Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Cassandra
The base feels different tonight.
Heavier.
Thicker.
As if the air itself has learned how to bruise.
Outside the med tent, the generators growl in mismatched rhythms, coughing out bursts of heat that cling to the skin.
The sandstorms drag themselves across the horizon like something alive, scratching at the canvas walls.
Voices carry—shouting, laughing too loud, crying too soft.
Metal bangs against metal. Boots stomp through grit.
War hums under everything here and none of it hurts half as much as this.
It hurts more than I will ever admit.
Not just in my chest. Not just in my ribs. It’s like something’s rotting inside me now — something warm and soft that used to believe in him.
I thought we had something.
I thought—
Fuck.
I don’t even know what I fucking thought.
That maybe when I saw him again, he’d pull me into his arms. Whisper that he missed me. That I wasn’t crazy for holding onto the memory of his voice while the bombs dropped and the nights got too long.
That he’d still be mine.
God.
I’m so fucking stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The med tent lights flicker overhead like they’re tired of trying. The overhead AC unit hums weakly, trying to push out air that isn’t sixty percent dust. Somewhere down the row, a soldier groans through morphine, and another medic mutters curses as he tries to find a vein that hasn’t collapsed.
And through all of it…
He didn’t even look at me like I mattered.
Didn’t blink when he spat those words—cold, sharp, detached—like I was just another medic with a clipboard and clean boots, not the girl he kissed like a storm in the kitchen with syrup dripping off my thighs.
He looked through me as if I was a ghost. Like I’d already died. I swallow down the lump in my throat and pretend it’s just dust. Fatigue. Dehydration.
Not heartbreak.
Not betrayal.
Not the raw scream building in my chest.
A helicopter roars overhead, rattling the tent poles. The smell of antiseptic rises sharper. Blood dries faster in the heat. There’s shouting somewhere outside—orders barked into radios, the crackle of static, the rumble of tires on gravel.
I shouldn’t care.
I shouldn’t fucking care.
We’re at war. People are dying. I’m covered in blood that isn’t mine, stitching skin I barely have time to memorise before they get dragged out on stretchers again.
This isn’t about love.
This isn’t about him.
Except it is Because it’s always been about him.
Dax Kingston.
The man who burned through me like a matchstick. The man who said goodbye without meaning it, and then never came back.
Not really.
Not the version of him I knew.
The man outside that tent is not the man who fed me strawberries and told me with his eyes that he wanted me forever. He’s someone else now and maybe I am too.
Maybe this place stripped more than our illusions. Maybe it scraped away the soft and left nothing but bone.
But God… it still hurts.
It hurts so fucking much to stand here, so close I can hear him breathing, and feel like I’m not even worth a goddamn glance.
The tent smells like antiseptic and rust. Like pain trying to clean itself up. I hold the gauze tighter than I need to. Press a little harder on the wound I’m dressing—partly to stop the bleeding, partly to keep my hands from shaking.
Don’t cry. Don’t crack. Don’t care.
The ventilator cycles on the far side of the room. The vents cough dust. The lights buzz. A tray drops. Someone curses. The entire medical bay trembles like it’s made of bones instead of canvas and poles.
“Jesus, you really don’t mess around,” a voice says from my left.
I glance up.
It’s Torres.
Another field medic. One of the newer guys. Navy. Tall, sun-browned, annoyingly confident in that way boys get when they haven’t seen what war really does yet.
He’s grinning. Not in a sleazy way. Not even in that I’m-gonna-get-your-number way. Just warm. Easy. Like he hasn’t noticed the wreckage inside me yet.
“You always press that hard, or is it just the ones who flirt with you first?”
My brow lifts. “He’s unconscious, Torres.”
“Exactly. My competition’s down. I had to shoot my shot.”
A laugh slips out.
I clamp it back with my teeth and shake my head. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
He shrugs, then hands me fresh gauze. “Yeah, but I’m the idiot with good banter. You need some of that today. You look like your soul’s been put through a blender.”
I don’t answer.
Can’t.
Not when my soul has been put through a blender, and the blade looked a hell of a lot like Dax Kingston.
Torres leans his hip against the gurney beside me. “You okay?”
The question shouldn’t matter but it lands. Harder than it should because no one’s asked me that since I got here. Not really. Not like they meant it.
I could lie.
Say yes.
Shrug and throw a joke back at him like I’m still whole, like I’m not two seconds away from collapsing in a pile of too-late feelings and syrup-soaked memories that still sting behind my eyes.
Instead, I murmur, “I’m fine.”
