The moonlight catches his face—hollow cheeks, the haunted blue of his eyes, the sweat slicking his neck. He looks like a soldier, like a sinner, like a man who’s been living with ghosts too long.
“Dax—”
“Don’t say my name like that.” He whirls on me, eyes wild, voice sharp. “Like you’re breaking. Like I’m the one who put the cracks there.”
“You did.” My voice shatters, raw. “You fucking did.”
He flinches. Just slightly.
Then he’s moving closer, boots crunching over glass, every step deliberate. He looks terrifying like this, drunk and desperate, but it’s the way his voice cracks that undoes me.
“I told myself I could forget you,” he rasps. “That if I drank enough, fucked enough, bled enough—I’d burn you out of my system. But you’re still here. You’re in every fucking breath, Butterfly.”
His words slice me open, cruel and beautiful all at once.
“You left me,” I whisper again, tears spilling down my cheeks.
He closes the distance in one breath, one heartbeat, one impossible second, his hand gripping my wrist and pulling me flush against his chest. His voice is a broken growl against my ear. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever been scared to lose.”
I gasp, my knees weakening, my body betraying me as much as my heart.
The ruined chapel groans around us, wind sneaking through the cracks, carrying the scent of dust and blood and something holy turned unholy.
And all I can think—is that he’s right.
There’s no hiding here.
Not from him.
Not from me.
Not from the war we made of each other.
His breath is hot against my ear, his chest solid against mine, and it’s everything I wanted, everything I swore I wouldn’t beg for again—And it terrifies me.
“Don’t,” I choke out, trying to shove him back, but my hands won’t push hard enough. They’re traitors, clutching his shirt like they still remember the way he felt when he kissed me under the stars.
“Don’t what?” His voice is hoarse, dangerous. “Don’t tell you the truth? Don’t fucking touch you when you’re looking at me like you’re drowning?”
“You’ll leave.” The words tear out before I can stop them, small and sharp like glass in my throat. “You’ll break me all over again, Dax. You’ll rip me open and then you’ll walk away, and I can’t?—”
He grabs my jaw, forces me to meet the storm in his eyes.
“You think I haven’t already left a trail of bodies behind me?” His voice shakes, raw. “You think I don’t know what I did to you?”
“Then why are you doing it again?” I whisper, tears hot on my cheeks.
His thumb brushes across my skin, and for a second—just a second—he’s soft. His lips tremble like he’s about to kiss me, and I almost lean in, I almost fall.
But then the fear rips me back.
“I’ll fall,” I cry, shoving his chest now, harder this time, though he doesn’t move an inch. “And you won’t catch me, Dax. You never fucking do.”
His jaw clenches, his body taut with something like pain, something like rage, and his grip on me doesn’t loosen.
“Goddamn it, Butterfly,” he growls, voice cracking. “What if I’m the one who’s scared you won’t catch me?”
My heart stutters.
