Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Dax
Iknock because I don’t know how else to tell her I’m outside, because standing here with my heartbeat lodged in my throat feels like the closest thing to penance I’ve ever done, and because part of me is convinced she won’t answer.
I knock even though the stupid little voice in the back of my skull keeps whispering that she shouldn’t — not after what I did, not after what I said, not after the way I tore us open and walked away like I wasn’t bleeding for her too.
But then the door opens — and she’s there.
Barefoot on the threshold, toes curling against the cold floorboards, drowning in an oversized hoodie that’s slipping off one shoulder, her hair scraped into a messy bun that’s already losing the battle against gravity, one sock missing like she got distracted halfway through putting her life together this morning.
She looks tired in that soft, human way — not broken, just worn, like she didn’t expect anyone to show up and certainly not me.
And God help me, she’s so fucking beautiful my lungs miss a step.
My voice sticks. Actually sticks. Like my body forgot how to speak the moment those eyes found mine.
She arches a brow — unimpressed, guarded, but alive. “You’re early.”
“You’re… real.”
It falls out of me before I can reel it back in, before I can pretend like I’m composed or sane or not completely undone by just looking at her.
She blinks, slow, confused, like she’s trying to decide whether I’m joking or genuinely losing my mind on her doorstep.
I clear my throat, shifting the weight of the paper bag in my hands. “Sorry. Couldn’t wait.”
Her gaze drops.
To the bag.
To the steam escaping the lid of the takeaway cups, curling through the cool morning air like a peace offering she never asked for but I brought anyway.
“Is that coffee?” she asks, voice low.
“And pastries.” I lift the bag slightly, the corner of the warm paper brushing my knuckles as I hold it up like a white flag, like a promise, like a pathetic attempt at redemption wrapped in sugar and caffeine.
Her mouth twitches. Just a little. Like she’s trying hard not to let it happen — not to smile, not to soften — but there it is. The ghost of something warm flickering at the edges.
And for the first time in days, I breathe.
Properly.
Deeply.
Like oxygen isn’t something I have to fight for.
Like maybe — just maybe — she didn’t close the door in her heart when she closed it in my face.
Like I might still have a chance to fix what I broke.
Or at the very least… try.
We don’t talk much in the car.
I play her music, old songs scratched into burned CDs I forgot were in the glovebox.
The sound is warm and imperfect, full of static and memory, the kind of music that feels like it belongs to a different lifetime—one where things were simple, and quiet, and safe. The kind of lifetime neither of us ever got to live, but sometimes pretend we did.
She sits small in the passenger seat, curled slightly toward the window, her bare legs drawn up just enough that the oversized hoodie slides higher on her thighs every time she shifts.
The morning light leaks through the windscreen, soft and gold, colouring the edges of her hair and turning her skin into something almost unreal.
I catch her smiling at the lyrics, mouthing along when she thinks I’m not looking.
She presses her lips together when she notices me glance, like she can hide the softness, but she can’t. It fills the whole car. It fills me.
The road stretches ahead of us, empty at this hour, just grey asphalt unraveling into more sky. Houses blur past—quiet, still, untouched by the chaos living in our heads. Street lamps flicker. Pavements shine from last night’s rain.
Her legs are bare. Her hoodie rides up when she shifts. And my hand tightens on the wheel like it’s her skin.
I don’t touch her.
Not yet.
Not when this simple, fragile moment feels like something I could break just by breathing wrong. Not when the quiet between us feels almost holy—like the world exhaled for the first time in years and told us to listen.
So I keep my eyes on the road. On the curve of the bend ahead. On anything except the soft shape of her knee or the way she tucks her hair behind her ear or the way her lips part slightly when a lyric hits her in the chest.
I don’t touch her.
Not until I’m sure I won’t ruin it.
But God, she’s close. And the car smells like her—shampoo, vanilla, something warm and familiar. Something I never should’ve had and can’t let go of.
She taps her fingers on her thigh in time with the song. She hums under her breath. She shifts again, and the seatbelt slides across the curve of her chest in a way that makes my breath stutter and my grip on the wheel tighten until my knuckles ache.
A red light stops us.
The city is waking—slow, sleepy, unaware that inside my car the world has narrowed to one girl and one question I’m too afraid to ask:
What the hell are we doing?
