Chapter 32 - Amanda
AMANDA
The quiet didn’t scare me the way it used at first.
It still made my chest feel tight sometimes. Still made my thoughts spiral if I let them run too far ahead of me. But tonight, the quiet felt… softer. Like something I could sit inside instead of something that hunted me.
I woke up just before dawn.
Not because of a nightmare. Not because of a sound. Just because my body decided sleep was done with me for now.
Wrecker was beside me, stretched out on his back, one arm bent behind his head, the other resting loosely across my waist. He wasn’t asleep. I could tell by the way his breathing stayed too even, too controlled.
We’d both been doing that lately. Lying still. Pretending rest.
The room was dim, the curtains barely holding back the early light. Dust motes floated in the air, slow and harmless. For a moment, everything felt normal enough that I almost believed it.
Almost.
I shifted slightly, testing the ache in my shoulder, the faint soreness along my ribs. Healing pain. The kind that reminded you something had happened, but that you’d survived it.
Wrecker’s hand tightened reflexively at my waist.
“You okay?” he murmured.
His voice was rough with disuse, like he hadn’t planned on talking yet.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
I glanced up at him. His eyes were open now, focused on the ceiling, jaw relaxed but alert. Always alert.
For a second, the old instinct flared, the urge to reassure him. To tell him I was fine, really fine, so he didn’t have to hold so much tension in his body.
I didn’t.
I let the silence sit.
That was new.
He turned his head toward me. “You want to talk?”
The question wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t careful either. Just open. Like he was offering something without needing me to take it.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe.”
He nodded once. Didn’t press.
I stared at the faint crack in the ceiling above the bed. “I keep waiting for it to make sense.”
“For what to make sense,” he said gently.
“All of it,” I replied. “The bad days. The good ones. The way I can feel strong in the morning and wrecked by afternoon. Like I should be past it already.”
Wrecker exhaled slowly. “You don’t owe anyone a timeline.”
“I know,” I said. “But knowing it and feeling it aren’t the same thing.”
His thumb traced a small, absent circle against my side. Grounding. Steady.
“You don’t feel weak to me,” he said.
“That’s not what scares me,” I admitted.
He waited.
I took a deep breath. “What scares me is that I don’t feel broken all the time anymore. And part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like I’m doing it wrong by… being okay.”
Wrecker’s chest rose beneath my cheek. “Being okay isn’t a betrayal of what you went through.”
“I know,” I said again, softer this time. “I just don’t trust it yet.”
“That makes sense.”
No argument. No fixing. Just acceptance.
I shifted onto my back, staring up at him. “When I woke up last night, I thought I heard footsteps. I didn’t panic. I just… waited. Listened. Like I was bracing for something that didn’t come.”
His brow furrowed slightly. “And how did that feel.”
I thought about it. “Weirdly calm. And also exhausting.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Hypervigilance does that.”
I blinked. “You know that word?”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Doc talks. I listen.”
That made something warm settle in my chest.
We lay there for a bit, the room slowly brightening around us. Somewhere down the hall, a door creaked open. Footsteps passed. Normal sounds. Normal life.
“I heard Ghost was up all night,” I said eventually.
Wrecker went still in a way I’d learned to recognize. Not alarmed. Focused.
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s digging into new intel.”
“The ring,” I said.
“The ring.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Not because I wanted to escape the thought, but because I wanted to feel my breath moving in and out, steady and real.
“They’re not done,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “They’re not.”
I turned onto my side again, propping myself up slightly. “Does that scare you.”
He met my gaze. “It makes me careful.”
“That’s not an answer.”
A pause. Then, “Yes.”
The honesty landed harder than any reassurance could have.
“What scares you,” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer right away. His hand slid from my waist to my back, firm and warm.
“That I’ll miss something,” he said. “That I’ll assume you’re okay when you’re not. That I’ll try to fix when you just need me to listen.”
My throat tightened.
“You’re doing okay so far,” I said.
“I’m trying,” he replied. “And if I screw it up, I want you to tell me.”
I studied his face. The faint bruise near his jaw. The scar at his temple. The man who’d fought like hell to get me back and then learned how to stay still beside me.
“I will,” I promised.
He nodded, like that mattered more than anything else.
Later, we moved slowly through the morning. No rush. No agenda. I showered while he stayed close, not hovering, just present. When I flinched at the sudden burst of hot water, he noticed, but didn’t comment. Just adjusted the temperature and handed me the soap.
We dressed. We ate. We existed.
Outside, the compound was waking up. Scout was in the yard with Ranger, moving stiffly through a series of controlled stretches. Ghost passed by the window, expression unreadable as always. Life continued, uneven and real.
I felt a twinge of guilt watching Scout. The familiar whisper that said I’d been rescued and he’d suffered longer.
Wrecker caught the shift in my expression.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Where’d you go.”
I hesitated. Then told the truth. “I feel bad that I’m… better today.”
He shook his head gently. “Healing isn’t a competition.”
“I know.”
“And Scout being hurt longer doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to heal faster,” he added. “You don’t carry his pain by staying broken.”
That settled something in me.
We stepped outside together later, the air crisp and clean. I stretched, feeling my muscles respond. Not perfect. Not pain-free. But capable.
I took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to live waiting for the next bad thing,” I said.
Wrecker stood beside me, solid as a wall. “Then don’t.”
I looked at him. “It’s not that simple.”
“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.