Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
ELLIOT
The briefing at headquarters lasted twenty minutes. He took notes, asked relevant questions, and picked up a folder full of intel he'd spend the next twenty-four hours memorizing.
As he stepped out of the meeting, he saw his father standing in the corridor. His arms were crossed, face set in that familiar military stoicism.
They hadn't talked much since his mother died. Without her as the mediator, their conversations usually ended in disagreement.
He didn't have the energy for it anymore.
Stopping in front of his father, he saluted. "General."
"Walk with me." That was all his father said until they were outside, away from other personnel, anyone who might overhear. Then he stopped and turned to face Elliot.
"I heard about your orders."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm getting you reassigned."
Elliot blinked. "Excuse me?"
"This deployment—it's a waste of your skillset. You're better utilized here, stateside. I've already made some calls."
He stared at his father. Tried to find something in his face—concern, worry, fear for his son's safety. Anything that would indicate this was about him and not about the career path The General had mapped out three decades ago.
The truth was, had his father told him this yesterday—before calling Hudson and realizing he’d moved on—he might have accepted. But now it didn’t matter. There was no reason for him to stay. He wanted out of here.
"I don't want to be reassigned," Elliot said.
His father waved a hand like Elliot hadn't spoken. "Fisher at JSOC owes me a favor. I'll have you transferred to a training role. It's better for your career anyway. You're due for promotion next year, and this deployment will only delay—"
"I said, I don't want to be reassigned."
The General finally looked at him. Despite his set expression, Elliot could see the shock on his face. "That’s not your decision to make."
"Yes, it is. And I'm taking the deployment."
"You're throwing away an opportunity. Do you understand what a training position could do for your record? The connections you could make? You'd be fast-tracked for—"
"I don't care," Elliot said, surprisingly assertive.
His father's expression didn't change, but his posture pulled taut. "What did you say?"
"I said, I don't care. About the promotion. Or the connections. Or whatever." Elliot kept his voice level. "I'm going."
"Captain Shaw."
"This isn't a discussion, sir." Blood rushed in his ears.
The General's jaw ticked. "Every door I've opened, every introduction I've made, every string I've pulled—it's all been to set you up for success. And you're going to throw it away because you want to play hero in some combat zone?"
The air around Elliot thinned. His chest contracted. It almost felt hard to breathe. "You didn't do it for me.”
"What?"
"You didn't do any of it for me. You did it for yourself." He met his father's gaze.
"That's ridiculous. You've excelled at every step. You wouldn't have made it this far if you didn't want it."
Elliot had been waiting thirty years to hear his father say he'd excelled at something. And now that he'd finally said it, it meant nothing.
"I made it this far because I was afraid to disappoint you." Elliot’s voice was still calm. Still controlled. But there was a bite to it now. "But I'm done."
His father stared at him. "You're making a mistake."
"I don’t think so.”
"Elliot—"
"I'm taking the deployment. And I'm not asking for permission."
The General's expression turned cold. Not angry—anger would have meant Elliot mattered. This was something else. Calculation. Reassessment. Like Elliot had failed an evaluation.
"Then I have nothing more to say to you."
Elliot stood at attention and saluted him. Then he turned to leave. He put three steps between them before coming to a halt.
If he didn’t come back, his father would have nothing real to say about him. Not one true thing.
He kept his back to his father and spoke into the air between them.
"I hated the Academy.” His hands were shaking.
He balled them into fists. “I wanted to be an engineer.
I've been reading Rumi since I was sixteen—that book Aunt Marguerite gave me, the one you threw out, I picked it out of the trash.
" The words kept coming and he couldn’t stop them.
"And I still have nightmares about the night you made me sleep outside. When I was eight."
The silence behind him was deafening.
And I'm gay. But you'll never know that.
His father's voice was flat when he finally spoke. "I see."
That was it. No inflection. This was all Elliot was going to get.
He turned around one last time. The General already had his phone out, checking messages, moving on to the next item on his agenda. He didn’t seem to care that Elliot had just told him something real.
Elliot exhaled and walked away.
He went to his office and put on his running gear. There were twelve miles between headquarters and his home. He would let himself dwell on his father, on Hale, for twelve miles, and then he would shut it all down.
