Page 72 of Dozer

She wipes the last of the tears from her face, watching me with the particular attention she gives everything.

"Spartan Elite's lost people." I sit back on my heels, hands loose between my knees, making myself say it. "Not just Reyes, this week. Before him. Since I joined. People I considered my brothers. People I recruited to sign up with me after the military."

I take a breath. "Torres, four years ago. An extraction that went bad in a way none of us saw coming. Whitfield, the year after. Training accident that never should have happened and haunted half the team for months because it wasn't even the enemy that took him. It was our own equipment failing at the worst possible second. And Charlie, this week. Same convoy as Reyes. Same ambush. Same road we drove down without knowing somebody had already sold us out."

Her expression changes with every name. Not pity. She knows better than that. Something quieter. Recognition.

"You carry all of them."

"I lost men in battle too, but these feel different. These are all brothers who served with me and who could have gone into safer jobs after the military but I recruited them. I believed in Elite, I still do, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for them. Selfishly, I wanted men around who I trusted. I recruited my own team members and then watched them die. Every operator carries the dead with them. It's part of the job nobody puts in the recruitment pitch. "

That earns the smallest curve of her mouth. "Probably because 'come work for us and collect lifelong guilt and grief' doesn't test well with focus groups."

"Probably." The almost-smile disappears as quickly as it came. "Your brother. My team. Different uniforms, same weight." I look at her, steady, letting her see more of it than I usually let anyone see. "I understand exactly what it costs to lose someone that way. To a mission. To a war that doesn't care how much a person mattered to the people who loved them."

"You never talk about them."

"I don't talk about most things." A ghost of something that isn't quite a smile touches my mouth. "You've noticed."

"I've noticed everything." There's warmth in it now, real warmth, the grief from a few minutes ago settling into something gentler underneath it. "It's basically my whole personality."

"I know."

The words hang there between us. I realize, with a clarity I don't particularly want, that I'm closer to her than I've been to anyone in years. I'm close enough that I can see the faint tracks tears left behind on her cheeks, the tiny crease between her brows that appears when she's trying not to say something, the way her fingers keep flexing against the arm of the chair like they're still remembering what it felt like to hold onto her brother's memory all these years.

It's the other kind of close that scares me. The kind that gives someone enough information to hurt you without ever having to pick up a weapon. The emotional close. The vulnerability that can be a weakness or a strength.

We sit there for a moment, close and quiet, the two of us having handed each other the heaviest things we carry within an hour of each other, and I feel something settle between us that doesn't need any more words to explain itself. Not competition over who lost more. Not comfort performed for the sake of comfort. Just recognition, the specific, rare understanding of two people who have both learned exactly how much grief weighs when you're the one carrying it.

"I don't know how to do this," I say, quiet, honest, admitting something I hadn't planned on admitting tonight either. "Whatever this is."

Her eyes stay on mine.

"I've spent years making sure nothing got close enough to cost me anything if it left. You're already closer than anyone's gotten in that whole time, and I don't know how to want that and still be good at my job."

She studies me for a second. "Maybe they're not as separate as you think."

"Maybe not."

The words should make me uncomfortable. Instead, they feel like permission.

Her hand lifts slowly, giving me every opportunity to move away. I don't. Her fingertips brush along my jaw, light enough that I feel every point of contact, and something in me goes completely still. It's the same gesture I gave her in that motel room. Except this time nobody interrupts us. No car door slamming, no cell phone ringing on the nightstand, and absolutely no gunfire. Nothing except her hand against my face and the fact that I want it there.

Her thumb moves once along my jaw, and I catch her wrist gently, not to stop her, just to hold on.

"Kenzi."

She looks at me. "Yeah?"

"I'm trying very hard to remember how to be patient."

That gets the smallest laugh out of her. "Now's probably a terrible time to discover a character flaw."

"I've got several."

"I've noticed."

Her fingers slide into mine, and that simple connection hits harder than it should. Maybe because we've spent days touching only when one of us needed to pull the other out of danger. A hand at her back. Fingers around her wrist. My palm on her shoulder. Contact dictated by survival.