Dominic and I sat together for a while. After he spoke, nobody else got up after him. A lot of the crowd talked quietly in their seats. Then there were a steady stream of uniforms going up to visit dad's casket and that's when I escaped the front row. I didn't want to watch all those in attendance salute my father one final time. I walked to the back of the room and took a seat in the couch against the back wall.

Just as I was finally starting to settle the emotional storm that was brewing inside me, Ryan walked up to me. I stood from the couch as he shook my hand.

"I think we've worked together enough for a hug." Ryan said and I sighed as we pulled each other into a hug. The hug probably lasted a little too long but neither of us minded. When he pulled away Ryan gave me a small smile.

"I also wanted to say thank you for saving that mission. It was a good win for us when it looked like we were going to get pulled with nothing." Ryan said.

"We were stuck on that roof all day; I wasn't going to be happy coming home empty handed. Getting to fire the shot myself made it worth it." I said.

"I don't doubt that will be the last time we work together Eagle. But we are going to take our leave. My team and I have a flight to catch back over there." Ryan said.

"It was nice to see you Ryan, thank you again for coming and for the shadow box. It really means a lot." I said and held out my hand.

"Like I said before, Major was the best I've ever worked for and he deserved the best especially now." Ryan said and shook my hand.

He didn't say anything else as he walked out the door. The rest of Alpha team was right behind him. All of the guys shook my hand as they left and once they were gone, I took my seat on the couch again. The funeral home was like a revolving door for a while. A lot of soldiers in uniform came and went as I took it all in from the couch in the back.

Some time later I felt someone sit down next to me and I turned to see Mallory sitting next to me. Her blonde hair falling in waves that stand out from her black dress shirt.

"Even though I've explained it about a hundred times to Logan that he needs to be quiet and respectful, he is too excited to sit still. Your friend Robert really took to him and has answered so many of his questions. Do you think I can borrow him for a while to entertain Logan until he crashes?" Mallory chuckled as we watched Logan sitting next to Rob.

"That's because Rob's a dad at heart. He's a sucker for kids. His daughter is probably Logans age and he only got to see them for a day when we came home before he left again." I answered.

"You were away?" Mallory asked.

"Yea, we were in the middle of a deployment, just got back to base from a mission actually when I got the phone call. I flew here right from base overseas, Rob and Morgan at least got to go home for a day before coming here." I answered.

"That explains the" Mallory said and pointed to the cuts on my face. I nodded and tried to piece together what to do to get away from her.

"Are you okay though? Like were you hurt anywhere else other then that?" Mal asked sounding concerned.

"Oh so now you care?" I asked and gave her one of my resting bitch faces.

"I've never stopped Daniella." Mal said.

"No, you don't get to do this, not now, not after all this time." I said and slid all the way to the other end of the couch trying to keep my decorum.

"Well it wasn't like we could talk about anything; you left and didn't come back." Mallory said and moved closer to me.

"And who's fault was that?" I hissed and got up off the couch leaving Mallory behind.

Just before I could get back to the sitting room, I felt a rough tug on my elbow and I was pulled out the side door. Once we were outside I easily shook Mallory off and glared at her.

"Are you ever going to let that go?" Mallory asked and blinked a few times at the sudden sunlight in her eyes.

"No, I'm not. We did everything together. You were basically living at my house during senior year together. Then you go to prom with fucken Troy of all people, and I find out you were out with him, in a relationship, all of senior year while you were still with me! But you still asked me to stay when you knew how much going into the army was my dream. I've been a skeleton in your closet for long enough, I won't be anymore. So I asked you, me or him, and when I said I still going to go to boot camp, you told me to leave and never come back."

Finally, I hit my limit. After all the stress from dads passing and wake and seeing Mallory all these years later, I've had enough of walking on egg shells. This blow up needed to happen if we were going to keep running into each other for my own sanity.

"You were making me decide to come out to my family who would have kicked me out, leaving me with nothing to go to college with, while you were gone at boot camp for God knows how long, only to be deployed not much afterwards. How could I do that? How could I choice you for you to end up half way around the world getting shot at and not knowing if you would make it home? I would have been left with nothing." Mallory said with fire in her eyes.

