Chapter 10 #2
She’s not tangled in my sheets stealing warmth from the cold half of the bed.
She’s not in my arms, where she never belonged but somehow fit too perfectly, like she was made for the parts of me I’ve spent years trying to bury.
She’s gone.
And I don’t know how to breathe without her anymore.
I don’t know how to want anything that isn’t her mouth or her voice or her fucking heartbeat pressed to mine like maybe, just maybe, we weren’t doomed from the start.
I don’t know how to survive a war when the battlefield is inside my own chest.
And I sure as hell don’t know how to walk away from a girl who tasted like the first good thing I’d had in years.
But I did.
I walked away.
And now every part of me feels like it’s dying in slow motion.
Because losing her isn’t a wound.
It’s a death.
And I did it to myself.
I’m slouched on the floor, back pressed against the cold wall, knuckles split and bleeding, breath thick with liquor and loathing, my head fogged and drowning and spinning like I’m caught in the frayed tail end of a dream I never wanted to wake from — a dream stitched together from smoke and ghosts and everything I’ve tried so fucking hard to outrun.
And then I hear it.
Soft.
Shaky.
“Dax?”
Her voice.
No.
No, fuck no.
I’ve imagined it before — too many times — in the dark, in the quiet, in the nightmares that wear her face and whisper her name like a curse I earned ten times over.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Not now. Don’t do this to me now.”
“Dax,” she says again, closer this time. Frightened. Soft. Real.
And that word in her mouth cuts through me like a bullet wrapped in silk.
“Butterfly.”
I lift my head — and there she is.
Lit up like a sin I don’t deserve in the doorway, framed by the low amber light of the flat, the storm behind her casting restless shadows across the hall.
Her hair’s tangled from the wind, her face bare, her eyes red-rimmed like she’s been crying — but still so fucking her.
Still like sunlight on a battlefield. Still the only thing that has ever looked remotely like peace.
A hoodie — my hoodie — drowns her body, sleeves dangling past her hands, hem near her knees. She clutches it closed with one fist like armour. But it’s her eyes that hurt the most.
Concern.
Not anger. Not hate. Just concern.
She drops to her knees in front of me, eyes wide and scared and searching.
“Jesus, Dax, your hand—”
She takes my wrist gently, and I flinch — not from the pain, but from the fact that she’s touching me. Touching me like I’m not a monster. Touching me like I haven’t spent weeks proving I am.
And she feels…
“You feel real,” I rasp.
She freezes.
“I am real,” she whispers. “I’m right here.”
I stare at her, the scent of her shampoo already making me light-headed, the heat of her hands on my ruined skin twisting something vicious and tender inside my chest.
“I thought you were a dream,” I murmur, voice cracked and thin. “I thought I drank you back into my head.”
Her lip trembles as she unzips the hoodie and pulls a napkin from the pocket. It’s not clean. She doesn’t give a shit. She presses it to my bleeding knuckles, trying to be gentle, but the tears in her eyes say she wants to scream. And I fucking deserve every second of it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say.
Her hands still. “But I am.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
“Maybe not.”
“You should hate me.”
“Maybe I do.”
Her eyes meet mine. And I’m done.
Gone.
Drowning.
“I tried to fuck you out of my system,” I confess, every word a nail driven straight through my own ribs. “I tried to drink you out, burn you out, punch you out — but you’re still here. Still fucking here.”
Her breath hitches. Her fingers tighten around my wrist.
I lean in, my forehead nearly touching hers.
“I see you when I blink. I hear your laugh in the static. I smell you on my skin when I haven’t even touched you.
You think I wanted this?” My voice shakes like it’s fighting to stay in my throat.
“You think I wanted you to be the one who fucking broke you?”
Tears slip down her cheeks.
“You did break me,” she whispers. “But I let you.”
I exhale like something inside me just tore open.
“I hate you for leaving me in that bar,” she breathes. “I hate you for pretending it didn’t mean something.”
My lips hover above hers.
“I hate me too.”
And then I kiss her.
No.
I fucking devour her.
There’s no hesitation. No pause. No transitional breath. Just raw, ruined desperation tearing through me like shrapnel.
My mouth crashes into hers with weeks of madness behind it. My hand grips her jaw, the other — still bleeding — tangles in her hair and yanks her closer like I’m trying to drag her straight into my lungs. Her lips part and I taste salt and sugar and a salvation I have no right to crave.
She whimpers.
I groan — low, broken, starving.
I kiss her like I’m punishing her for existing. Like I’m punishing myself for ever letting her go. Our teeth clash, tongues collide, mouths bruise. It’s not sweet. It’s not gentle.
