Page 69 of The Breaking Point

More than an hour later, I get a text from Aiden: Can you talk?

I don’t text back. I just walk into the bedroom and call. He answers on the first ring. “What happened?”

He exhales, slow and heavy. “Well… I talked to him. And there’s no convincing him.”

“What the hell is he thinking? His wife just cried herself to sleep on the couch.”

He’s quiet for a beat. Then, “Yeah. Well, he drank himself to sleep here.”

I sit on the edge of the bed, gripping the phone tighter.

Aiden goes on. “He said this last tour was supposed to be it. His send-off. But after what happened, going MIA, losing more than half the guys he trained with. He said it doesn’t feel finished. He says he needs closure. He’s not re-enlisting long-term. Just… one more tour.”

I close my eyes. “Come on, Aiden. Youknowthe number of times Quinn called me this past month. Before he came back. After. He’s barely present as it is, she’sbarelyholding it together. If he leaves again…”

Aiden doesn’t answer for a moment. Then: “I know. He’ll either come back whole… or…”

“Or he won’t,” I finish for him, my voice breaking. “What do we do?” I ask. It’s not rhetorical.

He sighs. “The only thing we can. Hold them together. I’ll try again once he’s sober.”

“I don’t think Quinn can take another tour.”

“I know.”

“No, I’m saying-” I pause, words thick and heavy. “I don’t think they’llstay marriedif he does this.”

Silence.

Then Aiden says, quiet and heavy, “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

And for a minute, we both sit there, not speaking. Just breathing into the space where love and pain and impossible choices live.

I ask, “Where are you right now?”

Aiden’s voice comes through the speaker, low and tired. “Markus passed out on the floor. I dragged him to the bed, but… I think I should stay. Just in case. So he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.”

I sigh, rub my temple. “Maybe the army won’t take him back.”

“They will,” Aiden says immediately.

“Why are you so sure?”

A pause. Then, “He told me what happened.”

I sit up straighter. “I don’t think he even told Quinn.”

“He was drunk. He never answered when I asked before.” Aiden mutters, like it explains everything. Maybe it does.

He exhales hard, then continues, “He said they were on their way back from a safe house, keeping watch on a target. Their Humvee overturned. He doesn’t know if it was an accident or intentional. But when it flipped, a couple of the guys, his friends, got trapped under it. And he just… he watched them die, Kate.”

I press a hand to my mouth.

“Local militia found them,” Aiden says. “Instead of helping, they stripped what they could, restrained the ones that could walk. Blindfolded them. Markus thinks… hethinksthey executed the rest.”

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “Hethinks?”

“He couldn’t see,” Aiden says quietly. “Not really. Just heard things. They were locked up and the next thing he knew, they were rescued by American forces. Flown to Landstuhl Medical Centre in Germany.”

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