Twenty-six was young.
Twenty-six was a whole future.
Twenty-six was plenty of time to start over.
But Connor had been medically retired from the Navy SEALs with shrapnel scars across his ribs, a limp he hated, and a silence inside him that no doctor had been able to treat.
Six months earlier, an explosion in a country he was still not allowed to name had ended his career and taken away the only identity he understood.
Before that day, Connor had known exactly who he was.
He was the man who moved when others froze.
He was the man who trained until pain became weather.
He was the man who could read a room by the angle of a shoulder, the tilt of a rifle, the silence before a door opened.
After the explosion, people read him instead.
They noticed the limp.
They noticed the scars if his shirt shifted.
