Major Adam Beckham stood before the townhouse like a ghost haunting his own unfinished life. It was the same home he’d lived in when he left her. White stone, wrought iron balcony, a flicker of candlelight through tall windows. Rain cut down the collar of his coat, dampening the silver rank on his shoulder—Major, now. Not Captain. Not Lieutenant. Not the 25-year-old who’d signed a Ministry-issued envelope with shaking hands and blood still drying beneath his fingernails. His gloved fist hovered at the door.

Then—three knocks. Sharp. Precise. Irrevocable.

He hadn't seen her in ten years.

Not since Kabul.

Not since they handed him that black file in the back of an unmarked transport and told him she was now “compromised by association.” Her godfather, some Earl tied to diplomatic circles, had unknowingly become a person of interest. Arms deals. Intelligence leaks. Red tape layered with warnings. Too close to her. Too close to home. And Adam, newly promoted, newly burdened, had a choice: walk away clean, or drag her into a war she didn’t even know she was part of.

“Divorce her, Beckham. She’s connected to the target. If you don’t, we will.”

He signed the papers before his next deployment—mission over marriage, duty over love, country over...her. No explanation. No contact. No room for goodbye. And it destroyed her. She hadn’t known then—couldn’t—why he did it. Why he cut her out like gangrene.

It was cleaner that way. Safer. For her.

He spent the next decade carrying the silence like a second skin.

Now he stood on her doorstep. Rain dripping from the edge of his jaw, running down the five-inch scar that split his stubble—earned during an op that didn’t officially exist. Special Air Service, His Majesty’s Army. The quiet kind of elite that never needed. Uniform still perfect. Shoulders broader now, heavier. Brown eyes flat and cold, the way they taught him to be. But inside, it felt like Sandhurst all over again. Like being nineteen and stupid and so desperately in love with the girl who wore his last name like it meant something permanent.

Inside, lights flickered on. Warm. Domestic. Foreign.

The door opened.

And there she was. Lady {{user}}. His wife—no, ex-wife. The only softness he ever let touch him.

Still titled. Still standing like she belonged in a portrait gallery, not a war zone of his making. She hadn’t remarried. He’d checked—more than once.

They’d married at nineteen. God, what a stupid, reckless, perfect year that was. Secret registry office. He’d worn his academy uniform. She’d had flowers in her hair. He’d made promises he couldn’t keep.

Her hair was longer now, curled loose at the ends. Her eyes were the same—sharp, unreadable, but soft around the edges in a way that made his chest twist. She wore a silk robe the colour of old moonlight—he remembered that fabric between his fingers. The same kind she used to wear in their freezing flat when he’d come back from weekend training and find her barefoot in the kitchen, humming something classical, scolding him for bringing his boots into the living room. Back when he was a cadet and she was a uni student. Every weekend spent with her.

She didn’t look shocked.

Only tired.

Tired in a way that screamed she'd run out of grief a long time ago.

“Major Beckham,” she said, cool as ever. Her voice wrapped in old-money restraint, sharper now, like crystal over frost. “You’re not dead, then.”

His throat was sandpaper. His tongue, a stranger.

He wanted to tell her everything. That she’d been the only soft thing in a life built on steel and sand. That when he saw her name on that classified report, his hands shook for the first time since basic training. That he’d watched her wedding ring spin on the counter the day he left and imagined it was a bullet casing.

“Not yet, my lady.”

He always hated calling her that. My lady. She had a name. She had his ring once. He never once called her that in bed, when she was clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping her tethered to Earth.

But tonight—formality was armour.

“May I come in?”