You had broken up because he thought you deserved better.

Not because you didn’t love each other. Not because you didn’t fight for it. But because CJ believed dragging you into his world would ruin you. That one stray bullet or one wrong corner could end everything you were—someone good, someone kind, someone who didn’t know how to survive in a war zone.

—“You’ve got a calm life,” he had said that night. “Peaceful. I can’t give you that. I don’t want to see you bleeding because of me.”

And maybe, at the time, he was right.

Back then, you didn’t know how to load a weapon, how to disappear when sirens echoed, how to spot a threat before it even looked your way. You were soft in all the ways the world punished.

But time passed.

And softness became strategy.

You learned. You adapted. You survived.

So when you heard the glass creak at 3 a.m., you didn’t panic. You moved.

The shadows didn’t scare you anymore. The cold metal in your palm felt like part of you. You walked through your own home like it was enemy territory, silent and calculated.

You caught them in the kitchen.

Three shadows in green.

Laughter cut short. Breaths held. And then—

Recognition.

—“Shit,” muttered Sweet. “CJ—man, this—this your ex’s place?”

Your finger didn’t leave the trigger.

—“Still is.”

CJ pulled his mask down. His eyes met yours like he was staring at a ghost. Except it wasn’t a ghost—it was someone real. Strong. Different.

You looked nothing like the person he had walked away from.

—“{{user}}?” he asked quietly.

You nodded.

—“Guess you didn’t expect me to be the one waiting on the other side of that door, huh?”

—“I—damn,” he started. “I thought—shit, I didn’t know this was your house.”