I step closer before I even realize I’m doing it.
“Yes,” I answer. “You do.”
We’re standing too close now.
Close enough that I can smell her soap. Clean and faintly floral, softened by the damp heat still clinging to her skin. Close enough that if I moved an inch, I’d touch her. Close enough that the room feels smaller for it.
Neither of us does.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she murmurs. “About… everything. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of it with my dad.”
“You didn’t,” I reply. “I walked into it willingly.”
Her lips part slightly, like she didn’t expect that answer and maybe hates how much it matters.
“I never asked you to,” she says.
“I know.”
That’s the problem. She never asks. She never has to. I keep showing up anyway.
I hesitate, then lift my hand slowly, giving her time to stop me.
She doesn’t.
My fingers brush her wrist first. Light. Testing. Her pulse jumps beneath my fingertips. When she doesn’t pull away, I slide my hand up, resting it gently against her forearm.
She exhales.
So do I.
The contact is almost nothing. It feels like everything.
“Delilah,” I say quietly. “If this is just… adrenaline, or fear, or trying to hold on to the nearest solid thing—”
“It’s not,” she interrupts. There’s no sharpness in it. Just certainty. “I’ve had plenty of both. This feels different.”
I search her face. “How?”
Her eyes don’t leave mine. “Like I’m… here,” she whispers. “Not stuck somewhere else. Like when I’m with you, my brain finally shuts up.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
“That’s dangerous,” I murmur roughly.
“I know.”
We both do.
That’s what makes the silence after it feel so brutal. So honest. There’s no pretending this is simple. No pretending I can be just her captain and she can be just another soldier and we’ll both walk away from this untouched. That lie died a long time ago. We’re just the last two people to stop stepping over its body.
She steps closer.
Now there’s no space between us.
Her hand lifts, hesitates, then rests lightly against my chest, right over my heart.
It’s like someone flips a switch.
