Just… a reason.
A single, fucking reason why I wasn’t enough.
He’s gone now.
Both of them and I sit there like a fucking idiot in the half-dark, surrounded by gauze, sand, and silence.
My ribs hurt like I’ve been hit from the inside out.
Not from a blast. Not from the war. From him. From me. From the part of me that looked into Torres’s warm, waiting eyes and still couldn’t say yes and I should’ve. God, I should’ve.
Torres is hot as fucking sin—chocolate skin and crooked grin, hands that look like they’ve held a thousand people together and a voice that makes you feel like maybe—just maybe—you could be safe again. He smells like cedar and sweat, wears his dog tags like they mean something, and when he laughs?
It sounds like hope.
The kind that doesn’t come easy out here.
The kind I used to have before a pair of icy blue eyes looked through me like I was just another piece of war he wanted to forget.
And I still didn’t say yes.
I should’ve flirted back. I should’ve said something cool. Something effortless. Something that would’ve made me feel like I was healing, like I wasn’t still stitched together with someone else’s goodbye.
Instead, I froze.
Like a coward.
Like a girl still hoping the ghost outside the door will come back as the man she remembers.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Cassandra.”
I whisper it to no one, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until colours burst like pain behind my lids.
He’s not coming back.
Not really.
Not the way I want.
The Dax I knew—the Dax who kissed me like it hurt not to, who held me in his kitchen like I was the only soft thing in his life worth keeping—that Dax is gone.
Replaced by a man made of gunpowder and guilt.
A man who can barely look at me without setting his own fuse.
And I still fucking want him.
I groan and fall back onto the cot, staring up at the sagging canvas ceiling, trying to breathe through the tightness in my chest.
It’s not fair.
Torres is kind. Torres is solid. Torres calls me Monroe in that stupid flirt voice like he’s trying not to smile, and he makes the world feel less heavy, even if only for a second but I’d still trade all of that for one second with Dax looking at me like I’m his again.
Even if he never will.
My hands curl into the thin blanket beneath me.
I think about saying yes next time. Letting Torres take me somewhere, even if it’s just ten feet outside the med tent under the stars.
