Chapter 841
“Colonel,” K.C. Bell’s voice came from the other side, flat and professional. “You have a secure conference call in five minutes.”
The interruption was a lifeline for Jarrod and a source of profound irritation for Sloane. A flicker of annoyance crossed her face.
Jarrod seized the opportunity. He shifted back by a measured half-step, the movement stiff around the brace, letting the hard metal across his torso widen the distance she had tried to erase.
“Postpone it,” he said to the door, his voice hard.
He turned his full attention back to Sloane. His gaze swept over her exposed skin, the open front of her uniform, and his expression was not one of desire or memory, but of stern disapproval.
“Fix your uniform, Instructor Hawke,” he said, his tone that of a commanding officer addressing a disorderly subordinate. “Your appearance is unprofessional and in violation of military regulations.”
The words hit Sloane like a physical slap. Instructor Hawke. Regulations. After she had just bared her soul, and her scars, he was quoting the rulebook at her.
Her hand froze in mid-air, inches from his face. The hope in her eyes curdled into disbelief and a deep, wounded confusion.
“Jarrod, what’s wrong with you?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “It’s me. It’s Elena.”
She used her old name, the name he had called her in the heat of battle, in the quiet moments between missions. It was a key she thought would unlock the man she knew.
His expression didn’t soften. If anything, it grew colder. “Sloane Hawke was killed in action,” he stated, his voice devoid of any emotion. “That’s what the after-action report says. As far as I’m concerned, that person is dead.”
The cruelty of it was breathtaking. He wasn’t just rejecting her; he was erasing her. He was telling her that the ghost he had mourned was preferable to the living woman standing before him.
The color drained from Sloane’s face. She staggered back a step, as if physically struck by the force of his words.
“But I’m not dead,” she choked out. “I’m here. I came back.”
“Your return was not processed through the proper channels,” Jarrod continued, his voice relentless, clinical. “Your presence on this base is an administrative error. A problem that needs to be corrected.”
He had taken her miraculous, love-fueled return from the dead and reduced it to a clerical mistake. A piece of inconvenient paperwork.
Tears finally welled in Sloane’s eyes, shimmering with betrayal. Her legendary composure, the iron will that had seen her through a year of hell, shattered. She couldn’t understand. The man she had come back for was gone, replaced by this cold, unfeeling stranger.
With a desperate cry, she lunged forward, not toward his hands, because one was locked against his chest and the other trapped in its splint, but toward the rigid brace itself. Her fingers caught the front edge of his modified jacket and the hard medical frame beneath it. “Look at me, Jarrod! You can’t do this to me!”