Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
SLOANE
The room feels smaller now. It isn’t because of the storm. Or the fire burning too hot. It’s not the walls closing tight around us beneath the weight of rain and memory.
Because the truth takes up space. And now there’s too much of it in here.
Neither of us speaks.
Thunder rolls somewhere deeper in the mountains, farther away than before. The storm is finally moving east, but the cabin still trembles occasionally beneath the heavy wind.
Rhys stands near the window with his back partly turned toward me. He doesn’t move. No signs of leaving, but not staying either. Just existing in that terrible middle ground he seems to live in.
I stare at him across the dim room and try to force my thoughts into some recognizable shape.
Phoenix chose this—not death, not necessarily—but the risk. The mission. Whatever waited inside that building badly enough to leave formation and walk into exposure.
And Rhys.
God.
Rhys didn’t abandon him. The realization sits heavy and ugly inside my chest because I built so much of myself around believing otherwise.
The anger. The investigation. My obsession. All of it pointed toward one simple truth. Someone failed my brother. Now nothing feels simple anymore.
Rain taps softly against the window. The fire cracks low behind me.
Rhys still hasn’t looked directly at me since finishing the story. Maybe because he thinks I hate him now. Maybe because part of him still hates himself. I don’t know which possibility hurts more.
My throat feels raw from holding too many things inside at once. “He really thought it mattered,” I say quietly. I close the distance, resting my hand on his shoulder.
He tightens almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”
One word. No hesitation. That certainty destroys something in me all over again. Because Rhys trusted him. Maybe not in the moment. But somewhere before that, he wouldn’t let go.
My thumb slides against his neck, letting him know I’m here. He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t acknowledge me either. The air feels electric, more than any lightning.
He catches my wrist, rubbing my pulse point.
Like two people tethered together, though they shouldn’t be. I don’t know what this is between us. But I need to touch him, feel him in some way. He glances up, then, and I see the same hunger behind his eyes.
Phoenix would hate this.
But really? Would he?
I don’t know. All I know is he’s gone, and we’re both here trying to sort out why. Maybe that’s what tethers us together now.
He brings my hand to his mouth slowly. His lips brush over my knuckles like this matters.
Something inside me softens painfully. “Rhys,” I whisper.
But he doesn’t stop, and I don’t pull back. Everything sits between us in the only space we know how to cross.
He presses his cheek to my palm, then kisses it. Still not looking at me. Not speaking. Saying everything he refuses to put into words.
And that’s why I’ll stay… even when he tells me to go.
His hand drops to his side, but mine still palms his cheek, tilting his head, forcing him to look at me.
“Rhys.” It comes out like a sob or a prayer. Maybe a vow.
He turns away, and the room goes cold again. The thunder claps louder, lightning flashes brighter. I hug myself with my arms.
After the smoke cleared, and the bodies were counted, and Phoenix was gone. Rhys knew Phoenix died for something he believed in. I don’t know if that makes this better or worse.
“So, even to the end, he thought he was right?” The question leaves me before I can stop it.
Rhys goes very still. For a second, I think he won’t answer. Then, his voice comes out low and gravelly, “I think he believed he was.”
I stare down at my hands, gripping my arms. The same hands that touched Rhys’s scars, wrapped his arm, pressed against the coordinates burned permanently into his skin. A memorial disguised as punishment. Or maybe punishment disguised as a memorial.
I don’t know anymore. Nothing fits cleanly enough to hold on to.
Rhys finally moves away from the window. The shift is immediate. I feel the distance, the withdrawal. His armor sliding back into place piece by piece.
“I’ll check the slope before daylight,” he says.
I blink, disoriented by the sudden practicality. “What?”
“The ground’ll loosen more overnight.”
“You don’t have to keep pretending that Jeep matters right now.”
His teeth grind. “That’s not pretending.”
Maybe not. Maybe fixing things is the only language he has left.
He grabs his jacket from the hook near the door, movements controlled again, careful and contained. Like the man who broke open ten minutes ago never existed. The loss of him is immediate and irrational.
“You don’t have to go.”
His hand pauses on the jacket. “Can’t stay. Not right now.”
Fire simmers behind his gaze, his face hard and unreadable. But everything I need to know, I felt in his careful touch. In the way his lips adored me.
I shake my head, trying to clear my mind. I never expected this—the loneliness, the need, the possibility of happiness close enough to grasp. Maybe. If one of us would relent or be braver.
I ask the question that’s been sitting inside my chest since the moment he said Phoenix fought him. “Do you regret trying to save him?”
Slowly, he turns. The firelight catches the exhaustion carved deep into his face. “No.”
The honesty in it nearly tears me apart. I swallow hard. “Even knowing what you know now?”
His eyes darken. “I was responsible for my team.” The answer comes instantly. Military. Absolute. But something beneath it cracks slightly when he continues. “And he was one of them.”
There it is again. That impossible grief. Not just guilt. Forgiveness despite everything—complicated, furious, unfinished. The kind that survives people, whether you want it to or not.
Rhys looks away first. “I need air.” Then he steps outside before I can answer.
A cold wind rushes briefly into the cabin before the door shuts behind him. Silence crashes down immediately afterward.
I stare at the closed door for a long moment, then finally move toward the window. Outside, the storm has weakened to drifting rain and fog. Rhys stands near the edge of the porch, hands braced against the railing, head lowered slightly.
Alone. Not because he wants to be. Because he thinks he should be.
The realization settles quietly through me. I came here expecting a monster. Or at least a coward. A man who abandoned my brother and disappeared into the mountains to escape what he’d done.
Instead, I found someone carrying the weight of impossible choices as if they’re stitched directly into his bones. Someone who followed protocol… who tried to save his team. Someone who still wakes up every day wishing he’d made a different call.
My chest tightens painfully. Because I understand that feeling. War taught me something ugly a long time ago. That sometimes there isn’t a right choice. Only the one you live through.
Lightning flickers faintly beyond distant ridges now, muted and fading.
Rhys doesn’t move from the porch, and I realize suddenly that he’s waiting. And it’s not for the storm. It’s for me. For the moment, I decide what to do with the truth.
Whether I walk away or I expose him.
But now there’s another option I hadn’t felt before.
Whether I leave him.
The problem is, I already know I won’t. And that’s something I never expected.
I press my forehead lightly against the cold window glass and close my eyes. I can still feel his warm lips on my hand.
I came here for answers. Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them.