“You don’t mean that,” she whispers.
I step closer. My voice drops. “Don’t I?”
We’re eye to eye now. Too close. Too much history choking the air between us.
“I left you in that kitchen for a reason, Butterfly,” I say, voice like a blade. “You weren’t supposed to follow me.”
“I didn’t follow you,” she says, quiet but fierce. “I enlisted.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” she snaps. “It’s not. I didn’t come here for you.”
I smirk. “Sure. That’s why you’re standing in this tent, watching me like you still dream about my mouth.”
She gasps.
Good.
Let it sting.
I turn my back on her. “This was a mistake.”
“You don’t get to say that,” she breathes.
I spin around. “I do when I’m the one who had to walk away.”
“You didn’t walk. You ran. And you didn’t even say goodbye.”
I freeze and that’s when I feel it. That familiar split down the middle of me. The part that wants to grab her by the throat and scream don’t ever leave again, and the part that wants to shove her out of this tent so I never have to feel this again.
So I choose the part that hurts her because it’s safer. Easier to bleed her than admit I’m the one dying.
“I didn’t say goodbye,” I say coldly, “because I didn’t give a fuck.”
Silence.
It’s worse than a slap.
Her hand curls at her side. Her eyes well up—but she doesn’t let them fall.
Not yet.
She’s too proud for that.
“Got it,” she says softly.
I swear to God, I feel something crack but I don’t stop because if I stop, I’ll touch her and if I touch her, I’ll never let go.
So I walk past her.
Out into the heat. The dust. The silence.
Where it’s easier to be the bastard than the boy who still dreams about her every fucking night.
I don’t stop walking until the air burns my lungs.
The sun’s dropped behind the mountains, but it’s still hot as hell—still smells like sand, diesel, blood. The sky is a dead purple bruise. Gunfire pops in the distance — controlled, routine, the rhythm of another unit training two clicks out.
