Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Cassandra
Three weeks.
That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen his face.
Since I’ve heard his voice.
Since he called me butterfly like it meant something and not like it was the last thing he’d ever give me.
But he didn’t say goodbye.
Not really.
He just walked out of that kitchen—barefoot, furious, syrup-streaked and trembling—and left me standing there with sticky hands, a broken chest, and those two soft, cruel words hanging in the air like the echo of a door slamming shut.
Goodbye, butterfly.
That was it.
That was all I got.
No kiss.
No last touch.
No chance to say the thing that should’ve been said before any of the kissing, before the rooftop, before the stars, before the wreckage of breakfast spilled across the tiles.
No chance to tell him that it wasn’t just a goodbye for him.
That I’m going too.
Now he’s gone and I’m still here.
Packing my bags like a girl performing a ritual she’s already numb from. Folding my life into duffels and military-issue compartments. Pretending I’m not already halfway grieving a man who might never come home.
Or worse—might come home and never speak to me again because I lied.
I kept it from him.
I let him touch me.
Let him worship me.
Let him fucking fall—and I didn’t say a single word until it blew up between us like a grenade.
Not until it was too late.
Not until his heart cracked open and he let me see everything he hides from the world and then he walked away, leaving those shattered pieces bleeding out behind him.
God.
I don’t even know if he’s okay.
I don’t know if he made it to base.
I don’t know if he’s alive.
No texts.
No calls.
No updates.
Just… silence.
Maybe that’s what I deserve.
Maybe that’s what happens when you hold back the truth until it becomes a weapon but none of that makes it easier to breathe.
Especially not today.
I sit in the sterile white of the medical briefing room, the walls humming with fluorescent light, the air too sharp, too cold, too clean—as if it’s trying to erase every trace of softness left inside me.
Voices murmur around me, clipped and distant, like I’m underwater.
The nurse checking my vitals frowns softly, taps her pen against her clipboard. Then she wraps the cuff around my arm again like she’s not convinced my first reading wasn’t a malfunction.
She shouldn’t be convinced.
My heart isn’t beating right.
It’s been beating wrong since the morning he left because part of it isn’t here anymore.
“You ever been under fire before?” The medic’s voice cuts into the fog, calm and impersonal in a way that makes it worse somehow.
I blink back into myself. “No,” I say quietly. “Not yet.”
He nods like the answer has weight he’s heard too many times. Like he’s already watched girls with eyes too soft for war walk into what I’m walking into.
He checks my pupils. My reflexes. My cycle. My sleep.
My trauma history.
I lie through half of it.
“I’m fine,” I say with a smile that isn’t a smile.
“You sure?” he asks gently, eyes narrowing. “The deployments—especially where you’re going—they can break even the ones who think they’re prepared.”
I smile again. It stretches wrong across my face. “I’ve already been broken. This is just the aftermath.”
He doesn’t argue.
Doesn’t agree.
Just clears me for deployment like he’s stamping a passport into hell.
In the locker room, I sit on the cold metal bench with my knees pulled to my chest. Steam curls from the showers, fogging the mirrors until the reflections bleed into one another. My uniform is folded beside me. Crisp. Stiff. Waiting.
Dog tags sit in my palm.
Cold.
Heavy.
Foreign.
I haven’t put them on yet.
I can’t.
Not when they feel less like a beginning and more like a severing.
Not when he left without ever turning around.
You didn’t even say goodbye.
I whisper it into the empty room, voice shaking.
And then I freeze because that isn’t fair, is it?
He did say goodbye.
Just not the kind with hope attached.
Not the kind meant to be undone.
Not the kind that leaves room for a future.
He said the kind that ends things.
Cleanly.
Quietly.
Cruelly.
He said the kind of goodbye you feel like a blade between the ribs.
I press my fingers against the centre of my chest.
Right where his head rested that night.
Right where I felt him breathe against me.
Right where he fell apart.
And now he’s gone.
And I’m next.
I pick up the tags.
Thread the chain through trembling fingers.
Lift it over my head.
Let the metal settle against my skin.
This is it.
No syrup.
No stars.
No softness.
No him.
Just countdowns.
And war.
And whatever version of myself will survive what’s coming.
If any version survives at all.
I shove my duffel into the pile with the others, the canvas slapping against canvas, the sound dull and heavy like a body hitting dirt. One more bag. One more soldier. One more name signed up to be swallowed by somewhere far away.
