Page 81 of Collateral Damage
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.