"We had a plan! You had a lot of scholarship money so most of your tuition was covered, you could have taken a loan out to dorm on campus while I was away and then when I came home from my first deployment we would have gotten an apartment not far from school! My sign on bonus would have gone to paying back your loans. We had it all planned out Mallory!" I almost yelled back.

"But you still would have been gone! I would have been alone with no family." Mallory countered.

"You had my family! My Mom, Dad, Peyton, fucken Dominic and you can't tell me now that you didn't make friends when you went to school! You would have been fine; you just couldn't see past your own fear of being alone to see any of it." I said trying to simmer down.

"I thought you would have stayed if I asked and I did ask but you still left. I was hurt and didn't want to lose you in a war that was raging on for years already and saw so many service members getting hurt and killed. I just wanted you to stay Dani and be mine." Mallory said with tears in her eyes.

"I did leave, and I left because I didn't want to be half in and half out with you. I couldn't do it anymore Mal; it was killing me." I pleaded, I needed her to know how much it hurt for me to constantly be her secret. At first I was fine with it. Things were new and exciting in our relationship and we didn't want to share it with anybody else. But when I kept bringing it up that I wanted to share our status, Mallory always shut it down.

"I've been shot at, hurt, almost blown to bits by grenades, but I've still come home after each and every deployment because I'm really fucken good at what I do. Did you see in the paper the other day about the mission that took out an ISIS leader? That was me, not my team, not the Delta Special Forces team that went in to take him out, that was me, half a mile away on a roof top in 100 plus degree weather with my sniper rifle. I pulled the trigger and watched his skull get blown to bits because I'm that good. On our way out from that mission a grenade was thrown and landed close enough to blow me back so hard I ended up with a concussion. But I still came home!" I yelled at the end.

"Daniella!" Morgan's voice cut through the fog of my rampage and I almost stumbled backwards.

Morgan got in the middle of us and it was only then that I realized Mallory was shaking, but I couldn't tell if it was from my yelling or the contenting of the words. It took a second for me to calm down enough to realize Morgan has a death grip on my hand and the other is tapping my cheek to get me to focus on her. When my eyes connected with hers I could see the unease in them. It took me a few seconds to reign my emotions back in and when I did Morgan dropped her hand from my face but still left her other hand connected to mine, grounding me.

"I see. I'll just get Logan and we'll go." Mallory said.

It looked like all the fight drained from her eyes when they landed on Morgan's hand still intertwined with mine. Neither Morgan or I corrected her or pulled away as she walked past us back through the door. Morgan didn't say anything to me as I pulled her back inside the funeral home. It seamed like nobody inside heard us yelling thank God. When we got back to the sitting room, Mallory was standing with Logan attached to her hip, Rob and Monica standing not far from her.

"Gold Team, met out in the front room." I said and watched as all of my team members stood from their seats and walk out to the front room as I turned back to Mallory and Logan.

"Before you guys head out, I wanted to introduce you to my team. Maybe one day Logan, you'll take over my team for me." I said and gave him a smile before holding out my hand.

Logan didn't even hesitate before reaching out for my hand. Together we walked to the front room were my team assembled themselves. I could fell Mallory's eyes burn into my back as we walked down the line and I introduced Logan to my team. He got so excited to officially met everyone and he was smitten with Monica once he found out she's our demolitions expert. After we got through the line I bent down to his eye level.

"Anybody got a pen and paper?" I asked looking at my team. A few seconds later they gave me what I was looking for and I wrote my name and phone number down on the paper and held it out to Logan.

"I don't know how long I'll be here for but if you ever want to talk about the army you can call me okay?" I said and watched as Logan took the paper and saw my phone number on it. He didn't say anything but just plowed into my chest with a hug that almost knocked me over.

Even though Mallory and I were fighting again, I didn't want to forget about Logan. He's such a sweat kid and I wanted to make sure he had someone who supported him if he wanted to talk about the army. After living with Morgan all these years, I knew it was important to have someone around who supported your decision to join the military. When Logan pulled away from me I stood up and he stood at attention and gave me a salute. I smiled before snapping to attention to salute him back. After we broke Logan skipped over to Mallory holding the piece of paper like its his prized possession. Mallory gave me one final look before taking Logans hand and walking out of the door.

