift.
The air between us turns cold. The moment collapses.
She looks at me, eyes burning—anger, desire, love, and hate all mixed together.
She blinks. Slow. Like the words take time to register. “What?”
“After South Africa.” My voice is flat. Low. Final. “I got you out of that compound. I carried you out of that fucking hellhole with your body shaking in my arms. I brought you home. But you never really came back.”
She seems to stop breathing.
The room is silent, except for the quiet hum of the baby monitor on her nightstand. I see her brace for what’s coming. But I’ve held this in too long.
“You came home in one piece. Physically. But the rest of you, it never made it through.”
“Ky—” she tries, but I keep going.
“You smiled for photos. You made breakfast. You rocked Hadley to sleep like nothing had happened. But it was all surface. Like you were performing normal. Like if you just played the part long enough, eventually the pain would shut up and disappear.”
Her hands tremble at her side. She won’t look at me.
“I kept waiting for you to let me in,” I say. “To fall apart. To scream. Cry. Hit me. Anything. Just—something. But you never did.”
Her voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t know how.”
I nod once. “Yeah. I figured that out.”
She swallows, jaw tightening. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her eyes snap to mine, wet and furious. “You think I wanted to be that way? You think I liked waking up in cold sweats, scared of my own goddamn shadow? You think I chose to disassociate through half of Hadley’s first year just so I wouldn’t feel like a fucking hostage in my own skin?”
“I think it broke you,” I say, throat tight.
Her bottom lip trembles.
“And I think it broke me too,” I continue. “Because I kept trying to be what you needed. The strong one. The stable one. The safe place. But every time I reached for you, you were already gone.”
She covers her mouth with her hand like she’s going to be sick.
“I watched the light go out in your eyes and told myself it would come back,” I say, voice cracking now. “I told myself you’d wake up one day and stop looking at me like I was the last face you saw before the world went dark.”
She breaks.
A sob tears out of her like something primal, and I take a half step forward before I stop myself.
I can’t comfort her through this. Not anymore.
Because I’m part of the pain now. I’m not her shelter—I’m her reminder.
“I tried, Ivy.” My voice is hoarse. “Fuck. I tried. I tried to hold it together for both of us. But you never let me in. And the worst part is—I get it. I get why. Because no matter how many doors I kicked down or bullets I took for this country, I couldn’t save you from that place.”
She shakes her head like she’s trying to shut me out, but I can see it—all of it—on her face now. The memory. The weight. The truth she’s been burying right next to mine.
“I came for you,” I whisper. “But I was already too late.”
She’s crying now. Hard. Silent, shaking sobs. Her shoulders curled inward, like she’s trying to fold herself out of existence.
And I still love her. I love her so much it makes me sick. But I can’t keep loving her like this.
Not when I’m the ghost of the man who saved her, and she’s the shadow of the woman I married.
We never really made it back.
And when she opens her mouth, it’s not denial that comes out. It’s heartbreak. “Kyler…”
“Don’t.” My voice is sharper than I mean it to be.
My wife flinches at my voice. She fucking flinched. Not much. Just a flicker. But it hits like a goddamn round to the chest.
I grab the sheet off the floor, wrapping it around her small shoulders. Then cross to the suitcase, crouching down beside it. I press one hand to the top and breathe. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. I’ve stared down a barrel with steadier hands than this.
“I wasn’t going to leave,” she says behind me. “I—I just needed to feel like I had a choice.”
I turn my head and look at her.
And everything inside me tears in two.
Because she’s right. She didn’t have a choice.
I took it from her. Every time I answered a call instead of holding her. Every time I left her in this goddamn empty house. Every time I came back different and expected her not to notice.
“I love you,” I say. “You know that, right?”
Tears pool in her eyes. She nods, just barely.
“I love you so fucking much,” I say again, quieter this time, like repetition might save us.
But it won’t.
Because love isn’t enough—not when you keep choosing something else over it.
I thought I could have both—Ivy and this job. But I can’t.
One of them was always going to destroy me.
I walk to the nightstand, pick up her ring. Hold it for a second.
It’s small. Weightless.
It once meant forever.
Now it just means too late.
I look at her. She’s crying silently now, hands gripping the edge of the sheet like it’s the only thing keeping her grounded.
I could beg.
I could fall to my knees and promise her the world, tell her I’ll change, I’ll quit, I’ll do anything. But it would be a lie. I’d mean it in this moment, but I’d take the next call that came.
Because that’s who I am.
So instead, I set the ring back down and do the one thing I never thought I’d do.
I leave her.