Page 71 of Dozer

"Hunter came to see us after. He was the one who delivered the news, a promise he’d made Ryan and one Ryan had also made him. If anything were to happen to them, they’d tell the family before the uniforms arrived. He sat with my father for hours the week of the funeral and told him everything he was allowed to, and some things, I think, that he probably wasn't. He didn't have to do that. He is family, even if he doesn’t share our blood." I look down at my hands. "He's stayed family. Shows up on the anniversary of Ryan’s death. Checks in when he shouldn't have to. Treats me like I belong to him, like I’m his sister. I think sometimes it’s because he carried my brother out himself, and some part of him never fully set that weight back down."

"You don't blame him," Dozer says. Not a question.

"Never did. Not for one second. Not even in the years right after, when I was angry at everything and everyone and looking for somewhere to put it. I blamed the war. I blamed a system that sends men to die for decisions made by people who'll never carry a body a quarter mile through anything harder than a hallway." My throat tightens. "I never blamed the man who made sure my brother didn't die alone in the dirt."

My voice cracks. Finally. Right there, the plain sentence underneath all the careful cataloguing breaking through despite every year of practice I've put into keeping it steady.

"I just miss him." It comes out smaller than everything before it. Rawer. The thing I usually keep so far underneath the jokes and the competence that most people never get anywhere near it. "Every single day. I catalog dead strangers for a living because somebody has to remember they mattered, and some part of that has always been about him. About making sure nobody's brother gets treated like just a body on a table, because I know exactly what it costs a family when somebody does. He was my brother but after my dad’s last deployment and with our age differences, he was more like a sudo-father. He took care of me and was the last person who ever truly did."

Dozer doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then he gets up. He comes around the table and crouches in front of my chair so we're eye level. He doesn't touch me immediately. That matters more than he probably knows. He gives me the choice.

I close the distance by an inch. His hand comes up, settling lightly over mine. The same hand that's held a weapon, dragged me through crowds, put me behind cover, and stitched together everything that could have gone wrong this week. Now it just holds mine.

"He'd be proud of you," he says, quiet and certain, the way he says everything he actually believes. "Every stranger you've ever treated like they mattered. Every family you've made sure got the truth. That's not just your job. That's his memory, still doing good in the world through you."

I don't have a joke for that. I don't want one. The tears come before I can stop them, quiet at first, then harder, years of careful wall building and balancing giving way all at once. I hate crying. I hate the vulnerability of it, the loss of control, the complete lack of useful purpose.

But Dozer stays exactly where he is. He doesn't try to fix it. Doesn't tell me it'll be okay. Doesn't give me some hollow version of he's in a better place or everything happens for a reason, both of which should be punishable offenses when someone is grieving. He just stays.

His thumb moves once over the back of my hand, it’s a tiny motion. Almost nothing. It feels like everything.

"Thank you," I say once I can talk again, wiping my face with the back of my free hand. "For not trying to make it smaller than it is."

"It's not small," he says. "Nothing about it is small."

I look at him, this quiet, careful man crouched in front of my chair in a safe house that isn't fully safe, his hand still wrapped around mine like he's not in any hurry to let go. Something settles into place. Something that's been circling for days, maybe weeks, maybe longer than that if I'm honest about how long I've been waiting for someone to just let me be exactly this messy and this real without flinching.

"I've never told anyone all of that," I say. "Not like that. Not the whole thing at once."

"I know."

"Why do you think I told you?"

He doesn't answer right away. He just looks at me, steady and unguarded, his thumb still resting against my knuckles. Then his gaze drops briefly to our hands before coming back to my face.

"Because you trust me."

The words are simple. No grand declaration. No promise he can't keep. Somehow, that makes them hit harder.

I inhale slowly. "Yeah," I whisper. "I do."

His fingers tighten around mine, just enough for me to feel it. "And because," he adds, voice rougher now, "you don't have to carry it alone anymore."

That does it. My eyes burn again, but this time I don't look away. Neither does he.

For once, I don't catalog the moment. I don't analyze it. I don't search for the reason why his hand feels so good in mine or why the space between us suddenly seems much smaller than it was five minutes ago. I just let myself feel it all. Him. And, the terrifying possibility that maybe letting someone in isn't the same thing as giving them the power to hurt you.

Maybe sometimes it's giving them the chance to heal you and make you whole again.

CHAPTER 24

Dozer

I stay crouched in front of her chair longer than makes sense, just looking at her, this woman who has handed me the heaviest thing she carries without asking for anything back, and understand somewhere in the quiet that I owe her something more than a soft word and a steady hand.

She has tears drying on her face, but she isn't trying to hide them anymore. That's what gets me. Kenzi has spent this entire week turning pain into information and fear into action. Now she's sitting in front of me without any of the usual armor, and somehow that feels more intimate than anything we've done so far.

"I know why you told me," I say finally. "Same reason I'm about to tell you something I don't usually say out loud."