“No,” he agreed. “But it’s possible.”
I watched Scout laugh quietly at something Ranger said. Watched Ghost disappear around the corner, already somewhere else mentally. Watched the compound exist in its strange, fractured version of normal.
“I’m scared it’ll come back,” I admitted. “The fear. The panic. That I’ll wake up one day and feel like I’m back in that room.”
Wrecker didn’t deny it. “It might.”
My stomach clenched.
“But,” he continued, “you won’t be alone in it. And it won’t erase the days you feel strong. Both things can exist.”
I nodded slowly.
“I don’t need you to protect me from the world,” I said. “I need you to stand next to me in it.”
His hand found mine. Firm. Certain.
“That,” he said, “I can do.”
We stood there as the sun climbed higher, the quiet settling into something less fragile.
Healing wasn’t linear.
But it was happening.
And for the first time, I trusted that even on the days it wasn’t, I’d still be okay.
Not because the fear was gone.
But because I wasn’t facing it alone.
33
WRECKER
The compound felt different in the mornings now.
Not quieter. Not safer. Just… steadier.
Like the place had taken a hit and adjusted instead of splintering. Men moved with purpose again. Routines snapped back into place. The smell of coffee and oil and gun cleaner mixed in the air like it always had, but underneath it was something new. A shared understanding.
We survived.
Didn’t mean we were done. Just meant we were still standing.
Amanda sat at the long table near the windows, boots planted on the rung beneath her chair, elbows braced as she worked through a stack of range logs Ranger had handed her earlier. Her hair was pulled back, face bare, jaw set in concentration.
She looked… solid.
Not untouched. Not magically healed. But present in her own body in a way she hadn’t been when this started.
I watched her for a second longer than necessary.
She felt it. Looked up. One brow lifted.
“What?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