She glances at me again, soft and shy, like she’s checking to see if I’m still here.
I am.
More than she knows.
The light turns green. I press the accelerator.
And we keep going.
Into morning.
Into whatever the fuck this is.
Into something that feels dangerously close to hope.
The elevator creaks like it remembers me — the nights I slept on the roof when I was seventeen, the nights I waited for a father who never showed, the nights I convinced myself that cold concrete counted as safety if I stared at the sky long enough.
It shudders to a stop, and she stands beside me in the dim, flickering light, staring at the warped bulb above the doors as though the whole world might be waiting on the other side.
When the metal slides open, the wind hits us with a force that steals breath and steadiness, city air pushing past us like it’s been waiting years for someone to open the door again.
It carries the smell of rain that hasn’t fallen yet, petrol from some distant street, and the faint metallic tang of night.
She gasps — hand flying to her chest, lips parting in a way that pulls something painful and familiar out of me — and steps forward, blinking as though her eyes are adjusting not to the view, but to a memory she never lived.
I don’t look at the skyline.
I don’t need to.
I’ve already found the only view I want to memorise.
“This is…” She turns slowly, taking it in — the broken brick ledge, the rusted antennae, the graffiti fading into the roof’s concrete bones. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere I used to sleep when I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend, like the place is tugging pieces of my seventeen-year-old self back to the surface.
She turns toward me fully this time, slower than before, like she’s afraid to step too hard on something that still holds my ghosts. “You brought me to your past?”
“I don’t know how to do flowers and dinner, Cassandra.”
The honesty lands in the space between us like something heavier than truth.
She steps closer — close enough I feel her warmth in the cold air.
“You brought me to your hurt.”
We sit on an old army blanket I shoved into my duffel, the kind that smells faintly of dust and history, and the coffee’s gone cold between us, pastries untouched inside their bag like they were never the point anyway.
She shivers when a gust of wind sweeps across the rooftop, and without thinking, I pull the blanket around her shoulders, tucking it close as though the fabric could protect her from every version of me she doesn’t know yet.
Then I lie back, eyes on the stars — the ones that look different here than they ever did overseas, the ones that never answered when I asked why I kept surviving things I didn’t want to.
“You ever wonder how many people are looking at the same sky?” I ask, voice low.
“Sometimes,” she murmurs.
I tilt my head. She’s lying beside me now, closer than she was a moment ago, her shoulder brushing mine in small, barely-there touches that feel louder than gunfire.
“But right now,” she whispers, “I don’t care who else sees it. Because you brought me here.”
“Yeah,” I murmur, “I did.”
She turns her head toward me, hair brushing the blanket. “Why?”
My heart stalls. Hits something sharp.
Because I couldn’t stay away.
Because you wrecked me the second you kissed me back.
Because I’ve survived death and blood and fire, and nothing has ever made me feel like your laugh does.
Instead, I say, “Because I thought if you saw the place that made me, you’d understand why I’m so fucked up.”
She goes quiet, eyes softening in a way that hurts worse than anything I faced in uniform.
“I’m glad I saw it,” she whispers.
The silence shifts — no longer empty. Not heavy. Just thick enough to feel like it’s holding its breath.
Her hand brushes mine.
A barely there touch.
A test. A bridge. A plea.
I don’t move.
Because I want it.
Because I’ve always wanted it.
Her eyes flick to my lips.
And still, I don’t move.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she says, voice trembling despite her bravery.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t be looking at me like that.”
“I know.”
Her next breath is even quieter. “And you definitely shouldn’t kiss me.”
My hand lifts on instinct, sliding up her jaw, thumb sweeping across her cheekbone like I’ve been waiting years for permission.
“Then stop looking at me like you want me to.”
She tastes like every moment I never thought I’d survive — like danger wrapped in softness, like freedom laced with fear, like coming home to something I never believed I deserved.
Her fingers tangle in my shirt, holding me like she’s afraid the wind might take me if she loosens her grip. Her breath hitches when I slide my hand into her hair and pull, just enough to make her gasp into my mouth like the sky cracked open above us.
I press my forehead to hers, breaths mingling in the cold.
“You’re killing me,” I whisper.
She smiles — small, secret, devastating.
“Good.”