Ally had changed my mind.

Our nightly trysts were slowly seeping into my unconscious and I felt myself being rewired, all my old assumptions about men and women melting and dissolving. Ally challenged me. She felt like she was a challenge, all in herself, some delicious puzzle to be endlessly unlocked, unraveled… I felt in Ally’s presence that I was not being tested so much as seasoned. Had I really been such an idiot before, to walk around the world, completely oblivious to anything female that didn’t fit into the narrow band of young and hot.

Ally was teaching me what it meant to be ripe. Her body was different to anything I’d experienced before. I felt like a student at the temple of a master, allowed deeper in every time I understood one of her mysteries, continually astonished at how exquisite she was, how perfectly fine-tuned for pleasure. Her body was, on one level, unremarkable. She was shaped like something an older version of me wouldn’t have even noticed before. But now I felt like I’d seen the light. Like I couldn’t believe I had limited myself before with such boyish notions of what youth and beauty were.

Ally was beautiful. Painfully beautiful. But it was a whole new kind of beauty. Her breasts weren’t perky, but they were… graceful. There was an elegance in her hands. And her sweet, delicious little pussy was like a cave of treasures to me, different every time, like it could taste me right back. It gave me a strange, animal, stirring deep in the pit of my stomach to imagine that she had carried and birthed children. Children I knew and cared for. Her whole body was alive. She was a miracle. And she was hot as fucking hell.

When her ex got in contact with me, I wrestled for a few days about whether to tell her or not. He wanted to meet, alone. He said he had something he wanted to tell me. On the one hand, Ally had been through enough and there was no reason to stress her out even more by telling her that he wasn’t done sniffing around her life yet. On the other hand, I couldn’t push away the image of her standing behind him, knife in her hand. I wanted to protect her from him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t recognize that she was capable of protecting herself if it came to it.

Eventually the decision was made for me, I never found the right moment to tell her, and instead I let Jack know where I’d be in case I needed back up. The CIA’s investigation into him and the National Legacy had begun in Russia and landed right here, on our doorstep. There were more layers to the investigation than I cared to unwrap, but there was one thing I did know: Andrew was in for a world of pain one way or another; I just had to decide how much I wanted to be a part of it.

It was late enough that the sky was turning a little, blue to black. Meeting this piece of shit behind some abandoned storage facility wasn’t my idea of a classy move, but whatever. I already knew he couldn’t fight for shit and I had Jack and the guys at the ready to back me up if it came to it. They’d never admit it but I was almost 100% sure that they’d all been itching in some way for a bit of action since we came back. It might even be good for us all, for old time’s sake, to beat the tar out of this idiot.

I drove on in silence, looking for the place. Happily, Ally was making fast friends with Max’s new girl and she had gone off this evening with her and the kids to a movie. If I played this right, I might even be done in time to join them all before the trailers were over. I rolled the car along the narrowing alleyways, then spied the place. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, but there were plenty hidey holes. While I was certain he wasn’t stupid enough to try and jump me, I had to admit I didn’t quite know what he wanted.

I brought the car to an idling stand still and turned off the ignition, checking all round me, easily slipping into that hyper-focused, foxlike state. I stepped out when I saw him a little way in the distance, hands in his pockets. I leaned against the car and waited for him to approach me. We eyed one another for a moment. This was my first real disappointment as a soldier: the fight is never really like this, the good guy on one side and the bad guy on the other, facing off like they’re in an old Western. There is never any obvious move, never any death that doesn’t feel like a mistake. I was just some trigger happy moron who landed up with a uniform on him. And he was just a man who was what many would consider pure evil. And yet he was the father of two little boys who I had more than a soft spot for. If the woman I loved could have at one point loved a man like him, what did that say about good and evil? About me? About her?

I didn’t know. I just knew that it made it hard to feel too much like a hero, or too much like a villain. He took a step towards me and I could more clearly make out his black eye. He looked like every guy I’d served with. Like every guy you’ve ever gone to school with. Like nobody, or everybody. He nodded to me. I nodded back.

“By rights I should fucking kill you,” he said slowly.

I said nothing. If he had anything to say, he’d better spit it out soon before I lost my patience.

“No matter what our differences are, man, you’ve had no right to step into my kids’ lives and poison their minds.”

I frowned.

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t think to touch base with their actual fucking father before swooping in with some big brother bullshit behind my back?”

“Wait a second, I—”

“Let me fucking finish,” he hissed. “Those kids have a father figure. It’s me. I can understand Ally being that disrespectful, but some stranger I don’t even know? I expected more from a soldier.”

“With respect—”

“I’m still not fucking finished,” he said and took another step towards me. I could tell he wasn’t armed but there was no saying what he had tucked into that bulky jacket.

