“You think you’re the only one allowed to bleed?” Her whisper cuts deep. “You think you’re the only one who gets to drown?”
I close my eyes. Not because I want to, but because the weight of hers is too much. The fury. The grief. The love she won’t admit but can’t fucking hide.
Her thumb brushes over my knuckles, gentle when nothing else in this place is.
“You stupid bastard,” she chokes. “I was ready to let you go once. I can’t do it again. I won’t.”
My chest jerks. A cough tears through me, hot, wet. Pain flares like fire stitched into my ribs. She’s there instantly—tilting me, pressing gauze, whispering it’s okay, it’s okay even though it’s not.
When the spasm eases, I’m wrecked. My body’s a corpse barely strung together, but my voice finally cracks out one word.
“Why?”
She freezes. “Why what?”
“Why… stay?” My throat rasps, raw, every syllable clawing. “Why not… run?”
Her breath stutters. She leans down, so close I feel her tears hit my skin, hot and relentless. “Because even when you leave,” she whispers, voice shredded, “I still fucking love you.”
It guts me. More than the blast. More than the war because I don’t deserve it and I can’t live without it.
My fingers twitch around hers, the only strength I’ve got left. My lips crack, the word slipping out like confession, like surrender, like the only truth I’ll ever own.
“Butterfly…”
Her head bows, her hair brushing my face, her body trembling against mine as the machines keep screaming I’m alive and for the first time, I almost believe them.
The drugs hit slow. Heavy.
Not enough to silence the pain, just enough to turn it into something else.
Thick. Warped. Like the edges of me are blurring.
I blink—and the ceiling isn’t the ceiling anymore.
It’s sky. Black. Burning. The blast still in my bones.
I hear Harris screaming.
Reese coughing blood.
Torres dragging me through hell by the straps of my vest.
And over it—her voice.
“Breathe with me, Dax.”
My chest jerks. I try. I drag in smoke instead. Choke. Gag. My ribs splinter.
Her hands press down, sharp, frantic.
Not Cassandra’s hands. Not here. Not real.
But my mind doesn’t care.
She’s crouched over me in the crater, scrubs covered in dust, eyes wide, wet, breaking.
“Don’t you dare leave me. Not like this.”
