My body betrays me. Heat blooms low in my belly even as tears sting my eyes. “Dax,” I whisper, shaking. “You’ll regret this tomorrow.”
He shakes his head, slow and certain. His hand slides from my wrist to my waist, pulling me even closer, crushing me against him like he wants to fuse us together. “I’ll regret nothing but this—” his lips brush mine, not a kiss, just a promise, raw and jagged—“letting you go again.”
“No, Dax,” I choke, the words shaking as much as my hands against his chest. “I can’t. I can’t do this. That’s not why I’m here.”
My eyes burn, and I hate myself for it, but the tears slip free anyway. “You left me,” I whisper, broken. “You left me to live without you, and do you have any idea what that feels like? To breathe every fucking day like your lungs are full of glass because the only person you wanted to come back never did?”
His jaw locks. The flicker in his eyes is violent—too violent.
“You think I wanted that?” His voice cuts, low and dangerous. “You think I walked away because I didn’t need you?”
I shake my head hard, tears running down my cheeks. “You left me, Dax. That’s all I know. You left me.”
Something in him snaps.
Before I can move, his arm bands around my waist, lifting me like I weigh nothing. My scream tears out, panicked, furious, desperate.
“Put me down!” I claw at his back, fists pounding against him. “Dax! Put me the fuck down!”
He doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t listen. His grip only tightens, my body thrown over his shoulder like I’m his fucking prize, like I belong to him whether I fight or not.
“You think I can’t hear you?” His voice rumbles through me, rough, ragged. “I hear every word. Every scream. Every sob. But you’re still mine.”
My fists slam harder against him, but my body shakes with something I don’t want to admit—fear tangled with the same ache that’s been clawing at me since the day he walked out of my life.
He pushes through the tent flap, boots pounding across the compound like the whole fucking world belongs to him. Soldiersglance up, smirk, look away fast. No one stops him. No one would dare.
“Dax—please!” My voice cracks into a sob. “Don’t do this?—”
“Don’t what?” he growls, not slowing. “Don’t remind you who you belong to? Don’t make you look me in the eye and admit you never stopped wanting me? Don’t carry you somewhere you can’t fucking hide?”
And then he’s shoving through another door, the air inside cooler, darker, different. A place not meant for softness, but the moment he kicks it shut behind us, my breath catches like it’s been ripped from my lungs.
Because he’s right.
He’s taken me somewhere I can’t hide.
And for the first time since he left me, it feels like I’m standing on the edge of something I’ll never come back from.
The slam of the door echoes like a gunshot.
Dust shakes free from the rafters. The sound reverberates through the hollowed-out chapel, a structure swallowed by war—its beams blackened, its roof half-missing, its walls cracked wide enough for moonlight to pour in like fractured silver.
He drops me onto my feet so suddenly my knees buckle, my palms smacking against his chest just to stay upright. My heart’s a riot, my throat raw from screaming, but when I finally see where he’s dragged me?—
I freeze.
The old chapel.
What’s left of it anyway.
Half the roof blown out, dust swirling down in weak shafts of moonlight. The pews are broken, splintered. Shards of stained glass litter the floor like confetti for a funeral no one attended.
It smells like earth and ash and old prayers.
“Why here?” My voice trembles, cracking in the middle.
“Because it’s empty,” he snaps, pacing like a caged animal, his fists curling and uncurling. “Because no one can hear you tell me to let you go.”
