Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Dax
War doesn’t feel like war.
It feels like waiting.
Waiting for something to explode.
Waiting for someone not to come back.
Waiting for the ground to open up and take you, or the sky to fall, or the fucking silence between gunfire to be the last thing you ever hear and that’s the thing no briefing, no manual, no recruiter ever tells you — that it is the waiting that strips the skin first. The anticipation that rots the nerves.
The stillness between violence that becomes its own kind of violence.
I don’t think people realise how quiet it gets.
The moments after.
After the blast.
After the scream.
After the medics drag what’s left of your brother into the dust and someone shouts “CLEAR” and then…
silence.
That silence will haunt you harder than the blood.
Harder than the screams.
Harder than the memory of what a body looks like before and after it stops being a person.
And you know what’s worse?
It’s not the fear.
Not the sweat on your neck or the weight of your gear.
Not even the way your hands shake when you reload.
It’s the thought.
Her.
That fucking girl with syrup on her skin and stars in her hair.
The one I left on a kitchen table with a goodbye I didn’t mean and a heart I never deserved.
Cassandra.
She’s in every breath.
Every blink.
Every dream I don’t let myself have.
And fuck me, I dream.
Even when I’m awake.
I dream she’s here, in this heat, sitting beside me in the back of this convoy, brushing sand off her thighs and telling me about some stupid book she’s reading while bullets rattle like dice in the distance.
I dream she never said she was leaving. Never said she was gonna put herself in the line of fire because I can’t protect her from here. I can’t fucking breathe knowing she’s out there.
The heat is a different kind of cruel today. My shirt’s soaked. The Kevlar feels like it’s fused to my spine. My boots crunch over gravel like it’s bone.
We’ve been out six hours.
Patrol. Dust. Shitty rations.
Some kid waved at us from a rooftop, holding a phone like he was filming the next time we’d bleed. Every building looks like it’s watching. Every alley holds its breath. Every shadow feels sculpted by someone who hates you enough to wait for the right moment.
“You good, Kingston?”
I nod, even though I’m not.
I haven’t been good since I let go of her hand.
We get back to base. There’s sand in my throat. Smoke on the horizon. Someone’s talking but it’s background noise. It all is.
The generators hum like dying animals. The prayer call drifts from the village at the edge of the wire. Helicopters throb overhead, a heartbeat made of steel.
I drop down on my cot like my bones don’t work anymore. Stare up at the tarp roof like it owes me answers and then I do something I said I wouldn’t. I reach into the pocket where I keep the only thing I have left of her.
The letter I never should’ve brought.
Crumpled. Worn. Her name on the front in my chicken-scratch handwriting.
Unsent.
Unread.
Un-fucking-finished.
I open it.
The ink’s smudged.
Sweat and dirt and regret smearing what little I managed to say.
I press the page to my chest. Close my eyes and I see her again.
My butterfly.
Soft. Fragile. Wild.
Mine.
The girl I should’ve never touched. The girl I can’t stop craving. The girl I left with nothing but my silence.
You want realism?
This is it.
No sleep.
No peace.
Just sand, sweat, ghosts, and her name echoing in every fucking breath.
And the brutal, choking truth:
I don’t know if I’ll survive this time.
And I don’t know if I want to if she’s not waiting on the other side.
I try to write but the pen shakes in my hand like it’s scared of what I’ll say.
I’ve started this letter a hundred times.
Burned it.
Buried it.
Tore it to pieces and stuffed it back into the corner of my cot like it didn’t mean anything but it does.
It fucking does.
Every time I close my eyes I see hers—wide, wild, hurt—and I hear the stupid things I said that night. The way I backed away from her like she was the threat, when I’ve always been the one made of blood and ruin.
And that’s the truth, isn’t it?
I left her on that table with syrup on her thighs and love in her eyes… and I walked out like it meant nothing because I thought she was going to be safe. I thought if I ripped the bandaid off early, it would hurt less when she forgot me. I didn’t think I deserved her staying.
And now?
Now she’s here.
Not here here—but in the same fucking war zone, in the same damn sandstorm I swore I’d protect her from and I’m the one who sent her running straight into it.
The metal fan above my head makes a clicking sound like it’s counting down the minutes I’ve got left. Somewhere outside, someone yells in Arabic. Another soldier coughs in the tent next door.
The sun’s not even up and I already want to scream.
