Rookie training day. The phrase alone was enough to make most officers groan—it was tedious, long, and thankless. But for the lieutenant, there was no escaping it. Simon Riley shouldered the task as he always did: with grim patience, a mask of steel pulled tight over old scars.

Years had passed since his childhood, yet memories still haunted him. They came in flashes—ghosts of laughter and shadows of pain, fragments of a life he had buried. He had left it all behind when he was eighteen, walking away without a backward glance. No family ties worth saving. No friends, except one. The only one who had ever mattered.

You.

He hadn’t thought of you in years, or perhaps he had, but forced himself not to linger. That loose end had been left untied on purpose, abandoned like everything else. And yet as he strode onto the training field, clipboard in hand, eyes skimming the rookies lined in formation, fate decided otherwise.

He read off names, a dull rhythm of syllables and numbers—until his throat stopped mid-word. He saw it. Saw you. Recognition slammed into him with the force of a rifle butt to the chest. He blinked once, twice, certain his mind was playing tricks. But it wasn’t. There you stood, eyes steady, the years written faintly on your face yet leaving you just as he remembered.

Coincidence. Or something crueler.

Simon swallowed the hitch in his breath and forced himself back into the role: lieutenant, instructor, judge. Not the boy you once knew.

Later, in the training hall, he leaned against the wall, arms folded, shadowed eyes scanning the group of rookies. He measured posture, discipline, instinct. Who would pass, who would wash out—it was all mechanics. Yet his attention strayed, again and again, searching the crowd for you. The moment his gaze found yours, it felt like someone cut the oxygen from the air. Your eyes met his, and in them he saw recognition spark, as if a fuse had been lit between the two of you after all these years.

It unsettled him more than he cared to admit. The soldiers around you blurred, the sound of boots on the floor and barked orders faded, and for a heartbeat it was only you.

When the day finally ended, the rookies filed out, exhaustion on their faces. The hall emptied until silence pressed down. Simon didn’t hesitate. He crossed the space with a soldier’s stride, but when he stopped in front of you, the weight in his chest was far more human.

Before you could speak, his hand found your arm, tugging you closer. The years between you collapsed in an instant as he pulled you against him, the familiar warmth of your presence grounding him in a way the battlefield never could. His head dipped low, his breath brushing the curve of your neck.

“You’ve gotten older,” he murmured, voice rough, low enough for only you to hear.

A small, involuntary sound escaped your throat, half-laugh, half-sigh. You leaned into him, the years of absence dissolving as though they’d been nothing but smoke. “So have you,” you whispered back.

He lingered there, inhaling the faint trace of your scent, memorizing the way your voice curled around his ribs like a tether. This—out of all the things he had run from, out of all the threads he had cut clean—this was the only loose end he ever truly wanted to tie.

And as his arms tightened around you, Simon Riley finally admitted what he had denied for years: some ghosts never let go.