Kai #4
I grip her jaw, force her to look at me.
“I won’t fucking lose you again,” I snarl. “Not to him. Not to the version of you that pretends I don’t exist.” My forehead presses to hers, breath hot, shaking. “I already lived through that once. I won’t survive it twice.”
Her eyes fill. She doesn’t fight me. She just trembles.
“This ends one way, Scarlett,” I say. “With you leaving with me—or with me burning the world down to make sure no one else ever touches you.”
The sound of rotors slices through the trees.
I straighten, decision locked, hand tightening around her wrist.
“Choose,” I tell her. “Now.”
Her breath breaks.
It isn’t pretty crying. It’s ugly, tearing, the kind that comes from too deep in the chest to stop once it starts. Her shoulders fold in on themselves as if she’s trying to disappear inside her own body, fingers curling into the torn fabric at her sides.
“I can’t,” she sobs. “Kai—I can’t. This was wrong. It was wrong four years ago and it’s wrong right now and you know that.”
Her words come out fractured, tumbling over each other. She shakes her head over and over, like if she keeps moving maybe the moment won’t solidify.
“You don’t get to do this,” she cries. “You don’t get to drag me back into it. I tried to stop. I tried to be normal. I tried to forget you.”
That’s when I lose what little patience I had left.
I grab her face, hard enough that her teeth click, forcing her to look at me through the tears streaking tracks through the dirt.
“It wasn’t fucking wrong,” I snap, each word bitten off. “Don’t rewrite it. Don’t cheapen it. Don’t lie to me now.”
Her breath stutters.
“We didn’t imagine it,” I go on, voice dropping, dangerous and steady. “You didn’t cry into my shoulder because it was wrong. You didn’t whisper my name in the dark because it was a mistake.”
She chokes on a sob. “We were kids—”
“No,” I cut in immediately. “We were already broken. There’s a difference.”
My thumb digs into her jaw, not cruel, not gentle—claiming.
“What’s wrong,” I say quietly, “is pretending you can erase something that carved itself into both of us.”
The rotors thunder closer. The light sweeps the tree-line again, harsher now. Real. Counting down.
She shakes under my hands.
“I don’t want this,” she whispers. “I don’t want you like this. I don’t want to be this person.”
I lean in, my forehead pressing to hers, breath rough.
“You already are,” I say. “You’ve been her the whole time.”
Her hands clutch weakly at my wrists, not pushing, not pulling—caught.
“This ends one way, Scarlett,” I repeat, lower now. “With you walking away with me—or with everything else breaking around us until there’s nowhere left to stand.”
Her eyes search my face like she’s looking for mercy and finding none.
“Kai…” she sobs. “Please.”
The word hits, but it doesn’t slow me. It locks me in.
I straighten, grip tightening around her wrist as the sound of boots and voices begin to bleed through the jungle.
“They’re closing in,” I say. “This is the last clean second you get.”
I hold her gaze.
“Choose,” I tell her again. “Now.”
Her knees finally give.
She doesn’t collapse all the way—just enough that I feel the weight of it through my grip, her body sagging like something cut loose from its spine. She’s sobbing now, properly sobbing, sound ripped out of her in jagged, humiliating pulls.
“I can’t,” she keeps saying, over and over. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—Kai, this was wrong. It was wrong back then and it’s wrong now and I can’t keep doing this.”
The words hit me like teeth.
I let go of her wrist only to grab her shoulders, shaking her once—hard. Not to hurt. To wake her.
“Look at me,” I snap.
She does. Reluctant. Wrecked. Her face is a mess—mud, tears, fear—and it splits something open in my chest I don’t have language for.
“Don’t say that,” I growl. “Don’t you dare fucking say it was wrong.”
Her mouth opens again but I talk over her, voice breaking through my teeth.
“Wrong is letting him touch you like you’re something clean.
Wrong is pretending you didn’t bleed when you left me.
Wrong is every night I spent knowing you were alive somewhere and choosing not to come for you because I thought—” My breath stutters.
I shove the words out anyway. “—because I thought you were better without me.”
She shakes her head violently. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’m not,” I snarl. “I’m asking.”
The word lands heavier than anything else I’ve said.
Asking.
The searchlight cuts closer. Voices now—real ones. Not imagined. The net tightening.
I lean in, forehead pressed to hers, my voice dropping into something raw and shaking and unguarded.
“Choose me,” I say.
Her breath hitches so hard it sounds painful.
“Scar,” I whisper, desperate now, stripped bare of threats and fury. “Choose me. Please.”
Her eyes flood again. She tries to pull back, but she doesn’t go far. She can’t.
“I don’t want to be this,” she sobs. “I don’t want to ruin everything.”
I laugh—short, broken, almost hysterical.
“Everything’s already ruined,” I say. “I’m just asking you to pick what ruins you.”
She makes a small, wounded sound, like something cornered.
“I can’t go back,” she whispers.
I nod once. Sharp.
“Then don’t.”
I grip her face again, gentler this time, thumbs brushing the wet tracks on her cheeks like I’m memorising them.
“Choose me,” I repeat, voice cracking completely now. “Not the past. Not the guilt. Me. I’m right here.”
The rotors roar overhead. Too close. Too loud.
Her lips tremble. Her eyes flick toward the light, then back to me.
I don’t look away.
“I won’t survive losing you again,” I say quietly. No threat. No drama. Just truth. “So if you don’t choose me, I’ll choose for both of us.”
She inhales, sharp and broken.
“Kai…”
I press my forehead to hers one last time.
“Choose,” I whisper.