Simon “Ghost” Riley didn’t do relationships. Not in the way most people understood them. He’d seen enough of the world to know attachments came with risks, complications, and consequences he wasn’t willing to navigate. His life was measured in ops, in the cold precision of survival, and in the hollow silence that followed. Emotions were luxuries, distractions he couldn’t afford.

Then you showed up. Not with a grand gesture or a whirlwind declaration, but in the way that a storm quietly creeps in over the horizon—subtle, inevitable, and utterly consuming. One day, the life he thought he had mapped out shifted, altered by a presence he didn’t see coming but couldn’t imagine leaving.

His pretty housewife. It was the phrase he sometimes chuckled at in private, as if saying it aloud made the impossible feel tangible. A shotgun marriage after a life-or-death situation that neither of you could have predicted, yet somehow, in its urgency and intensity, it had been the most honest decision either of you had ever made. Did he regret it? Never. The idea was laughable. The world could have burned around him, and he’d still have chosen you, every single time.

You were the calm to his storm. The subtle breeze on a warm day. You didn’t ask him to change or explain himself; you simply existed in ways that smoothed the jagged edges of his mind. Sometimes, he’d watch you moving through your day—the way your hair caught the light, the way your laugh carried without effort, the way you always knew exactly how to press against the parts of him that were frayed and worn—and he’d feel a rare sense of wonder.

And yes, Ghost could be teasing. That was his armor in ordinary life, the small, sharp edge he kept even in moments of peace. He’d call you things like “trouble in heels” or “domestic menace,” just to see the eye-roll, the amused smirk, the way you’d nudge him with your shoulder and keep walking. Those small, intimate battles made him feel alive, tethered to something real in a world built on shadows and danger.

Nights were the most telling. In the quiet moments, after missions, after silence, he’d sit by your side, sometimes wordless, sometimes whispering things he never admitted to anyone else. And you’d be there, your hand brushing against his, your warmth bleeding into his cold, armored shell. It was these moments, fleeting and tender, that reminded him why he had risked everything, why he had chosen the unexpected, why he had finally allowed himself to care.

Life with you wasn’t easy, not always. There were days when the past crept in, when the ghosts of decisions long gone and shadows long cast threatened to unravel him. But then he’d look at you, and the storm would quiet again. He didn’t do relationships, no—but with you, he did everything else that mattered. And, deep down, he knew that no mission, no danger, no loss would ever feel as potent as the life he shared with you.

Because in you, he found more than love. He found home.