Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Cassandra
Iwake up to the smell of him before my eyes even bother to open — salt and skin and something darker, something that clings to him like a memory he can’t wash off, the ghost of gunpowder threaded through the warmth of sweat.
His arm is draped over my waist like a brand, heavy and possessive, as though even in sleep he’s warning the world that I am his to hold and his to lose.
Except he’s not asleep.
I can feel it — that charged stillness, not peaceful but taut, a quiet that vibrates with whatever storm he’s holding behind his ribs.
When I finally open my eyes, the morning bleeds in slow and soft. We’re still outside, still under the fading stars, the blanket knotted around us, my hoodie rucked high on my thigh, and Dax watching me like he hasn’t allowed himself to blink.
Like if he does, I’ll be gone.
“Hey,” I whisper, my voice rough with sleep.
He doesn’t answer.
He just lifts his hand and brushes his thumb along my cheekbone, slow and reverent, as though he’s mapping me for the last time.
“You’ve got a serious staring problem, soldier.”
It earns me the ghost of a smirk — barely there — and then it’s gone, swallowed by something quieter, sadder, too raw to hide. His face folds inward, not into a smile, not into anything I can name. Just quiet grief. Quiet knowing. Something that tastes like a countdown.
“Trying to remember you,” he murmurs.
My throat tightens. “I’m right here.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Right now.”
Time doesn’t care how good it feels.
It just keeps going.
Thirty days.
And already I feel him slipping through my fingers.
He lies back beside me, eyes on the sky, one hand still resting on my waist like he’s anchoring me to a world he’s already half out of.
I turn onto my side, watching the curve of his jaw, the shadows softening the scar beneath his temple, the one I never ask about because it feels like a question with blood on it.
“You always this dramatic in the morning?” I tease gently, the softness in my tone at odds with the grenade I’m holding between my ribs.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t answer. Just breathes out slowly, the exhale sounding like it hurts.
“Dax…”
“I didn’t want to go back.” His voice is low, rough, broken-glass honesty scraping across my heart. “Didn’t even plan to. But they called… and I said yes before I could think of one good reason not to.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. What am I supposed to say to that? What do you say to a man who only knows how to walk toward fire?
“Why?” I whisper.
He turns his head just enough that our eyes meet. “Because I don’t know what I am without it.”
You do.
You’re the man who touched me like I was glass and kissed me like I was sin and made me feel like the sky was something I could set alight with my bare hands.
But I don’t say that.
Instead, I let my fingers trace the thin scar at the edge of his eyebrow. “And me?” I ask quietly. “What am I in all that?”
His breath catches.
“You’re the first thing that ever made me question it.”
The words punch all the air out of me.
That isn’t a line.
It isn’t meant to be pretty.
It isn’t meant to be anything but truth.
And Dax isn’t a man who hands out truth. He swallows it, carries it, lets it weigh him down until he buckles beneath it.
“I don’t want to stop this,” I say, barely breathing. “Even if it’s a countdown.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, thumb tracing slow circles into my hip like he’s trying to carve this moment into my bones.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
His eyes open. “Of what?”
“That you’ll go… and I won’t even be a memory.”
He blinks once. Twice. Something sharp and pained flickers.
“Butterfly,” he says, voice thick with everything he can’t articulate, “you’ve already marked me.”
And I stop breathing.
He says it like it cost him something to admit it.
Like he had to cut it out from a part of himself he doesn’t let anyone touch.
You’ve already marked me.
It hits like a slow bullet, twisting as it sinks in. I want to believe him. I want to live in the space that sentence builds. But belief feels dangerous. Hope feels fatal.
Thirty days is not forever.
Thirty days is barely a bruise.
And Dax Kingston doesn’t come with promises — only warnings.
“I’m not a tattoo,” I whisper, eyes lifting to the dimming stars. “You can’t carry me around on your skin and forget the pain that came with it.”
“No,” he breathes, fingers slipping to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, forehead to forehead, breath mingling with mine. “You’re not a tattoo, butterfly.”
His grip tightens, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
“You’re a fucking scar.”
His voice is raw. Gravel and confession. Blood and memory.
“You’re under my skin. Permanent. Ugly. Beautiful. Something I’ll never forget surviving.”
I close my eyes because it’s too much and not enough all at once.
“You’re going to leave,” I whisper. “And I’m going to stay. And we’re both going to pretend this wasn’t the most real thing either of us ever felt.”
