“You’re real,” I choke, the sound barely human. “Jesus Christ. You’re really here.”
Something old and dangerous and buried cracks open inside me—something I’ve kept locked down for years, something that tastes like grief and hope and fear all tangled together in one corrosive breath.
“I thought I made you up,” I admit, the confession dragging its claws up my throat. “I thought you were just another ghost my head conjured because it needed something soft. Something I didn’t destroy.”
“You didn’t destroy me,” she says softly, gently, like she doesn’t know how close those words come to killing me.
“I always destroy,” I rasp. “I ruin anything good. I bleed on anything clean. And you—fuck, Cassandra—you were the only thing that ever made me feel like maybe I wasn’t already dead.”
She moves closer.
Carefully.
Softly.
Like she’s approaching something wounded and wild, something that bites even when it wants to be touched.
“Dax—”
“I see things that aren’t real,” I grit out. “I hear things that aren’t happening. I smell smoke that isn’t there. My gun’s in my hand even when I’m unarmed. And when it finally goes quiet—when the world stops screaming—I hear it anyway.”
“I know,” she whispers, and I swear her voice is the only steady thing in the room.
Her hand touches my cheek—light, warm, unbearably gentle—and that’s when the truth sinks in, full and sharp and undeniable.
“You were never supposed to be real,” I whisper. “You were supposed to be a hallucination. A fever dream. Not here. Not touching me like you’re not scared.”
“I am scared,” she says, eyes shining. “But I’m more scared of you forgetting how to feel.”
Silence stretches between us.
Heavy.
Painful.
Alive in a way nothing else has been for years.
I lift my hand and touch her mouth—soft, trembling, reverent—like if I don’t anchor myself to this moment, she’ll disappear like every other good thing I’ve ever had ripped from me.
“You’re real,” I whisper again, needing the words like oxygen.
But reality is a knife, and it sinks in slow.
“I shouldn’t have touched you,” I say suddenly, the bottom dropping out of my voice, leaving it hollow and wrecked. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
“Dax—”
“No.” I snap back from her like her skin is fire and I’ve just remembered I’m made of gasoline. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“You thought I was a dream?” she asks, voice trembling, cracking at the centre.
I don’t answer.
Because the truth is too fucking cruel.
“I was drunk,” I say instead, pacing, breathing like I’m choking on my own lungs. “Jesus, I was so fucking drunk. I thought my head was playing tricks. I thought—fuck—I thought you weren’t real.”
“So the only reason you kissed me,” she whispers, “is because you thought you were hallucinating?”
