KALLUM
The north field was quiet in the morning light.
I moved through the tall grass, resetting pressure plates my hands remembered from the night. Three of them had triggered. Three bodies to step around, already drawing the attention of small scavengers that scattered at my approach. I left them where they lay. Let the others find them when they came back. Let them see what waited.
My hands knew the work. Check the mechanism. Replace the charge. Reset the trigger. Bury it again, smooth the soil, make it invisible.
My hands knew the work, but my mind was somewhere else.
The kitchen. The table. The warmth of ceramic against my palms and the smell of cold tea neither of us had touched.
Her knee against mine.
Warmth seeping through fabric. The press of her leg, solid and real. She hadn’t pulled away. I’d given her every opportunity, kept the touch light enough to be accidental, and she didn’t pull away.
What happens after?
Her voice, quiet and raw. Her eyes, green and steady, asking something she didn’t have words for. Something I didn’t have an answer to.
I’d pressed harder against her knee instead. Let my body say what my mouth couldn’t.
And she’d stayed.
I crouched beside a sensor node, checking the connections. Made myself focus. The morning sun warmed my back. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called out, unaware that the grass around it was planted with death.
But the focus wouldn’t hold. It kept slipping back to her.
The way she’d looked at me across the table. The tremor in her hands she’d tried to hide. The way her breath had changed when my knee pressed harder, the slight catch I’d seen in the pulse at her throat.
I’d wanted to reach across the table. Cup her face in my hands. Pull her forward and find out if her mouth was as warm as her knee, if she tasted like the tea she hadn’t drunk, if she’d make a sound when I kissed her.
The sensor slipped in my grip. I caught it before it hit the ground, fingers tightening on the casing.
Focus.
This wasn’t the time. Wasn’t the place. And still, I was crouched in a field of bodies thinking about the sound she might make if I kissed her.
I set the sensor carefully. Covered it with soil. Moved to the next position.
Tried not to think about her mouth.
Footsteps behind me.Light, deliberate. A rhythm I’d learned over five days of sharing her space.
I knew it was her before I turned. Knew the weight of her step, the length of her stride. My body knew she was there, and something in my chest shifted at the knowledge.
“Breakfast.” She crouched beside me, close enough that her sleeve brushed my arm. “And thoughts on the eastern approach.”
I made myself keep my eyes on the sensor. If I looked at her now, this close, with the morning light catching her hair and the smell of her filling my lungs, I’d do something stupid.
“You should have been a tactician.”
“I was a survivor first.”
She held out a metal cup. Steam rose from the surface, curling in the cold air.
I took it. Let my fingers brush hers as the cup changed hands.
Her skin was warm. Rougher than it looked, callused from years of work. I felt the texture of her palm against my fingertips, and I let the touch linger. A half-second longer than necessary. Long enough that it couldn’t be accidental.
