If he didn’t come back, his father would have nothing real to say about him. Notonetrue thing.
He kept his back to his father and spoke into the air between them. "I hated the Academy.” His hands were shaking. He balled them into fists. “I wanted to be an engineer. I've been reading Rumi since I was sixteen—that book Aunt Marguerite gave me, the one you threw out, I picked it out of the trash." The words kept coming and he couldn’t stop them. "And I still have nightmares about the night you made me sleep outside. When I was eight."
The silence behind him was deafening.
And I'm gay. But you'll never know that.
His father's voice was flat when he finally spoke. "I see."
That was it. No inflection. This was all Elliot was going to get.
He turned around one last time. The General already had his phone out, checking messages, moving on to the next item on his agenda. He didn’t seem to care that Elliot had just told him something real.
Elliot exhaled and walked away.
He went to his office and put on his running gear. There were twelve miles between headquarters and his home. He would let himself dwell on his father, on Hale, for twelve miles, and then he would shut it all down.
The conversation with his dad played over and over again in his head as he ran. He still couldn't believe he had finally stood his ground. Thirty years of molding himself into the perfect son, the perfect officer, and Elliot had walked away from it in under five minutes. He was still waiting for the relief to rush over him. The freedom, the vindication. But all he felt was empty.
The sound of shoes on the pavement was not enough to drown out any of it. Especially not the call from last night. The voice of Marcus—as it turned out—answeringHale's phone. Telling himHudsonwas in the shower. His step almost faltered at the thought of it.
He turned up the pace, running so fast his lungs burned.
Elliot had hung up and sat there with the phone in his hand, dumbstruck. Hale had someone. Of course he had. And Elliot had no right to be upset about it.
When Hale had asked him if everything was okay, he had wanted to shout:No! Nothing's fucking okay. I'm deploying tomorrow somewhere I might not come back from. I called you because I needed to hear your voice and someone else answered your phone.
Instead of saying any of that, he’d curtly informed him of the deployment. He watched Hale's face change when he said it. Saw the worry flash across his features before he could hide it.This is why I called,he’d thought.This. Right here. Because you're the only person who looks at me like that.
But Elliot couldn’t tell him that. Couldn't tell him there was no one else in his life he wanted to talk to more, who made him feel this safe.
So instead he had ended the call. Just like that.
Hours later, Elliot's phone had buzzed one last time.
Hale:I think I might actually like you
Elliot steppedoff the C-130 Hercules and stumbled back when the extreme heat hit him, dry and absolute. The tarmac shimmered and the sky stretched flat and bleached white.
He had never been to Syria before, but he’d heard about the quality of light flattening everything to a point where it made distances hard to judge. Almost like the landscape had been scrubbed of depth.
Around him soldiers moved efficiently. Aircraftunloaded, weapons checked, crates hauled, trucks packed. Elliot shouldered his bag and fell into step.
It was one of the larger bases in Syria. From his brief he knew they were ninety personnel, a mixture of US special operations and allies from other joint task forces. The perimeter held temporary structures reinforced with sandbags. Two helicopters were visible behind a blast wall, and a row of shipping containers served as quarters. Everything was the color of dust. Smelled like dust, too.
“Captain Shaw. Wait up.” Sergeant Diaz joined him. Elliot knew him from Fort Liberty. He had two previous deployments under his belt and was disturbingly at ease, eating a protein bar like they were on a lunch break.
“Sergeant Diaz,” Elliot nodded.
“You get the full brief?” Diaz asked.
“Wednesday.”
“This is a clusterfuck, huh?”
Elliot didn’t disagree. The situation in Syria had escalated faster than anyone had anticipated, which was probably why they needed sixty specialized personnel and a joint task force to step in.
Major Okafor met them at the operations building. He was Nigerian-American, built like a linebacker, and he got straight to it.
