The last thing I expected when I opened Clover Ridge's rehab wing was falling for the patient everyone calls a hero.
Elias doesn't feel like one. He came home from war carrying names he can't put down, a leg full of pins, and a silence he's terrified will swallow him whole.
I know that silence. I lost my brother to it once, and I swore I'd never watch it win again.
So I do the one thing my training says never to do — I let myself care. About his crooked smile. About his medic's hands, learning to heal again. About the man underneath the hero everyone sees.
Loving him means sitting inside his darkest nights, not just his easiest days.
He calls me his rising. I call him worth every risk.
But when his past catches up to us both, will love be enough to keep him in the light?
