He says it like it cost him something to admit it.
Like he had to cut it out from a part of himself he doesn’t let anyone touch.
You’ve already marked me.
It hits like a slow bullet, twisting as it sinks in. I want to believe him. I want to live in the space that sentence builds. But belief feels dangerous. Hope feels fatal.
Thirty days is not forever.
Thirty days is barely a bruise.
And Dax Kingston doesn’t come with promises — only warnings.
“I’m not a tattoo,” I whisper, eyes lifting to the dimming stars. “You can’t carry me around on your skin and forget the pain that came with it.”
“No,” he breathes, fingers slipping to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, forehead to forehead, breath mingling with mine. “You’re not a tattoo, butterfly.”
His grip tightens, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
“You’re a fucking scar.”
His voice is raw. Gravel and confession. Blood and memory.
“You’re under my skin. Permanent. Ugly. Beautiful. Something I’ll never forget surviving.”
I close my eyes because it’s too much and not enough all at once.
“You’re going to leave,” I whisper. “And I’m going to stay. And we’re both going to pretend this wasn’t the most real thing either of us ever felt.”
“No,” he says, so soft it bruises. “No pretending.”
He kisses me then — soft, impossibly soft, the gentleness a kind of apology, a kind of goodbye, a kind of prayer. Like he’s trying to memorise the exact way my lips shape his name.
And when he pulls back, the ache in his eyes nearly destroys me.
The grief.
The knowing.
The goodbye already blooming in his chest.
“Stay the night?” I breathe, so quietly I’m not even sure it leaves my mouth.
He doesn’t speak.
He just pulls me into his chest, arms tightening around me like he’s terrified I’ll vanish with the sunrise, holding me with the kind of desperation that feels like truth.
Like love disguised as fear.
Like the last night before the world breaks.
The sun is a cruel thing.
It warms my skin like nothing has changed, like the night didn’t peel back a piece of me and place it trembling in his hands, like it didn’t mark me in ways daylight has no business touching.
I wake tangled in his scent — salt, skin, sleep, and something darker that clings to him like a shadow he’ll never outrun. My cheek rests on his chest; his arm is locked around my waist as if even unconscious, he’s bracing for the moment I disappear. As if losing me is a nightmare he’s still trapped inside.
I don’t move.
