The weight of ashes

Elise Monroe, 24, is visiting her older sister in rural Montana when she meets Sergeant Caleb Rhoads, a 26-year-old Marine sniper on emergency bereavement leave. He's cold-eyed, sleep-deprived, and not the kind of man you want to get close to - but Elise is drawn to something quiet in him. Not the uniform. The silence. The restraint.

He notices her first. He tries not to.

What begins with shared cigarettes and late-night silences builds into something charged and unspoken - a connection neither of them names. They don't sleep together. They don't kiss. But on the last night before he returns to Iraq, she sits with him on the hood of his truck until dawn.

Two years later, Elise - now a trained Army combat medic - is deployed to Iraq. When she's transferred to a remote forward operating base near Fallujah, she hears that a Marine sniper unit has just arrived.