So I force my fingers to curl. Weak. Pathetic. But enough.
Her eyes widen. A sob tears out of her throat as she clutches my hand tighter.
“You’re here,” she breathes, forehead pressing to mine, her tears soaking into my skin. “You’re still here.”
My chest rattles, a broken exhale pushing through the tube. Her hand cups my cheek instantly, grounding me, anchoring me to the light bleeding back in around the edges.
Her lips brush my temple—soft, desperate, trembling.
“You don’t get to leave me again,” she whispers into my skin. “Do you hear me, Kingston? You don’t get to.”
I blink slow, heavy, but I lock on her. The only thing I can give her. The only vow I can make without words.
Her.
Always her.
And for the first time since the blast, the fear lifts because if she’s here, pouring her heart into me—then maybe I’m not drowning anymore.
Maybe I’m fighting.
Her voice doesn’t stop.
It fills the room like oxygen, like she’s breathing for me because my body’s too broken to do it on its own.
“I should hate you,” she whispers, shaking against me, her hair falling loose across my cheek. “God knows I tried. But even when I hated you, I still loved you. Do you understand that? You’ve wrecked me so bad there isn’t a version of me that doesn’t belong to you.”
Her thumb strokes across my jaw, careful, trembling, tracing the bruises blooming under my skin like she’s memorising them.
“I stayed with Mason all night,” she admits, voice cracking. “He told me you’ve been bleeding since the day you left me. He told me you never stopped, that I was the only thing you still—” Her words hitch. She swallows, chokes them down, then spits them out anyway. “The only thing you still live for.”
My chest jerks with the shallowest rise, the weakest protest. Not enough. Never enough.
Her tears drip warm against my face.
“You left me in that kitchen, and I swore I’d never forgive you. I swore I’d never let you touch me again. But then you kissed me in that chapel, and I realised I’d been lying to myself every fucking day since you walked out.”
Her forehead presses to mine, soft and shaking, her breath hot on my lips though the tube keeps them apart.
“I love you, Dax. I love you in ways that make no sense, in ways that terrify me. And I don’t care if you think you’ll ruin me. I don’t care if you think you’re poison. You’re mine. Do you hear me? Mine. And if you go, if you let this war take you from me, then it takes me too.”
Her words break into a sob that tears her whole body forward until she’s clinging to me like she can hold me in place by force. Her nails dig into my arm, her tears soaking the sheet between us.
The monitor keeps its steady beat.
Beep.
Beep.
Proof.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t tell her I hear every word. But my hand twitches again, the smallest rebellion, the only defiance I can manage.
Her sob shudders into a laugh, raw and desperate.
“That’s enough,” she whispers fiercely, pressing my hand to her heart. “That’s all I need. Just don’t stop fighting. Don’t you dare stop, Kingston.”
Her lips brush my forehead, the faintest kiss, trembling and in the dark between pain and sleep, I cling to the sound of her voice because as long as she’s pouring herself into me, maybe I’m not lost.
