Desmond
There was a light, bright and unyielding. It pressed through my eyelids like it had weight, as if it could pin me in place if I didn’t look at it. I tried to turn my head away, but there was no escape — only more light, more heat, more pressure behind my eyes.
But this time it was different.
My arm screamed, skin singed as the hairs on my arm burned away. Skin tightening. Hairs curling. The sharp, sickening smell of something burning that I couldn’t quite place until it was already gone.
My throat locked. There was a sound — metal folding in on itself, something tearing, something wrong in a way my brain couldn’t process fast enough.
A horn.
A scream.
I couldn’t tell if it was outside me or coming from my own chest, but the world lurched.
Weightless for only a second. Then impact. Hard. Violent. Final.
And then…vanilla. Sweet and thick. Completely out of place.
It filled my lungs, coated the back of my throat, tangled itself into the memory so tightly I couldn’t separate it from the rest of it.
“Desmond,” Anya’s voice cut through the black, dragging me from the depths. “Honey, wake up.”
“The coffee,” I mumbled, sitting up quickly. “I spilled it.” I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead and running down my neck. My hands were shaking. Violently. My chest heaved as if I’d been running, like I hadn’t stopped running since—
“There’s no coffee, Des,” her hand was cool against my cheek, slowly pulling me out of the tunnel vision. “We’re home. You’re in bed.”
“The bus—” The word crept out of me, catching somewhere between my chest and my throat. “Anya—”
“I’m right here.” She shifted closer, the mattress dipping with her weight, one hand still on my face, the other braced against my chest as though she could physically hold me in place. “You’re here. With me.”
But my body didn’t believe her.
My heart was still sprinting, frantic and uneven. My skin felt wrong — too tight, too hot, like something was still burning just beneath it.
“I can smell it,” I said, voice rough, panicked in a way I couldn’t quite contain. “Do you — do you smell that?”
Vanilla. It was everywhere.
Her hand stilled.
Just for a second.
Then she glanced over her shoulder toward the dresser, where the small candle we’d lit earlier had burned low, wax pooled and glossy. “That’s just the candle, baby,” she said gently. “From earlier, remember?”
My eyes followed hers. There it sat. Small and completely harmless.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, but it didn’t help. The smell was still there, layered over something else, something my brain refused to let go of. “I was bringing it to you,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
She stilled again, her head tilting to the side. “The coffee,” I added, my voice quieter now, more distant. “It was — I had it in my hand. I was—”
“Oh, Desmond.” The sun tried to creep through the blackout curtains I’d installed to help us sleep better. And it was just enough that I could see her eyes sparkle.
“I was coming to see you.”
Anya’s grip on me tightened, holding on harder, as if she was afraid I might disappear if she didn’t. “Des—”
“I didn’t even see it,” I pushed on, the frustration breaking through now, sharp and uneven. “One second I’m standing there, the next—” I let out a harsh breath. “I should’ve seen it. I should’ve done something.”
“You couldn’t have stopped that,” she said, firmer now.
My fingers caught at her waist, then slid around her, pulling her closer until she was practically in my lap, as if proximity alone could force my body to remember where I was. “Anya.”
She came without hesitation. Straddling my thighs, one hand braced on my shoulder, the other still at the back of my neck, grounding me from both sides.
“I’m here,” she whispered, her forehead pressing to mine. “I’m right here.”
“I thought I was going to die.” The admission tore out of me before I could stop it.
Her breath caught. But she didn’t pull away.
“I thought—” My voice broke, and I tightened my grip on her without meaning to, fingers curling into the fabric at her back. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it to you.”
Her hands slid down, framing my face now, thumbs brushing under my eyes, along my jaw, like were was making sure I was real.
“You did,” she said softly.
My laugh came out wrong. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Missing a piece.”
“You’re still here.” Her hand tightened slightly. “You are here, and you are safe, and you are whole, Des.”
“I lost my leg.” It came out flat. There was no fight to the words — was there any fight left in me?
“I know,” she said softly, moving to rake her fingers through my hair. Her touch soothed me and kept me here.
“I can’t even—” I exhaled sharply, looking away from her for the first time. “I can’t even stand up in the middle of the night without thinking. Every step is—” I shook my head. “Wrong.”
Her hand slid down, covering one of mine, where it rested against my thigh. “Not wrong,” she breathed. “Just different. New.”
I huffed a breath, brow furrowing. “That’s a nice way to say it.”
“It’s the right way to say it.” But her expression shifted. And it wasn’t pity. The way her face twisted… it was so much worse.
Guilt.
“You shouldn’t have been bringing me anything,” she said quietly. The words were so soft I almost missed them.
I stilled under her touch. “What?”
“The coffee,” she said, her voice tightening just slightly. “You were on your night off. You shouldn’t have been out. There were still patches of ice. You should have—”
“Hey, wait.” My hands came up to her wrists, stopping her before she could spiral any further. “No.” Her eyes dropped anyway. “This didn’t happen because of you.”
“You were coming to me.”
“I was coming to see you,” I corrected, softer now. “Because I wanted to. Because I had just spent four straight days with you and I was going crazy without you by my side, kid.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It is to me.” She shook her head slightly, like she didn’t believe it, like she couldn’t let herself believe it.