It’s war.
And I lose.
She fists my shirt, nails scraping across my chest like she wants to peel me open and climb inside. She kisses me like she’s trying to breathe me back to life — and for one sick, holy second, she does.
I drag her into my lap, her thighs straddling mine, and I feel how badly she wants this — how badly we both do.
But it’s the way she kisses back.
Her surrender.
Her sob.
Her ache.
That’s what destroys me.
Not her lips.
Not her body.
Her fucking heart.
Still cracked. Still bleeding.
Still beating for me.
And I don’t deserve a single piece of it.
But I take it anyway.
When I pull back, her lips are swollen, her eyes glazed and glassy like she can’t decide whether this is a dream or another heartbreak wearing my face.
“Dax…” she whispers.
I brush my thumb over her lower lip — hot, swollen, mine — and I let myself really look at her.
Not like a man trying to forget.
Like a man remembering everything.
“Say it again,” I murmur.
She blinks. “Say what?”
“My name. Like that. Like it still belongs to you.”
She swallows, lips parting like the word hurts — but she gives it to me anyway.
“Dax.”
Fuck.
My name in her mouth is church and violence. A prayer soaked in sin. A bullet dipped in longing.
I press my lips to her jaw, then lower, trailing slow, reverent kisses down her throat.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper against her skin.
She doesn’t breathe.
“But you are,” I continue, fingers tracing the line where the hoodie slips from her shoulder. “You always come when I’m at my worst.”
Her voice trembles. “Maybe I’m just stupid.”
“No,” I murmur. “You’re just mine.”
I tug the zipper down — slow, painfully slow — revealing the thin ribbed tank clinging to her body like a crime waiting to happen.
She’s not wearing a bra.
Of course she fucking isn’t.
Her nipples harden instantly in the cool air, and I stop breathing altogether, staring like a man starved, crawling through war zones and finding the only clean thing left on earth.
“You’re unreal,” I breathe. “You know that?”
“You said I felt real,” she whispers.
“You do. But you also feel like punishment.”
Her jaw tightens. “Then punish me.”
That snaps something in me.
I grab her face, kiss her like I’m never coming back from this — because I’m not. There’s no version of me that walks away from her twice.
I lower her onto the couch — careful, reverent, like she’s fragile even though I’m the one breaking apart.
She arches beneath me, breath staggering when my hands find her waist and drag that little tank over her head.
The hoodie falls. The tank drops.
She is perfect.
Fucking perfect.
“Look at me,” I whisper, kneeling between her thighs. “I want to see your eyes when I wreck you.”
She lifts her chin — fire behind her lashes.
My butterfly.
The kind that doesn’t flutter.
The kind that bites.
I kiss down her chest, over her ribs, lower and lower until she’s trembling beneath me.
“Dax…”
“I know, baby. I know.”
My voice softens — worship disguised as sin.
“I was never meant to have anything this good,” I whisper, sliding my hands beneath the waistband of her shorts, “but I’ll spend the rest of my fucking life trying to deserve it.”
Her breath stutters.
“You always say things like that.”
“Because I mean them.”
The shorts slide down her thighs, and I let my mouth follow — slow, worshipful, hungry.
I look up at her.
“You’re art, Butterfly.”
She laughs breathlessly. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m wrecked,” I whisper. “Not drunk.”
“Then prove it.”
I slide my tongue up her trembling thighs, take the thin material that’s covering her sweet pussy between my lips, let my teeth graze her skin and look into her eyes as I slowly slide it down her thighs.
I almost rip it open when she lets a gasp.
I slide them over feet and take them in my hands, inhale her sweet fucking set.
God, she fucking smells real, my hallucination has never felt so fucking real, she’s still looking at me with ruin in her eyes.
“Fuck, I can’t wait to taste you, butterfly.” She gasps as I settle my head between her thighs.
“Dax—”
“You said prove it.” I meet her eyes. “And I don’t make promises I don’t keep.”
Her thighs tremble when I breathe against her, and Christ —
She smells like sin and salvation. Like the first breath after drowning. Like everything I never expected to touch again.
I press my lips to the inside of her thigh, biting just enough to make her gasp before soothing the mark with slow kisses.
She moans, and fuck, that sweet fucking sound spreads straight to my cock, I spread her wider, thumb brushing her slick skin, my mouth hovering, hungry.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur.
“You’re—” she swallows hard, voice already wrecked, “you’re looking at me like you missed me.”
“I did,” I say. “I missed everything.”
And then I finally taste her.
She jerks with a gasp.
“Dax—”
“Shh.” My voice is nothing but ruin against her. “Let me taste the mess you made of me.”