The last strip goes on smooth and flat, and I don't let go.
"The wedding," I say, and the word lands between us like a grenade I've been carrying since the reception.
He stiffens. "What about it?"
"You know what about it." I wrap the gauze around his palm, tight enough to hold, careful enough not to restrict. Six years of wrapping wounds in field hospitals, in FOBs, in the back of armored vehicles with dust in my teeth and someone's blood on my hands. I can dress a wound in my sleep. I can do it while my heart hammers against my ribs and his skin burns under my fingers and every cell in my body screams at me to lean closer or pull back or do anything except sit here in this purgatory of light touching.
He catches the pivot. "Is that why you don't date? The military thing?"
"I date."
"Tourist hookups don't count."
I tie off the gauze and sit back on my heels, meeting his eyes. "Like you're one to talk about hookups, Stone. You had that blonde's number before midnight at Sarah's wedding."
His expression changes. The easy charm falls away, and underneath it I see a version of Finn I've only caught in flashes.
"I didn't get her number."
"I saw you—"
"You saw me trying to forget you." His voice lands flat and certain, no humor in it at all. "But it didn't work."
My breath catches. The gauze roll sits loose in my lap, unwinding against my knee, and I can't make myself pick it up.
"What?"
"You kissed me and then you disappeared. By the time I went looking, you were gone." He draws his bandaged hand back, rests it on his knee, and the muscles in his forearm cord tight. "So yeah, I tried to move on. For about two hours. Then I went home alone and thought about you instead."
Neither of us moves. A gust slams the building hard enough to rattle the plywood over the windows, and I still don't move.
My fingers tremble against my thighs. I press them flat. "You're lying."
"Why would I lie?"
"And you don't even know me that's what you're going to say?"
"Well, you don't."
"I know you take your coffee black but you steal the creamer when you think nobody's looking. I know you hum when you're stitching and you don't realize you do it. I know you call your mom every Sunday at seven even when Sarah's dragging you to a cookout." He leans forward. "I know you laugh different when something's actually funny versus when you're being polite, and I know which one I got in that garden. So don't tell me I don't know you."
My mouth opens. Closes. I have no answer for that because every single thing he listed is true, and I didn't think he noticed any of it.
"Don't." My voice cracks on the word.
"Don't what?"
"Don't do this to me. Not here. Not when I can't—"
"Jess, I—" His voice drops into something low, rough and unguarded, I can see it forming on his face, the thing he's about to say, the words lining up behind his lips—
The emergency radio screams to life.
"Nightfall Medical, this is Rescue Seven. Multiple-vehicle accident on Highway 1 near mile marker twelve. Three casualties inbound, ETA ten minutes. One possible spinal, one with a compound fracture, one walking wounded. Do you copy?"
I'm on my feet before the transmission ends.
The conversation, all of it drops away like dead weight.My heartbeat steadies. The part of me that deployed twice into active combat zones locks into place, and my body remembers the drill even when the rest of me falls apart.
