32
Jase
Location: Safehouse — Undisclosed
Time: 09:12
The quiet feels unreal after everything that just happened—the gunfire, the blood, the moment I thought I might lose her. Now it’s just stillness.
I sit on the edge of the bed, tightening the fresh bandage around my side. It’s better than before, but not by much. The pain is deep and constant, a reminder I shouldn’t even be on my feet right now.
“You’re doing that wrong.”
Her voice is soft, but it hits me harder than anything else has today.
I don’t look up right away. “Am I?”
“Yeah.” Mila steps into the room, already crossing toward me. She takes the bandage from my hands like it belongs to her. “Sit still.”
I almost smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her fingers brush my side as she adjusts the wrap—careful, steady, but not distant. Nothing about this feels distant anymore.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she says quietly.
There it is.
I let out a slow breath. “Yeah. Not my best decision.”
Her hands pause for just a second. “That’s not what I meant.”
I look up then, really look at her. There’s a bruise along her arm, tension still in the way she holds herself—but she’s here. Alive. Still fighting.
“I know,” I say.
Silence stretches between us, heavy but not uncomfortable.
“You could’ve died,” she says.
“So could you.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “That’s different.”
“It’s not.”
The truth lands between us, sharp and unavoidable. She knows it.
Her hands fall away from the bandage, but she doesn’t step back. “You don’t get to risk everything for me.”
I stand slowly, ignoring the pull in my side. “And you don’t get to decide that for me.”
We’re close now. Too close.
“This isn’t how this works,” she says.
“Then tell me how it does.”
She opens her mouth, then stops. Because she doesn’t have an answer—or she doesn’t want to say it.