My hands are filthy.
My head’s worse.
I stare down at the open letter.
The ink blots.
The words look like lies.
Cass,
I don’t know how to start this. I never was good at words, not when it came to you. But I guess I’m writing this in case I don’t come back. In case this place finally swallows me whole. In case the next explosion takes more than just my hearing this time.
I didn’t say goodbye because I’m a coward. I didn’t say “I love you” because I didn’t want to ruin the memory of your smile with the weight of those words.
But I did. I do. I fucking love you, Cass. I don’t know how to stop.
I clench my jaw. Stare at the last line. I don’t know how to stop.
Yeah. That’s the fucking problem.
I slam the notebook shut.
I can’t send this.
I can’t tell her how much I hate myself for letting her go. For letting her sign up for this. For imagining her in camo with a medic’s bag, soft hands covered in someone else’s blood. For picturing her on the other side of a radio call that starts with “we’ve got a casualty—”
No.
I shove the notebook away. Stand up so fast my boots skid in the sand. The canvas roof of the tent blurs above me. I don’t know if I want to run or throw up or punch a hole through the side of this fucking world.
My knuckles twitch.
My heart pounds and all I can hear is my voice whispering: Promise me you’ll come back.
And hers?
“I can’t promise you that.”
I walk out into the night, past the tents, past the radio room, past the young ones laughing too loud near the mess. I need air. I need quiet. I need to stop picturing her dead because that’s the thing they don’t tell you when you love someone in uniform:
It’s not just your life that’s on the line.
It’s theirs.
It’s both your hearts ticking like grenades and I swear to God, if something happens to her—
If I never get to kiss her again.
If I never get to trace her spine with my mouth.
If I never get to fall asleep beside her again, feeling like I finally found home in the middle of this hell—
I won’t make it back.
Not really.
There’s a phrase they use out here—
“Dead man walking.”
Most of the new guys think it’s about the body bags. It’s not. It’s the look you get when your soul leaves your chest before your blood does.
When the only thing keeping you upright is the memory of the person waiting for you on the other side of the bullet. When the fear of never seeing her again burns hotter than the sun ripping your skin open.
That’s me now.
I haven’t slept. Not properly. Not since the day I found out she’d be deployed here. Somewhere in this dust-choked, godforsaken pit of hell. They won’t give me her location. “Need to know,” they said.
As if every cell in my body doesn’t fucking need to know.
She’s out there.
Cassandra.
My Butterfly.
My soft girl with chaos in her eyes and a war in her bones.
The woman I should have kept safe and instead, I left her on that table. Left her with syrup on her skin and my name between her lips like a prayer. Left her thinking I could walk away from something like her and now I wake up every morning with bile in my throat and her ghost in my lungs.
“You’re too soft for this, Butterfly…”
“I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
I see it.
Over and over.
Her walking toward the transport unit, hair tied back, spine straight like she doesn’t feel the weight of what’s coming.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t fucking know what this place does to you. It guts you. Rips you open slow. Turns you into something you don’t recognise in the mirror and I should’ve dragged her out of that medical exam room the second I found out.
But instead?
I let her go because I thought she’d change her mind. I thought it was just another thing to prove she was strong. I didn’t know she’d actually do it.
The sandstorm kicks up hard. You can’t see ten feet in front of you. Wind screaming like the dead. Dust coating your teeth and eyes and every broken part of your past.
I take cover behind the comms truck. Light a cigarette with shaking hands. It’s the third time this week I’ve imagined her name over the radio.
Cassandra Monroe. Medic down. Repeat: medic down.
Every time I hear static now, my chest caves. Every fucking time.
I stare at the flame. Think about all the things I haven’t told her.
That I sleep with her necklace wrapped around my wrist. That I still dream of her humming in my kitchen.
That I rewatch the video of her dancing on the syrup-covered table at least once a week like a fucking addict.
That the reason I’m still breathing is because of her.
That I miss her so fucking much it makes my bones ache.
I drop the cigarette.
Crush it under my boot.
Stare out into the black night like maybe the wind will carry her to me and I whisper it, barely loud enough for the sand to hear.
“Where are you, Butterfly?”
The heat out here doesn’t just cook you—it crawls inside you It wraps around your spine and settles in your lungs like smoke, like regret, like every bad choice you ever made and every fucking reason you deserve to suffer for them.