The conversation with his dad played over and over again in his head as he ran.
He still couldn't believe he had finally stood his ground.
Thirty years of molding himself into the perfect son, the perfect officer, and Elliot had walked away from it in under five minutes.
He was still waiting for the relief to rush over him.
The freedom, the vindication. But all he felt was empty.
The sound of shoes on the pavement was not enough to drown out any of it. Especially not the call from last night. The voice of Marcus—as it turned out—answering Hale's phone. Telling him Hudson was in the shower. His step almost faltered at the thought of it.
He turned up the pace, running so fast his lungs burned.
Elliot had hung up and sat there with the phone in his hand, dumbstruck. Hale had someone. Of course he had. And Elliot had no right to be upset about it.
When Hale had asked him if everything was okay, he had wanted to shout: No! Nothing's fucking okay. I'm deploying tomorrow somewhere I might not come back from. I called you because I needed to hear your voice and someone else answered your phone.
Instead of saying any of that, he’d curtly informed him of the deployment. He watched Hale's face change when he said it. Saw the worry flash across his features before he could hide it. This is why I called, he’d thought. This. Right here. Because you're the only person who looks at me like that.
But Elliot couldn’t tell him that. Couldn't tell him there was no one else in his life he wanted to talk to more, who made him feel this safe.
So instead he had ended the call. Just like that.
Hours later, Elliot's phone had buzzed one last time.
Hale: I think I might actually like you
Elliot stepped off the C-130 Hercules and stumbled back when the extreme heat hit him, dry and absolute. The tarmac shimmered and the sky stretched flat and bleached white.
He had never been to Syria before, but he’d heard about the quality of light flattening everything to a point where it made distances hard to judge. Almost like the landscape had been scrubbed of depth.
Around him soldiers moved efficiently. Aircraft unloaded, weapons checked, crates hauled, trucks packed. Elliot shouldered his bag and fell into step.
It was one of the larger bases in Syria.
From his brief he knew they were ninety personnel, a mixture of US special operations and allies from other joint task forces.
The perimeter held temporary structures reinforced with sandbags.
Two helicopters were visible behind a blast wall, and a row of shipping containers served as quarters.
Everything was the color of dust. Smelled like dust, too.
“Captain Shaw. Wait up.” Sergeant Diaz joined him. Elliot knew him from Fort Liberty. He had two previous deployments under his belt and was disturbingly at ease, eating a protein bar like they were on a lunch break.
“Sergeant Diaz,” Elliot nodded.
“You get the full brief?” Diaz asked.
“Wednesday.”
“This is a clusterfuck, huh?”
Elliot didn’t disagree. The situation in Syria had escalated faster than anyone had anticipated, which was probably why they needed sixty specialized personnel and a joint task force to step in.
Major Okafor met them at the operations building. He was Nigerian-American, built like a linebacker, and he got straight to it.
"Captain Shaw. Sergeant Diaz." He handed them each a sheet. "Quarters are container three, east perimeter. Briefing at 1800, operations room. You report to me." He looked at Elliot specifically. "Shaw—you're running comms coordination. I'll walk you through the setup after the briefing."
He turned away before either of them could respond.
Later that day, Elliot and Diaz found their way to container three, which consisted of six bunks, a shelf bolted to the wall, and a smell that suggested the previous occupants had not prioritized ventilation.
Diaz claimed the bottom bunk nearest the door without discussion.
First Lieutenant Carver took the one opposite.
Sergeant Walsh was already asleep—or pretending to be—in the far corner.
Elliot took the bunk above Diaz, stowed his gear, and lay down with his boots still on.
The base had its own unfamiliar rhythm. Generators droned. Someone on the perimeter called out, answered by distant voices in a language Elliot couldn't place. With his eyes closed he built a map of the place through sound before he'd learn it through sight.
After a while, his mind drifted to Hale, as it did most nights when he was laying in the dark alone. So much for locking everything down.
He'd read Hale’s text four times that night before turning his phone off. Had started a reply twice. The first attempt was really long—too long—the other too short. He'd deleted both.
The problem wasn't that he didn't know what to say.