“No,” he says, so soft it bruises. “No pretending.”
He kisses me then — soft, impossibly soft, the gentleness a kind of apology, a kind of goodbye, a kind of prayer. Like he’s trying to memorise the exact way my lips shape his name.
And when he pulls back, the ache in his eyes nearly destroys me.
The grief.
The knowing.
The goodbye already blooming in his chest.
“Stay the night?” I breathe, so quietly I’m not even sure it leaves my mouth.
He doesn’t speak.
He just pulls me into his chest, arms tightening around me like he’s terrified I’ll vanish with the sunrise, holding me with the kind of desperation that feels like truth.
Like love disguised as fear.
Like the last night before the world breaks.
The sun is a cruel thing.
It warms my skin like nothing has changed, like the night didn’t peel back a piece of me and place it trembling in his hands, like it didn’t mark me in ways daylight has no business touching.
I wake tangled in his scent — salt, skin, sleep, and something darker that clings to him like a shadow he’ll never outrun.
My cheek rests on his chest; his arm is locked around my waist as if even unconscious, he’s bracing for the moment I disappear.
As if losing me is a nightmare he’s still trapped inside.
I don’t move.
I can’t move.
Because shifting even an inch would make it real — the morning after, the countdown breathing down our necks, the inevitability of him walking away again, and me stupidly letting him take whatever is left of me when he goes.
So I lie there and let his heartbeat lie to me. I let it pretend we’re safe. That nothing is ending. That this moment isn’t already slipping through our fingers.
“You watching me sleep, butterfly?”
His voice is low and sleep-rough, a sound that vibrates through his chest and straight into mine.
I smirk against his skin, refusing to let the ache take the wheel just yet. “You weren’t sleeping.”
“Was trying.” He stretches beneath me in one slow, lazy roll of muscle, feline and tired and beautiful in that dangerous, impossible way of his. “But then you started fidgeting and making little noises, and I got distracted.”
I slap his chest, pretending it doesn’t make something soft bloom in my ribcage. “I was not making noises.”
“Oh, baby,” he drawls, voice thick with amusement and something filthier, “you were. All night.”
“Stop,” I laugh, burying my face in his neck to hide the flush rising up my throat. The laugh is thin, fragile, too close to breaking. “You’re unbearable in the morning.”
“And you’re beautiful.” He says it lightly, almost carelessly, like it costs him nothing, but the way his hand tightens on my hip gives him away — it costs him everything.
“I should make breakfast,” I mumble, even though what I really mean is I need to stand before I crumble, before I ache myself open in front of him.
“I like when you feed me,” he says, rolling onto his back with a groan. “For a girl who swears she’s not a wife, you’re very good at pretending.”
I freeze.
Just a heartbeat. Just long enough for the word to sink its claws in.
Wife.
Not girlfriend.
Not temporary.
Not the girl he accidentally kissed twice and tried to forget.
A single, innocent syllable that slices straight through the softest part of me.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” I whisper, pulling away and grabbing his T-shirt off the floor. It falls down to my thighs, swallowing me whole, swallowing the parts of me I’m not ready to show.
“I mean everything,” he replies, not even blinking. “Especially the things I shouldn’t.”
The kitchen feels safer — small, cluttered, lived-in. A place where nothing catastrophic can happen. I open cupboards, pull out ingredients, organise them like armour.
Pancakes.
Distraction via sugar.
Distraction via movement.
He appears behind me soundlessly, all warm skin and rumpled hair and the kind of presence that fills every corner of a room without trying.
I hate how easily my heart whispers mine.
He wraps his arms around my waist and rests his chin on my shoulder, his breath warm against my neck. “You going to feed me in just my boxers,” he murmurs, “or should I go put pants on?”
I roll my eyes. “Eat first. Pants later. Or never. Doesn’t matter.”
“You care,” he whispers, lips brushing just behind my ear, voice lowered with meaning. “You care too much. That’s why it’s going to hurt.”
I freeze with the spatula mid-air.
“You always this poetic before pancakes?”
He doesn’t answer.
Just holds me tighter — not possessive, not yet, but desperate in a quiet, unspoken way. Like maybe if he holds on hard enough, time will slow down, and the goodbye waiting for us both won’t get any closer.
I pretend not to notice.
Pretend not to hear the truth threaded through his words.
Pretend not to feel my heart cracking with every second of silence.