I swallow. The answer lands deeper than I expect. Not because I need his approval. Because I know he means it. Because Jon doesn’t hand out softness carelessly, not even disguised as observation.
“You’re not mad I’m here,” he continues. “Not like before.”
I lean one hip against the bedframe, still holding his hand because neither of us has found a reason to let go yet. “I realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t need the field to prove I belong.” The words come easier than they would have a week ago. Maybe because I’ve had time to sit with them. Maybe because saying them to him matters in a way I don’t want to examine too closely. “I belong because I survived it.”
His jaw tightens slightly at that word.
Survived.
I know he still carries the guilt of not getting to me fast enough. Of not stopping what happened. Of not killing Mikhail himself. It lives in the way he watches me when I’m too quiet. In how quickly his hands find me when my breathing changes. In the way he still acts like every bruise on me is a failure he should’ve prevented.
But that isn’t mine to carry for him.
“You don’t have to keep chasing ghosts,” I tell him quietly. “You can let some of it go.”
He studies my face like he’s trying to memorize it. Like maybe he thinks if he looks hard enough, he’ll figure out how I came outof any of this still able to sit here and say something gentle to him.
“You’re not angry about King?” he asks.
“I was,” I answer honestly. “I still don’t like that he took the choice away.” I glance down at the bandage around his hand, smoothing the last edge into place. “But revenge isn’t the same as healing.”
That lands.
I can see it in the way his mouth shifts, the way his grip on my fingers loosens not from disinterest but because the truth of it stings.
He nods slowly. “I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
He huffs faintly, the closest thing to amusement he’s managed in the last two minutes. “About what comes next.”
“For Greenport?”
“For us.”
The word sends heat through me, low and steady.
For us.
Not a fantasy. Not a near-kiss. Not the ache of a shared bed and music through earbuds and all the fragile, stolen moments in between. A future-shaped phrase spoken out loud in the middle of a med bay full of half-healed soldiers and humming machines.
“There’s always another mission,” I say, because somebody has to say it. Because reality doesn’t disappear just because he looked at me like that.
“Not forever.”
I look at him fully now.
The idea hangs between us.
A future that isn’t built on hiding, adrenaline, or war.
Just…built.
The thought feels so big it almost doesn’t fit in the room.