His gaze lingers. He doesn’t believe me. But he doesn’t push. Just slides a protein bar into my hand and mutters, “Eat. Cry later.”
I blink down at it.
It’s stupid. Small. Pathetic but I could fucking sob at the way kindness suddenly feels like the sharpest weapon in the room.
Outside, the artillery checkpoint fires a warning shot into the distance. The ground shakes. Dust falls from the ceiling. A nurse winces as she tapes down an IV. The lights flicker again.
And still—
Outside, I can feel him.
Dax.
His presence is heavier than sandbags, pressing against the air like thunder before it breaks.
He’s not watching me.
But I know he knows.
Knows I’m here.
Knows Torres is here.
Knows someone else made me laugh.
I wonder if it kills him.
I wonder if it doesn’t.
And that thought?
Hurts worse than anything else.
He sees it.
The flicker in my throat when I swallow.
The way I keep glancing toward the exit like I’m hoping he’ll come back in.
Or dreading it.
I don’t even know anymore.
Torres leans down, voice low, teasing.
“Who is he?”
I blink.
My jaw clenches.
He doesn’t push because the silence that answers him is louder than a scream and yet—he doesn’t look smug. Doesn’t look like he’s already adding it up in his head. He just tosses a used gauze strip into the bin and says—
“Okay. Then I’ll be the rebound.”
I choke on a laugh. “Excuse me?”
He holds up both hands like he’s innocent, but there’s a wicked grin at the corner of his mouth.
“Relax. I don’t mean, like, now. Or even soon. But, you know—whenever you stop looking at the door like he’s gonna come back.”
My heart stumbles.
I don’t say anything because I’m not sure I can.
Torres nods to the protein bar in my hand. “Still haven’t eaten it.”
“I was going to.”
“Sure.” He plucks it from my palm, tears it open, and holds it to my lips. “Let me feed you like a princess since no one else is stepping the fuck up.”
I bite it before I can stop myself.
Chew. Swallow. Try not to laugh.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m romantic,” he argues. “You just haven’t seen the full deployment dating experience yet.”
I arch a brow. “Oh yeah? What’s that involve?”
He squints like he’s thinking hard. “Well, let’s see. No flowers, but I can get you extra wet wipes. No chocolate, but I’ll trade two Red Bulls and a mystery snack for a five-minute break under the shade tarp.”
I huff out a laugh.
“What about music?”
He points to a busted comms unit in the corner. “I’ll rig the static into something that sounds like Frank Sinatra.”
“And dancing?”
He grins. “Only if you don’t mind three left feet and my rifle strapped between us.”
I’m smiling before I realise it. Smiling too hard. Smiling like someone who wants to forget.
Fuck.
I don’t want to forget Dax. I just want him to fight for me but he’s not here.
Not really. Not where it counts. Not anymore.
And Torres?
He’s not trying to replace him. He’s not trying to fix me.
He’s just trying to make me laugh.
That might be the cruelest kindness of all.
He sits on the edge of the cot beside mine.
Pops open a can of something lukewarm and probably expired.
“So. Real talk.”
I glance at him, wary.
“What?”
He nudges my boot with his.
“When you are ready… we’re going on a date.”
“In a war zone?”
“Damn right.”
I snort. “And what would that even look like?”
Torres grins wide.
“Easy. I’ll steal a candle from the med tent.
You’ll swipe a slice of that weird bread they keep calling naan.
We’ll sneak up to the roof at sunset, pretend the shellfire in the distance is fireworks, and I’ll tell you all the dumbest stories from my first deployment.
You’ll laugh. I’ll get sappy. We’ll argue over MRE flavours and pretend we’re anywhere else in the world. Sound good?”
My throat tightens.
Fuck.
He’s serious.
He’s actually fucking serious and I don’t know what’s worse—that I want to say yes. Or that a piece of me wonders if Dax would even notice.
I don’t answer.
I just stare at him like maybe if I look hard enough, I’ll feel something else—something real. Something warm.
Something that doesn’t make me want to peel my skin off just to stop feeling like his.
But Torres isn’t Dax.
He doesn’t look at me like I’m fragile.
He doesn’t flinch when I snap.
He doesn’t carry that haunted silence like a weapon and a warning.
He just waits.
Like the offer’s not going anywhere.
Like I can unravel at my own fucking pace.
And God, I want to.
I want to fall into someone who doesn’t make me feel like I’m the reason the world’s ending.
But I already did that.
And he left me in that fucking kitchen with a name I used to love and a goodbye that didn’t mean a fucking thing.
