Chapter 8

The locker room smelled like wet concrete, soap, and exhaustion.

Steam drifted heavily beneath the fluorescent lights while soldiers filtered in after evening drills with aching shoulders and mud still drying across their boots. Someone had left a speaker running low static-filled country music near the sinks, though the sound kept cutting in and out whenever the wiring shorted.

Emily arrived late.

Again.

She had stayed behind near the western range resetting damaged targets alone after most of the unit already returned inside. The cold had worsened throughout the afternoon, sinking deep into the old burn injuries stretched across her back until every movement carried a faint pulling ache beneath the skin.

By the time she stepped into the locker room, fatigue clung heavily to her body.

Not weakness.

Just depletion.

The dangerous kind.

Jake Miller noticed immediately.

“Look who finally decided to join civilization,” he called from the benches near the lockers.

Ryan Brooks laughed without looking up from unlacing his boots. “Thought maybe she dissolved in the rain.”

Emily ignored them and moved toward the far corner where her locker sat partially hidden beside the showers. The room buzzed with overlapping voices and metal doors slamming open and shut while steam blurred the mirrors along the walls.

Ordinary.

Loud.

Safe, technically.

Yet the second she entered, that old instinct returned anyway—the constant unconscious cataloguing of exits, distances, movement.

Too many bodies.

Too much noise.

She forced herself to keep breathing evenly.

Across the room, Marcus Reed leaned against the lockers drying sweat from the back of his neck with a towel. His eyes tracked Emily automatically now in ways he increasingly disliked about himself.

Not attraction.

At least not purely.

Something more complicated.

Concern irritated him. Curiosity irritated him more.

Especially because Emily Carter gave him absolutely nothing to work with.

She reached her locker and pulled her damp training shirt slowly over her head.

The room changed instantly.

Not loudly.

Not at first.

But silence spread outward in strange uneven waves as conversations cut themselves off one by one.

Jake stopped mid-laugh.

Ryan looked up.

Marcus straightened fully without realizing he’d moved.

Scars stretched across Emily’s back from shoulder to waist in pale distorted ridges thick enough to warp beneath the fluorescent light. Some looked jagged and uneven like torn rope buried beneath skin. Others disappeared downward beneath the waistband of her fatigues in long violent lines that no surgery had managed to soften completely.

Burn trauma.

Severe enough that even the men at Blackridge—soldiers used to broken bodies and ugly injuries—went visibly still.

For one suspended second, nobody spoke.

Emily felt it immediately.

That shift in atmosphere people always failed to hide once they saw her uncovered.

Pity.

Disgust.

Curiosity.

Horror.

Sometimes all four.

Her fingers tightened briefly around the clean shirt in her hands.

Then Ryan let out a low whistle.

“Well... damn.”

The tension shattered instantly.

Jake barked a laugh loud enough to echo off the tile walls. “Jesus Christ, Carter. What happened to you?”

Ryan leaned back against the bench grinning now that everyone else had started reacting again.

“You lose a fight with a lawn mower?”

Laughter burst sharply through the room.

Not everyone joined in.

But nobody stopped it either.

Emily pulled the clean shirt closer against her stomach and reached for her locker with movements that remained controlled only because years of practice held them together by force.

Ignore it.

Dress.

Leave.

Marcus watched her shoulders tighten.

Something uneasy shifted low in his chest.

The jokes should have felt normal. Blackridge mocked everything—injuries, failures, fear. Soldiers turned ugliness into humor because otherwise military life would drown people slowly under the weight of what they’d seen.

But this felt different.

Meaner somehow.

Ryan stood and stepped closer.

“Seriously though,” he said. “That looks insane.”

Jake snorted. “Maybe that’s why she acts like a damn robot all the time.”

Emily grabbed her clean shirt quickly.

Then Marcus moved before thinking.

Not violently.

Just enough to catch the fabric between his fingers.

“Hold up,” he muttered.

The second the shirt stopped moving, the air changed again.

Emily froze.

Marcus felt it immediately.

Not anger.

Not embarrassment.

Fear.

Real fear.

It moved through her body so fast it almost looked electrical—the sharp inhale, the rigid shoulders, the instant stillness of someone whose nervous system had suddenly mistaken humiliation for danger.

Marcus released the shirt immediately.

Too late.

Jake laughed louder now, feeding off the reaction. “There she is. Knew she had emotions somewhere.”

Ryan circled slightly closer. “Relax, Carter. We’re just curious.”

The room suddenly felt too bright.

Emily’s pulse kicked violently against her ribs.

Someone behind her slammed a locker shut.

Metal cracked through the room.

And for one terrible fragmented second—

Memory collapsed inward.

Heat.

Smoke.

Men screaming through radio static.

Burning metal folding above her.

Her breathing broke sharply.

No.

Not here.

But the panic had already started moving.

The edges of the room blurred strangely while sound stretched too loud and too distant all at once. Her hands trembled visibly now as she yanked the shirt free and tried pulling it over her head too fast.

The fabric caught around one arm.

Jake pointed immediately.

“Oh shit,” he laughed. “She’s actually freaking out.”

More laughter.

Closer now.

Emily couldn’t breathe properly.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead loud enough to hurt. Steam crowded the room thickly around her skin. Every movement nearby felt dangerous.

Marcus saw the exact moment control finally cracked.

It happened quietly.

Emily sank onto the edge of the bench too suddenly, one hand gripping the metal hard enough for her knuckles to whiten while the other covered her mouth like she was trying physically to force air back into her lungs.

Nobody moved at first.

The men still looked entertained.

Confused, maybe.

But entertained.

Ryan shook his head laughing softly. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Jake crossed his arms. “Can’t handle locker room talk, don’t wear the uniform.”

Emily bent forward farther.

Breathing fractured unevenly through her fingers.

Marcus stared at her.

Then at the scars.

Then back again.

And something cold slid slowly through him as realization began taking shape.

This wasn’t embarrassment.

This was a panic response.

The kind soldiers carried back from places they never truly escaped.

The kind no one at Blackridge had noticed because they’d been too busy trying to break her.

Another locker slammed somewhere behind them.

Emily flinched so violently it silenced the room again.