My team broke apart after that. The wake still had a good amount of brass around so I quietly made my way to the side exit again to really try and get control of my emotions. I got lucky the first time that nobody overheard Mallory and I yelling but I can't ever let myself get to that point again when other people are around. But it seams that no matter how many years have past, Mallory still knows how to push every single on of my buttons. Looks like some things never changed.

Morgan joined me outside a little while later. The heat of the July afternoon already had a thin layer of sweat starting to coat the back of my neck but I don't think I could handle going back inside the funeral parlor just yet.

"You need to tell me about her, now." Morgan said with some heat behind her words. If anybody else were around and heard her, you would think the words had a jealous heat to them. But I knew better, Morgan was mad and it was just brewing under the surface. I just couldn't tell if she was mad at me, Mallory, or this whole situation she just found herself in the middle of.

"Mallory is my ex-girlfriend. When we got to basic, it was right after our falling out. We had a whole plan to be together but she wouldn't come out to her family. They would have kicked her out and cut her off if they knew about our relationship. We had a plan for what we were going to do when that happened. But she never did it. She went to prom with her now husband and I found out that she was in a relationship with him our whole senior while I also was with her. When I found out about it, we had our last fight and when I told her I was still leaving for boot camp, she told me to leave and never come back." I said giving Morgan the cliff note version of what happened between us.

"She's the reason why you almost didn't make it through boot camp." Morgan said putting the pieces together and I only nodded. I heard Morgan sigh and in the blink of an eye, Morgan was standing right in front of me. Her hand cupped my cheek and forced me to look into her eyes.

"Just like I told you back then, I'll say it again. You need to check that baggage at the door because if you don't, it's going to get you killed Dani. But now, it's not just you. You have a team to lead, that will follow behind you to the end. It's your decisions that will keep them alive. So you can't let her presence get to you any more." Morgan said.

Her words brought me back to the first week of boot camp, barely getting through the motions. The drill instructors already on my case because I was falling behind. If I didn't get it together they were going to send me home. It didn't matter that at the time my father was a major, they would send me packing if I didn't start to get it together. Then one night, instead of Morgan climbing onto her bunk above me, she sat on the floor in front of me. Her words rang out and cut through the fog I was stuck in. It was those words that got me through the rest of our training.

I sighed and lean my forehead against Morgan's. The fingers that were running back and forth across my cheek bone stalled for a moment before continuing.

"You're right. Thank you for reminding me and for stopping me before, before I said something I couldn't take back." I said quietly.

"Any time. How about we get back in there and finish this thing off just like we started this journey, together." Morgan asked.

I nodded against Morgan's forehead and took one more breath before leaning back and wiping my face. Morgan gave me another second before together we walked back inside the funeral home and took our seats in front of the room again. There weren't many in uniform inside any more. It looks like the time has been passing while I haven't been paying attention. After sitting for a while, there was a lull in visitors to dads casket so I gave Morgan's thigh a squeeze and stood up.

The walk was short, barely ten steps and I was in front of my father again. Both of my hands grabbed the side walls of the casket as I took a few more seconds before looking down at him. This time when I looked down, the sides of dads casket were full of unit patches and challenge coins. Tears poured out of my eyes as I sank down onto the knee bench that's in front of the casket. It took a few seconds before I could lift my eyes again but when I did, I looked around the side wall and took in all of the different patches. What caught my eye though was the two patches at were pined to the lid of the casket above all the others, my unit and Morgan's.

It took a few more moments but when I looked down at dad, the rank on his shoulder lapels were different. Gone is the silver oak leaf, now a silver eagle sits in its place. I reached out and lightly ran my fingers over the eagle to make sure it was real. The hard cold metal greeted my fingers when they grazed over them and I barely held back a sob. Dad was posthumously promoted to Colonel. I think today takes the top of the list for worst days of my life.

a/n: Mad Woman by Taylor Swift is the song of the chapter and thought it was pretty fitting. Both are pretty mad at each other and thought this one would capture the tone of this chapter pretty well. be ready for heart ache next chapter as we are going to the burial. early update as tomorrow is mother's day and i will be busy entering. happy mother's day to all the moms out there we all wouldn't be here with out you.