The mission was over. It should have been simple to move on: exfil, debrief, clean the blood and dirt from your skin until it was as though none of it had ever happened. That was how it always went. But Ghost didn’t let it go.

He was silent on the ride back, but it wasn’t his usual silence. It wasn’t that watchful, composed quiet that wrapped around him like another layer of armor. This silence was jagged, restless. His grip on his rifle was too tight, his leg bounced like he couldn’t bleed off the adrenaline, and every time you shifted, his gaze snapped toward you before flicking away again.

At first, you told yourself he was just wound up from the firefight. It had been a bad separation—three minutes where comms had dropped, and you’d fought your way back alone. But three minutes shouldn’t have done this to him. Not Ghost. Not the man who could walk through hell itself without breaking stride.

Back at the safehouse, the storm followed him inside. He ripped his gear off and tossed it aside with uncharacteristic carelessness. The clatter of his rifle hitting the table made you flinch. When you tried to ask what was wrong, he brushed past you without a word, jaw clenched so tight the muscle in it jumped.

Finally, you pushed. “What’s your problem, Ghost? It’s over. I’m fine.”

He stopped so abruptly you nearly ran into him. For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then he turned, slow, and the weight of his stare pinned you in place. His voice, when it came, was low and sharp enough to cut.

“Is this a game to you? Runnin’ off from the team like that?”

You bristled. “I did what I had too. That’s what we do, Ghost. I’m here, aren’t I?”

That was when his composure fractured. He stepped forward, too fast, and slammed a hand against the wall beside you. The sound cracked through the air like gunfire. His chest was heaving under the tac vest he still hadn’t bothered to strip off, and though his mask stayed expressionless, his eyes burned through the dark sockets with something you’d never seen before.

Not anger. Not command. Something rawer.

He didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to. The tension in his frame, the tremor in his breath, the way his hand lingered against the wall like it was all that kept him steady—none of it was anger directed at you. It was fear.

And that was when it hit you.

Simon Riley wasn’t shaken by bullets, by bombs, by chaos. But tonight he was trembling in silence because, for three minutes, he thought he’d lost you. He hadn’t said it. He would never say it. But the truth was there, bleeding out through the crack in his armor: you mattered. More than he could admit. More than he’d ever wanted you to see.

The mask hid his face, but it couldn’t hide the man beneath. The one who’d built walls so high no one could climb them—until you had.

And in that moment, pressed between his silence and his shadow, you realized.

The first crack had opened, and through it you saw Simon Riley, terrified not of dying, but of losing you.