The air outside the barracks smells like metal and distance — that sharp tang of steel and morning frost, that hollow quiet that comes before departures, that strange, foreboding scent that feels like it already knows not all of us will return.
My boots scrape over the gravel as I make my way toward the lot where Lola’s waiting.
Her old car idles like it’s out of patience, the engine humming low, vibrating through the cold air.
She’s leaning against the driver’s door with her arms crossed and her eyes hidden behind dark aviators, even though the sun hasn’t bothered to rise yet.
She always looks like she’s lived three lives more than the rest of us.
Like she’s already walked through the fire I’m willingly stepping into.
Maybe that’s why she’s here.
To give me a send-off no one else will.
To say the goodbye he didn’t.
She flicks the passenger door open with one hand, her elbow still resting on the frame. Her smile is tight and sharp, the kind that barely curves her lips.
“You look like shit.”
I huff a laugh that breaks before it forms. “That’s what I was going for.”
She doesn’t joke back.
She just watches me — really watches — her thumb tapping the steering wheel like she’s counting heartbeats, like she’s holding something back.
And then she says it.
Soft.
Calm.
Almost gentle enough that it doesn’t detonate.
“He made it.”
My heart misfires.
One beat missed.
One beat ruined.
She keeps her voice low. “Dax. I heard from him yesterday. Well — one of the guys did. They’re in.”
Alive.
The word hits hard. Brutal. Beautiful. A miracle and a wound at the same time, punching through my ribs like a sledgehammer wrapped in silk.
I swallow, my throat too thin. “He’s okay?”
She hesitates. Just long enough to terrify me.
Then she nods. “Physically, yeah. Still breathing. Still Dax.”
I nod too quickly. I nod like it keeps my lungs working.
And then it sinks in.
She heard from him.
I didn’t.
He crossed into hell, came out the other side, and he still didn’t reach for me. Didn’t check in. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even send a message that could’ve been two words, three syllables: still alive.
The relief blooming in my chest splinters straight through the middle — not joy, not warmth, just a slow, sad kind of burn.
“I’m glad he’s okay,” I whisper. Lola watches me too closely. “I thought maybe he…” I force a breath. “Never mind.”
She doesn’t push.
She just slides the gearstick into park, gets out, and slams the door behind her like she’s shutting out the conversation.
“Come here.”
I step into her arms before my brain can catch up. She holds me with a fierceness that feels like anger and love tangled together, like she’s gathering up all the parts of me he left scattered on that kitchen floor.
Her voice finds my ear, sharp and soft in the same breath. “You don’t have to prove anything, Cass.”
“I know.”
“You don’t owe the world your blood.”
“I know.”
“Then why the fuck are you doing this?”
I don’t answer because the truth is ugly and complicated and carved into bone and maybe I don’t even know anymore.
Lola pulls away first. She always does. She always knows when to give and when to let go. I stand there in her shadow for a moment longer, wishing it could shield me, that it could soften what comes next.
It doesn’t.
She lifts her sunglasses and meets my eyes. And for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t look hard. She looks tired. Like someone who’s watched too many people run straight into the places they’ll be broken.
“Whatever you’re chasing, Cass,” she says quietly, “I hope you find it before it breaks you.”
I try for a smile that doesn’t make it halfway. “Too late.”
Her mouth twitches, not quite a smile, not quite grief. She knows better than to argue because she knows me. Knows exactly what’s written in the cracks of me. Knows what I haven’t said aloud.
The real reason I’m going.
The truth no one’s dragged out of me.
Not her.
Not command.
Not even him.
It’s not about saving people.
It’s not about purpose.
It’s not even about courage.
It’s about punishment because somewhere along the line, I stopped believing I was allowed to be happy.
I let myself fall in love with a boy already bleeding from a thousand invisible wounds.
I didn’t stop him when he said goodbye, butterfly like I was already a fading photograph.
I still see my father dying every time I close my eyes — the way I froze, helpless, silent, useless.
I made myself a promise that I’d never freeze again and then I did.
The night Dax walked away, syrup drying on my skin like a brand of shame, and I didn’t run after him. I didn’t fight for him. I didn’t say I love you even though it was lodged in my throat so violently it hurt to breathe.
So yes.
I’m going.
Not because I’m brave.
Not because I’m strong but because maybe if I walk straight into hell, I’ll finally feel something that hurts worse than losing him.
Maybe then, the ache will quiet.