“Say yes, Cassandra.”
Torres’s voice is low. Soft. So unlike the way Dax used to demand things from me like he had the right.
“I can’t,” I whisper, more to myself than him.
“Can’t or won’t?”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Both.”
He doesn’t press. Just leans back on his elbows, stretching out on the cot beside mine like he belongs there.
“Then I’ll wait,” he says simply.
And that—that—somehow breaks me more than anything Dax ever did because Torres isn’t cruel. He’s kind. He’s light in a place where everything else feels like ash and I’m still stupidly, pathetically waiting on the man who treats me like a ghost he regrets touching.
A shadow moves outside the flap. Heavy steps. Dragged boots and I know it’s him before I even see him.
My lungs freeze.
My hands go still around the med kit I’m repacking just to keep busy.
Torres sees it too.
Sees the way my whole body reacts like I’ve been slapped.
He follows my gaze to the opening in the canvas, then back to me.
“You gonna be okay?”
I nod too fast. Lie too easily.
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t buy it but he doesn’t fight me on it either.
Just stands. Ruffles my hair. Murmurs something about needing to check inventory and disappears with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
The silence that follows is loud.
Thick.
Painful.
I hear the flap shift again.
Feel the air shift with it and I don’t have to turn around to know he’s standing there.
Dax.
I can feel him.
Like a fever under my skin. Like thunder waiting to break.
He doesn’t say anything.
Neither do I and for a second—just a second—I wonder if we’ll ever talk again like we used to.
If I’ll ever get to ask him why he looked at me like he wanted to kill something and then walked away like I was already dead.
If he’ll ever say my name without it sounding like a sin he regrets confessing but he doesn’t say anything.
Just stands there in the dark while my heart begs for something it knows it’ll never get from him.
Not warmth. Not answers. Not love.
Just… a reason.
A single, fucking reason why I wasn’t enough.
He’s gone now.
Both of them and I sit there like a fucking idiot in the half-dark, surrounded by gauze, sand, and silence.
My ribs hurt like I’ve been hit from the inside out.
Not from a blast. Not from the war. From him. From me. From the part of me that looked into Torres’s warm, waiting eyes and still couldn’t say yes and I should’ve. God, I should’ve.
Torres is hot as fucking sin—chocolate skin and crooked grin, hands that look like they’ve held a thousand people together and a voice that makes you feel like maybe—just maybe—you could be safe again. He smells like cedar and sweat, wears his dog tags like they mean something, and when he laughs?
It sounds like hope.
The kind that doesn’t come easy out here.
The kind I used to have before a pair of icy blue eyes looked through me like I was just another piece of war he wanted to forget.
And I still didn’t say yes.
I should’ve flirted back. I should’ve said something cool. Something effortless. Something that would’ve made me feel like I was healing, like I wasn’t still stitched together with someone else’s goodbye.
Instead, I froze.
Like a coward.
Like a girl still hoping the ghost outside the door will come back as the man she remembers.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Cassandra.”
I whisper it to no one, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until colours burst like pain behind my lids.
He’s not coming back.
Not really.
Not the way I want.
The Dax I knew—the Dax who kissed me like it hurt not to, who held me in his kitchen like I was the only soft thing in his life worth keeping—that Dax is gone.
Replaced by a man made of gunpowder and guilt.
A man who can barely look at me without setting his own fuse.
And I still fucking want him.
I groan and fall back onto the cot, staring up at the sagging canvas ceiling, trying to breathe through the tightness in my chest.
It’s not fair.
Torres is kind. Torres is solid. Torres calls me Monroe in that stupid flirt voice like he’s trying not to smile, and he makes the world feel less heavy, even if only for a second but I’d still trade all of that for one second with Dax looking at me like I’m his again.
Even if he never will.
My hands curl into the thin blanket beneath me.
I think about saying yes next time. Letting Torres take me somewhere, even if it’s just ten feet outside the med tent under the stars.
Letting myself laugh.
Letting myself forget but the moment I imagine it—his hands on mine, his smile close enough to taste—all I see is him.
All I feel is the phantom weight of Dax’s body over mine, syrup and sin and that low, broken voice whispering “mine” like a vow and a threat.
I hate him for this.
For making me this.
For turning me into a girl who flinches at kindness and waits for cruelty just to feel close to him again.
Outside, the wind kicks up. Somewhere in the shadows, I think I hear boots crunching gravel and I close my eyes, already knowing it’s not him.
It never is because Dax Kingston is a ghost and I’m just the idiot still calling him home.