Chapter Twenty Five #3
The monitor answers her with its steady beep, like it knows she needs proof I’m still tethered.
Beep.
Beep.
Alive.
I want to tell her I hear every word. That I’ve been trying to claw my way back to them, back to her, through smoke and blood and ghosts. But my mouth won’t work. My chest won’t obey.
So I force my fingers to curl. Weak. Pathetic. But enough.
Her eyes widen. A sob tears out of her throat as she clutches my hand tighter.
“You’re here,” she breathes, forehead pressing to mine, her tears soaking into my skin. “You’re still here.”
My chest rattles, a broken exhale pushing through the tube. Her hand cups my cheek instantly, grounding me, anchoring me to the light bleeding back in around the edges.
Her lips brush my temple—soft, desperate, trembling.
“You don’t get to leave me again,” she whispers into my skin. “Do you hear me, Kingston? You don’t get to.”
I blink slow, heavy, but I lock on her. The only thing I can give her. The only vow I can make without words.
Her.
Always her.
And for the first time since the blast, the fear lifts because if she’s here, pouring her heart into me—then maybe I’m not drowning anymore.
Maybe I’m fighting.
Her voice doesn’t stop.
It fills the room like oxygen, like she’s breathing for me because my body’s too broken to do it on its own.
“I should hate you,” she whispers, shaking against me, her hair falling loose across my cheek. “God knows I tried. But even when I hated you, I still loved you. Do you understand that? You’ve wrecked me so bad there isn’t a version of me that doesn’t belong to you.”
Her thumb strokes across my jaw, careful, trembling, tracing the bruises blooming under my skin like she’s memorising them.
“I stayed with Mason all night,” she admits, voice cracking.
“He told me you’ve been bleeding since the day you left me.
He told me you never stopped, that I was the only thing you still—” Her words hitch.
She swallows, chokes them down, then spits them out anyway. “The only thing you still live for.”
My chest jerks with the shallowest rise, the weakest protest. Not enough. Never enough.
Her tears drip warm against my face.
“You left me in that kitchen, and I swore I’d never forgive you. I swore I’d never let you touch me again. But then you kissed me in that chapel, and I realised I’d been lying to myself every fucking day since you walked out.”
Her forehead presses to mine, soft and shaking, her breath hot on my lips though the tube keeps them apart.
“I love you, Dax. I love you in ways that make no sense, in ways that terrify me. And I don’t care if you think you’ll ruin me. I don’t care if you think you’re poison. You’re mine. Do you hear me? Mine. And if you go, if you let this war take you from me, then it takes me too.”
Her words break into a sob that tears her whole body forward until she’s clinging to me like she can hold me in place by force. Her nails dig into my arm, her tears soaking the sheet between us.
The monitor keeps its steady beat.
Beep.
Beep.
Proof.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t tell her I hear every word. But my hand twitches again, the smallest rebellion, the only defiance I can manage.
Her sob shudders into a laugh, raw and desperate.
“That’s enough,” she whispers fiercely, pressing my hand to her heart. “That’s all I need. Just don’t stop fighting. Don’t you dare stop, Kingston.”
Her lips brush my forehead, the faintest kiss, trembling and in the dark between pain and sleep, I cling to the sound of her voice because as long as she’s pouring herself into me, maybe I’m not lost.
Maybe I’m still hers.
Her breath hitches the second my fingers twitch again, the faintest scrape of movement against her chest where she’s holding me like I’m all that’s left in the world.
She’s still talking, still pouring everything she’s ever buried into me—anger, grief, love so raw it tastes like blood. Her voice breaks and builds, a tide that won’t stop rising.
“Don’t you leave me again, Dax,” she whispers, forehead pressed hard to mine. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to tear me apart and walk away this time. You don’t get to die when I just found you again. You’re mine, do you hear me? Mine.”
My throat works. God, it’s a war just to drag air through the wreckage of my lungs. Every breath burns. Every sound scrapes but something inside me claws up anyway.
Through the haze. Through the pain. Through the ghosts.
My lips part.
Dry. Cracked. Barely moving.
And one word bleeds out.
“…Butterfly.”
Her whole body freezes.
Like time stopped with it.
Her hand clamps tighter around mine, her tears breaking open all over again, spilling hot against my face. A sound tears out of her chest—half sob, half laugh, so full of relief it guts me more than any shrapnel ever could.
Her fingers shake against my jaw, against the line of tubes and tape and bruises. “You—” she gasps, voice splitting in two. “Oh my God—you said—”
I can’t say more. My body’s too wrecked, my strength too thin. But my eyes drag open, a slit, just enough to catch the blur of her face and fuck—she’s beautiful. Ruined, raw, crying—and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Her lips press to my cheek, fierce, frantic, like she’s kissing me back to life. “Stay with me, soldier,” she whispers, her voice breaking as she throws my own word back at me. “Stay with me, please.”
The monitor beeps steady.
My chest lifts, shallow but stubborn and for the first time since the blast, I believe I might.