Page 90 of Collateral Damage
"People God put in his path," Justus says, his voice losing its humor. "Silas has never seen it any other way. He keeps them here to remind himself why he stays awake at night."
He’s quiet for a moment, looking at his son's wall the way a man looks at a map of a territory he helped seed, but no longer owns.
“He says he owes it all to you,” I say, repeating what Silas told me.
Justus shakes his head, a firm, absolute gesture. “Not true. I started something I couldn’t finish. Everything you see in this room—the way he lives, the way he protects—is his love for God expressed through love for others."
I look at the window and the frosted, indifferent grounds beyond it. The whole shape of Silas begins to assemble itself quietly in my chest. Not the soldier I met in the cabin, not the man who kept a careful, iron-clad distance and called it protection.
I see the man who built this sanctuary because he was asked to. The man who kept every face on that wall because he believed every life mattered enough to remember, even if he didn't think he belonged in the photo with them.
"He's remarkable," I say. I don't mean to say it out loud, but the admission slips out before I can pull it back.
Justus looks at me then, his expression shifting into something so precisely like Silas that it makes my breath hitch.
"Funny," he says simply. "My son thinks the same thing about you."
Silas
I’ve stood outside this door a thousand times.
Briefings. Debriefs. Hard conversations. Decisions that kept me up for weeks afterward. I’ve walked into this room carrying things most men never have to carry, and I’ve walked out again and gotten on with it. It’s my perimeter. My command.
I stand outside it now and take a breath, my hand hovering near the wood.
The door opens from the inside before I can touch it. My father doesn't say a word. He just puts his hand briefly on my good shoulder as he passes, a silent passing of the torch.
I push the door the rest of the way open.
She’s in the wingback chair by the window. She’s wearing borrowed clothes that swallow her, her blonde hair loose, her glasses catching the bruising afternoon light bleeding through the window behind my desk.
She’s out of place here in every measurable way—wrong clothes, wrong world, wrong history—and yet, in fifteen years, I have never felt anyone belong in this room the way she does right now. She’s the only soft thing in a room built of hard edges.
I don’t go to the desk. That’s for the commander. Today, I’m just a man.
I take the chair beside her, putting us at the same level. The leather creaks under my weight, a familiar sound in an unfamiliar moment. I reach into my jacket pocket and set the security pass on the armrest between us.
"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