“Admit it. You only signed up for that bullshit so you could screw Ally.”

I bit down and glowered at him, but said nothing.

“I fucking thought so. With respect, you don’t seem like a kid-loving kind of guy, do you?”

“What do you want?” I said, voice cold. He stared at the ground and mulled over his next words.

“I want you to stay away from my kids. Keep your stupid ideas away from them and keep—”

I laughed out loud.

“Excuse me, my stupid ideas?”

The look on his face could shatter glass. But he dropped his voice and held my gaze.

“Tell me something, since you’re a big shot Navy SEAL. What’s your purpose? What’s your duty and who do you serve?”

The sun had completely set by now, and a chill was settling into the air.

“I serve the Department of Defense of the United States government, to protect the security of our country,” I said, feeling my posture involuntarily straighten as I did so.

He scoffed at me.

“Yeah? Who’d you vote for?” he said with a jeer.

I was getting angry now.

“That’s none of your damn business—”

“Oh, but it is, now that you’ve decided to interfere in my family’s life. You see, people like you are toxic. You’re happy to destroy everything around you and happy to blame everyone else for it. Tell me why your weak ass team didn’t destroy Jeffrey Allister when they found him in Morgantown, huh?”

I felt so dizzy so quickly I almost threw up.

“What… what the fuck do you know about Jeffrey Allister?” I whispered.

He kept smiling smugly at me.

“Yeah, you’re not the only one with inside intel, you asshole. Why don’t you answer the question? Was it in the interests of our country’s security to deliberately let a man like that blow up that tower?”

“Shut up now or I’m going to make you shut up,” I said, but my head was spinning.

I hadn’t heard the name Jeffrey Allister since September. The guys never dared speak that name, and I had tried for months to forget everything that name meant. Yes, we knew what they were doing. Yes, we let them go through with a plot that resulted in the loss of almost a hundred innocent civilian lives. But no, I didn’t know why. I had unhooked my brain from that knot a long time ago and swore I wouldn’t care anymore, wouldn’t care about the blatant lies and deceit, about the murders. But here was this rat-faced asshole in front of me running his mouth and I felt like I’d kill him if he uttered one more word…

He was laughing under his breath.

“Yeah, just as I thought. You know what makes you a piece of shit? The fact that everyone thinks you fuckers are heroes. You put on your uniforms and yes sir no sir your way up the ranks and for what? To play at being superheroes and saving the day? That’s the difference between you and me. I actually fucking do something about my beliefs. I have convictions, man. What do you fucking have?”

My fist collided with his jaw a few split seconds before I consciously decided to hit him. Once the first blow landed the other followed quickly, and soon a red haze descended over my vision and we fell into grappling with one another. This time, however, he fought much harder. In a heartbeat, my one hand round his throat and my other raised to strike him again, I felt a deep, painful tear at my flank and a familiar searing shock rippled through me. I glanced down to see a soft trickle of blood gush out of me as he pulled out his blade and took a staggering step backwards.

My fingers were soon coated in bright red as I examined the damage. The ringing in my ears became a loud rushing. Digging deep I lunged towards him, twisting his arm till the knife angled away from us. He roared in anger and fought me hard, all knees and elbows and vicious punches with his left hand. But I could no longer feel my body. The pain and fear and adrenaline melted away into one and nothing existed for me in that moment but to finish this guy, once and for all.

I shoved him hard and he banged against my car door, his hands now raised up, still desperately seeking to bring that blade down into my flesh again. I ducked and strained underneath the bloody knife point. What hurt wasn’t the bloody gash at my side or the ache on my face where he had punched me. What hurt was hearing him say out loud all the things I wished weren’t true. All the things even the guys didn’t want to talk about anymore. He was right. We weren’t heroes. Puppets, maybe. Cowards – definitely. And to hear that truth on the lips of a man who was so fucking wrong about so much was like a thousand knife wounds.

The knife wavered and jerked above both our heads as we struggled, first him banging against the car door, then me, then him again. With the last shreds of my energy I slammed my body against his and held him down.

“Leave Ally alone. Leave my kids alone. Fuck off. Fuck off or I swear to god I’ll kill you,” he growled at me.

“You couldn’t if you tried,” I sneered. The pain was so intense it was like a white-hot fire was burning me up. It spread all through me, but I didn’t care. I wanted this. I wanted to fight for something. For something real.

He spun around and pinned me down instead, and the knife edge hovered dangerously close to my neck. But I held him off. It flashed through my mind like a movie, all at once: I couldn’t kill him. Holy fuck did I want to. But I couldn’t. When did it end? How did any of this ever fucking end?

The muscles in my bicep shivered and I felt his weight bearing down on me. I caught a glimpse of the knife out the corner of my eye. He was in striking distance, and I couldn’t hold him off much longer.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t put this fucking blade in your head right now,” he hissed. My ears whined. My side was ripped through with pain. One good reason?

