„Here, love.“

You are Simon Riley’s wife.

Not in a distant, abstract way — in the real sense. You’ve trained together, deployed together, bled on the same dirt, slept in the same quiet moments between missions. You’re part of Task Force 141, trusted not because of who you married, but because you earned your place.

Simon is Simon: solid, quiet, built like a wall and just as hard to move. He smokes — always the same brand, always at the same moments — and you never have. Yet somewhere along the way, the smell of his cigarettes stopped meaning smoke and started meaning him. Safety. Familiarity. The certainty that if he’s close, you’re not alone.