I tightened my hold on her, pulling her closer until there was no space left between us, until she had no choice but to look at me again. “I lost my leg because a bus slid off the road,” I said, steady now, both of us. “Not because you would have liked coffee.”
Her eyes flickered. “Oh my god, the burns.” I watched, in real time, as she processed parts of that night I would probably never remember. “You came in with superficial burns on your neck and arm.”
“I don’t remember—”
“They were mostly superficial… I didn’t even try to—”
“You focused on the biggest problem. You and the team saved me.” I exhaled slowly and rested my forehead against hers again, my grip loosening just enough to be gentle instead of desperate.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I could hear the tears thickening in her voice, could hear her own pain bubbling up.
“About the coffee?”
She nodded, wrestling her wrist from my grasp to quickly wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks.
“Seemed inconsequential after… everything.” I tugged her hand closer to me, pressing a kiss to the heel of her hand.
“Inconsequential?” She whispered, looking at me with a pained expression.
“Everything’s been inconsequential. You haven’t talked about it.
You haven’t shouted or cried or anything, Desmond.
You don’t have to be robotic.” Her voice hardened, her expression shifting from something broken to something… heavy.
“I was thinking about you,” I said quietly.
The words landed between us, heavier than I expected. I felt it in the way her body stilled, in the way her breath caught just slightly against my cheek. “What? That’s not—” she started, shaking her head, her voice already fraying. “That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.” But saying anything else felt like stepping off something solid into open air.
My hands tightened around hers instead, focusing on the warmth of her skin, the soft flex of her fingers against mine. I brought her hand back to my mouth, pressing another kiss there — slower this time, deliberate, like I could anchor both of us with it.
“I don’t want to make it worse,” I said finally.
Her brow pulled together. “Worse than losing your leg?”
“Worse than… everything,” I corrected, my voice quieter now. Thinner. “For you.”
Her expression shifted, something sharper breaking through the hurt. “For me?” she repeated.
I exhaled slowly, my forehead dropping back to hers, eyes closing because it was easier than holding her gaze through this.
“You were there when they brought me in,” I said. “You saw it. You—” My throat tightened. “You had to work on me.”
Her hands came up immediately, framing my face and forcing me to look at her. “I wanted to be there,” she said, firm despite the tears still clinging to her lashes.
“That doesn’t make it easier,” I replied.
“It doesn’t make it yours to carry alone either.”
I swallowed, my grip on her tightening again, fingers curling at her waist as if I needed to feel something solid, something real.
“I was pinned,” I said, the words coming out rough, unpracticed.
“The wheel,” I shook my head once, sharp.
“I couldn’t move. I couldn’t—” My breath hitched, betraying me. “I knew. I knew it was bad.”
Her thumbs brushed under my eyes, steady and grounding.
“Des—”
“I could smell it,” I pushed on, the memory slipping loose now, jagged and unstoppable. “Not just the coffee. Everything. Burning. Metal. I couldn’t feel my leg, and I thought—” My voice broke, and this time I couldn’t hide it. “I thought that was it. I thought that was how it ended.”
Her arms wrapped around me instantly, pulling me into her, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. It was as if I’d unstoppered something inside of me, and the memory was spilling out.
“I kept thinking I should’ve taken a different route,” I said into her shoulder, my voice muffled now, my hands gripping at her back — she was the only thing keeping me upright. “Should’ve stayed home. Should’ve—” I sucked in a breath that didn’t quite fill my lungs. “And then I thought about you.”
Her arms tightened around me.
“I thought about you waiting for me,” I continued, softer now, the words scraping their way out. “And I couldn’t—” My fingers flexed hard against her spine. “What if I never saw you smile again?”
Silence stretched.
My chest rose and fell unevenly, the adrenaline from the nightmare bleeding into something heavier, something that had been sitting just under my skin for weeks.
“I didn’t talk about it,” I admitted after a moment, my voice quieter now. “Because if I said it out loud…” I shook my head against her shoulder. “Then it actually happened. Not just the leg. All of it.”
Her hand slid up and down my back slowly, soothing, patient. “It did happen,” she said gently.
“Yeah.” I pulled back just enough to look at her again.
Her eyes were red. Wet. Wide in a way that made something twist low in my chest. “You’re allowed to fall apart,” she said softly. “You don’t have to be the strong one all the time.”
A breath left me in something that almost felt like a laugh, except there was no humor in it. “I don’t know how to do that,” I admitted.
Her lips trembled slightly. “Then learn,” she whispered. “With me.”
My hands slid from her waist up her back, pulling her closer until there was no space left between us, until I could feel her heartbeat against mine, steady where mine still stuttered.
I rested my forehead against hers again, my nose brushing hers, breath still uneven. “I’ll try,” I said quietly.
Her hand came back to my face, warm now, familiar, her thumb tracing slow, grounding lines along my cheek as if she were memorizing me. I turned into the touch without thinking, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm this time, lingering there longer than necessary.
She exhaled shakily, and when I leaned forward again, letting my weight rest more fully against her, she didn’t hesitate.