Chapter 8 - The Uniform Under the Tuxedo
The patio was so quiet you could hear the distant hum of traffic on the highway miles away.
Sloan stood frozen, her ivory gown streaked with wedding cake and shattered illusions, staring at her groom as if he were speaking a foreign language.
“You… you know her?” Sloan whispered, the fight completely draining out of her voice, replaced by sheer, unadulterated panic. “What are you talking about? You said you met at a tech conference in Atlanta!”
Callum slowly unbuttoned the top button of his expensive midnight-blue tuxedo jacket. Then, without breaking eye contact with his bride, he reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled out a small, dark leather case, and flipped it open.
Inside rested a bronze star with a V device, alongside several campaign ribbons.
“I lied, Sloan,” Callum said steadily. “When I met you through mutual friends two years ago, you talked endlessly about your wealthy family, your upcoming status, and how much you hated weakness. I wanted to see who you really were. I wanted to see if someone who could treat her own flesh and blood—a woman who bled for this country—with such casual cruelty was capable of actual love.”
He snapped the case shut with a sharp click.
“And today, I got my answer.”
My mother let out a muffled sob, sinking heavily into a folding chair as several aunts rushed to her side, whispering in frantic confusion.
Callum turned back toward me, dropping gracefully to his knees again among the frosting and shattered glass. He didn't care about his designer tuxedo pants. He gently slid his strong arms beneath my back and knees, lifting my broken body out of the wreckage with practiced, effortless precision, exactly the way a trained combat medic lifts a casualty from a danger zone.
Pain flared in my shoulder, but his grip was steady, secure, and entirely devoid of hesitation or disgust.
“I’ve got you, Mave,” he murmured softly, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’ve got you.”
He carried me out of the sticky white ruins of the five-thousand-dollar cake, past the stunned, silent crowd of wealthy wedding guests who suddenly couldn't meet my eyes, and toward the shaded path leading away from the patio.
Behind us, Sloan’s voice shattered the silence in a high-pitched shriek of pure, unadulterated despair.
“Callum! Where are you going?! The reception isn't over! You can’t leave me here!”
Callum didn’t even look back.
He carried me down the stone pathway, away from the fairy-tale estate, away from the fake smiles, away from the family that had spent years trying to make me disappear.
As we reached the transport van waiting by the gravel drive, the driver rushed forward to open the side doors and lower the wheelchair lift.
Callum carefully, tenderly settled me into the leather seat of my chair. He locked the brakes, knelt down beside me, and wiped a speck of white frosting gently from my cheek with his thumb.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion.
May you like
I looked down at my hands—the scarred knuckles, the trembling fingers—and then up into the eyes of the man who had just blown up his entire life to stand beside me in the dirt.
“I think,” I whispered, a genuine, watery smile breaking across my face for the first time in years, “for the first time since I came home… I actually am.”
