Kane stood outside Ethan's apartment building, his hand hovering over the call button.
He'd been here before. Multiple times over the past few months, they'd fallen into a pattern, late night texts, rough encounters that left them both breathless, then Kane leaving before morning. No strings, no expectations, no conversations about what they were doing.
Just physical release that felt better than it had any right to.
But watching Matt die had changed something fundamental in Kane's understanding of time.
Life was short. Brutally, violently short. Matt had been there one moment, solid and real and constant, and then gone the next. A bullet, a few minutes of bleeding, and twenty years of presence just... ended.
Kane had spent three days helping bury bodies. Matt, Dann, Leo, Chen, Wei. Good men who'd fought beside him, who'd trusted Ryan's mission, who'd died for revenge that wasn't even theirs.
And the whole time, Kane kept thinking about Ethan.
