I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 03

I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 03

Halfway through the banquet, I slipped out to the terrace, and Leo followed me, catching my wrist before I got far.

I could feel the faint calluses on his fingers from years of holding a scalpel. “Stella, what is this supposed to be? What are you doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” I pulled my hand away.

Leo let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “How long are you planning to drag this out? Is this really still about the deployment?”

“I already talked to Chloe, she was going to tell you. Even if you’d missed the withdrawal window entirely, she would’ve said something the next day.”

I nodded. “Then I guess I should thank her.”

“Don’t take that tone with me.” He let go of my wrist. “You’re coming to the summit with me next month. I made you a promise.”

He turned and walked away, his jacket swinging behind him.

The morning of the summit, I was standing at the apartment window by eight. Leo’s car was parked below, with Chloe leaning against it, glancing up at my window every few seconds.

I pulled the curtains shut. My phone buzzed.

[Come down. I’m not asking again.]

I replied. [I’m packing. I’m not going.]

[The summit matters more than packing. Don’t come crying to me later if you miss it.]

He drove away with Chloe, and over the course of the day he posted three times. Chloe was in every single one.

[Taking a young researcher to her first major conference. The look on her face took me back.]

[She blushed when the big names started complimenting her work. It was pretty great to watch.]

[Summit photo dump. New voices deserve a place in rooms like these. The future belongs to them.]

Comments from mutual friends started rolling in.

[Is Dr. Vance mentoring a student or dating one? Someone’s clearly taken with her.]

[Dr. Lane didn’t go? Did the dream team finally break up?]

[Chloe’s got real potential. Dr. Vance always did have an eye for talent.]

Hannah sent me a screenshot.

[This is 100% deliberate. You two haven’t tied the knot yet, but everyone in our circle knows you’ve been together for seven years. This is disgusting.]

[She’s seriously trying to steal your man?] [Aren’t you going to do something about this?]

Disgusting? I didn’t even have the energy for that. What I felt was misery, and under it, almost immediately, relief.

All it took was one intern to show me what seven years had actually been. The tighter I’d held on, the more he took me for granted.

The withdrawal deadline had passed, and I started preparing my gear.

I needed body armor, trauma kits, a full round of vaccines, and antimalarials. There was mandatory trauma resilience training too. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the grief started to feel less like an ending.

Before I left, I took Hannah to dinner at a Lyran restaurant, figured I might as well get used to the food early.

Hannah stared at me. “After everything Leo’s been posting, you’re out here trying new restaurants?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I laughed.

I’d always been able to separate my work from my relationship, and I’d put up with worse than this from Leo. But this time he’d crossed a line.

The food was rich with spice, olive oil, and charred meat, and it landed better than I’d expected.

Walking back to the apartment, I caught myself humming the Frontline Medical Corps anthem.

Hannah gave me a look.

“Have you really moved on? Their posts have only gotten more blatant since they got back from the summit.”

I didn’t answer. When we passed the old med school campus, I told Hannah to go on without me and turned toward the ivy-covered lab building.

The rooftop was where Leo and I had first met. Eight years ago, I was still a medical student, and he was already the youngest regional director in the Frontline Medical Corps.

That night, my mentor had ripped into me over a surgical mistake, and I’d come up there to hide and smoke. He found me and walked me to the railing.

“Look down.” He gestured out at the city lights.

“One mistake. That’s all this is.”

I went from a terrified med student to the person who knew him best. We debated cases, argued treatment plans, told each other about our breakthroughs up there. We came up there the night before every dangerous deployment.

Leo liked to lean against the railing, staring out at the hospital lights in the distance. “Stella, you’re moving so fast you’re starting to scare me.”

I watched him and smiled. “Then Dr. Vance better keep up before I leave you in the dust.”

Three years in, we were stationed in Northern Lyra. There was a breach in the containment protocol in my zone, and three team members got infected.

The headquarters investigator called it a dereliction of duty in front of everyone in the tent and wanted me pulled from the field.

Leo stood up and stepped in.

“I’m the officer in charge of this entire epidemic zone, and I’ll take full responsibility. I gave the final sign-off on Stella’s containment plan, if anyone was going to be disciplined, it should’ve been me.”

He absorbed the fallout and filed for an extension of his own posting to make it right. After the investigator left, I stood in the tent with the smell of disinfectant thick around me.

I watched Leo as he worked through the medical reports, and something tightened in my throat.

That was the night we officially got together.