She’s really here and I can’t breathe.
“I told you to stay away from me,” I whisper, voice cracked open like the rest of me.
She sets down her med kit, snaps on gloves, wipes a tear before it falls.
“And I told you I wasn’t leaving you again.”
Her hands are on me before I can stop her—ripping my vest off, pressing gauze against the split in my side.
Every touch is a curse. Every press of her fingers burns worse than the shrapnel.
I flinch.
Not from the pain.
From her.
From the way my chest remembers her weight.
From the way my throat aches to say something—anything—that isn’t cruel.
“You think I wanted this?” I bite, jaw clenched. “You think I wanted you to follow me into this hellhole?”
“I didn’t follow you.”
“The fuck you didn’t.”
“You left me.”
I go still.
Her voice breaks on the words.
Just slightly.
“You left me in that kitchen, bleeding and broken, without so much as a real goodbye.”
“I said goodbye.”
“No, Dax.” She meets my eyes. “You said butterfly. And then you vanished.”
I almost laugh.
Almost because she doesn’t get it. She never did.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t love her. I left because I did because this war was always going to kill one of us and I’d rather it be me but now she’s here, in the middle of it, with blood under her nails and heartbreak in her eyes and I don’t know whether to scream or hold her or shove her back out the tent and into the safe world she was never meant to leave.
“You don’t belong here,” I rasp.
“Neither do you.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Maybe I don’t care anymore.”
Something cracks inside me at that.
She finishes dressing the wound. Pulls the gauze tight. Tapes it with trembling fingers.