“I can think of two,” I sputtered, trying to get out from under him.

“What?”

“Ben and Alex,” I said, and gave one last, hard shove. “They like me, you know. We do shit together. Forget about Ally. She can take care of herself. But those kids will miss me like hell if I leave them now.”

The frown he gave me was deep and confused. I took a step and released myself from his grasp. He stood and looked at me, knife still in his fist.

“Let’s be honest man, I fucking hate you. I hate everyone like you. And you hate me, right? We’re two bad men, and here we are scrapping in an alleyway like animals. You’re an asshole, but the one good thing you did was bring those two boys into the world.”

Despite his efforts, his face softened.

“I love them more than anything,” he said, and it was pathetic to hear, and I still hated his guts, but in a slightly different way now.

“You know what? I love them too.”

I couldn’t tell if he was tearing up or scowling at me. Maybe both. The silence between us now was deafening.

“We fucked up our mission,” I said quietly. “We didn’t know. They walked us into that mess likes lambs to the slaughter. I swear we didn’t know. This is all confidential. It gets bigger than you know, just trust me on that. Our team was disassembled after that and they put in place a whole new fucking set of legislature after that. I didn’t sleep for months after what we did there. I know I’m not a hero, man. Trust me, I know better than anyone. You said I don’t believe in anything, well, you’re right. That was true until really recently. I’d like to say it was Ally that changed my mind. That love healed me and all that bullshit. But it wasn’t. It was those little boys… it was…”

Here I actually did choke up. My voice trailed off.

“Let’s call this a truce. I can’t promise a damn thing. Hell, I don’t even know how long Ally will keep putting up with my shit. I don’t like you and I don’t want to know you. But we can’t fight like this. For their sake.”

He was nodding slowly. I saw the tension seep from his expression and the tendons in his neck loosen. It was like a magic spell. He was an enemy in every sense of the word, but there was one thing we could both agree on – if us two sorry fools could somehow add up to one good ‘father figure’ in their lives, it would be a good thing.

The sound of the knife clattering to the floor almost echoed throughout that vacant lot. For a split second, I shared a moment of shame with him. We had pretty different ideas about what the right thing was, but at that moment we both wanted it. It was a start.

“Let me uh… let me drive you to the hospital?” he said.

We locked eyes. It was an uneasy respect, but it was there, hard-earned and real. I nodded. Gripping my bleeding side, I rummaged in my pockets and threw my car keys at him.

We drove together in tense silence, but the conflict was over now. It was strange. I still thought he was an ignorant cretin and I just knew that he felt the same way about me. But in a way, that didn’t seem to matter much. He took off soon after I checked myself in for stitches and that was that.

I had gone into that encounter with the full knowledge that I would do what it took to defend myself and Ally, to stand my ground, to make sure he knew who he was fucking with. I was prepared to kill him. But as I sat there on the bleached white hospital bed getting carefully stitched together by a nurse wearing scrubs that looked just like Ally’s, I realized something. The hardest part wasn’t fighting; it was choosing not to fight. The real challenge was to step away from revenge and anger and hate …and towards the things that mattered.

“Well, there you go, see if you can keep yourself out of fights for long enough for this one to heal, ok?” the nurse said, a tired edge to her voice.

I nodded and watched as she dressed the wound and carefully wound some bandages over it. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t the thug she thought I was. That I wasn’t a stupid, violent man getting into scrapes for stupid, violent reasons. But something told me she didn’t give a damn.

“When does your shift end?” I asked. She didn’t look up from her work.

“Six hours,” she said robotically.

“Do you have any children?”

Here she did look up at me.

“Yeah, one. A little girl,” she said, then carried on with her work.

“Well. She’s lucky to have such a great mom. Those are the neatest stitches I’ve ever seen.” She smiled, but the smile was weak and disappeared quickly.

“My wife is a nurse,” I said, still not quite sure what I wanted from this conversation, still a little woozy from all the adrenaline.

“Oh yeah?” she said. This seemed to genuinely get her attention.

“Yeah. We have two little boys. Eight and five. I love them with all my heart.”

She put down the bandages and gave me a warm look. It was like I had uttered the secret word that made her look at me as more than a patient. She nodded and handed me some ointment.

“They make it all worth it, don’t they?” she said casually, then left the room.

I sat there for a while, trying on some new thoughts for size. My wife. Why not? Hell, it would take me a while to get used to the idea, but to my surprise, it had felt good to say. Good to think about. The nurse had first seen me as some no-good guy brawling in the streets, but the moment I mentioned those magic words, she changed, and looked at me differently. She looked at me in a way that I wanted to be looked at.