12. Leah
LEAH
Some nights, it gets so quiet I can hear my pulse in my teeth.
Not my ears. My teeth. Like the tension’s burrowed into the bone and started knocking from the inside. The low thrum of blood moving too fast in a body trying too hard to play it cool.
I’m not cool.
I’m nowhere near it.
Kalev sleeps light—one arm over his chest, the other under the pillow, like his body’s still braced for a breach. We’re both running on six kinds of exhaustion, and even in sleep he keeps one boot hooked on the floor like he’s ready to launch.
Me? I stare at the condensation gathering on the pipes above our heads and feel the hours chew at my ribs.
Time gets weird down here. No sky. No shift bells. Just the artificial buzz of surveillance gear and the metallic tang of recycled air. It warps your sense of presence—makes you feel like the past and present are stuck in a holding pattern.
Which is probably why I’ve been thinking about the raid.
Not just remembering. Reliving.
Grolgath territory, outer rim, six years ago. I was twenty-one, still dumb enough to think tactical belts made me look competent. They didn’t. They made me a walking beacon of rookie energy, and worse—I thought standing still made me look brave.
I’ve never told anyone.
But it’s been pulling at the edges of me like a frayed thread for days, and I know—if I don’t say it soon, it’s going to tear something vital.
I roll onto my side.
Kalev doesn’t move. His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not asleep. He breathes too evenly when he’s pretending.
“Hey.”
A slow exhale. “Yeah.”
My voice is quiet, but it doesn’t shake. “You ever freeze in the field?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He shifts slightly, opens his eyes, looks at me across the low stretch of floor between us. “You want a real answer or a convenient one?”
“Real.”
He nods once. “Yeah. I have.”
I wait.
He waits, too.
But not in a “your turn” kind of way. More like… “we don’t rush this” kind of way.
I close my eyes for a second.
“When the Grolgath breached our compound, I was in the secondary med wing. I was supposed to help evacuate the auxiliary patients. I had a clear path. No fire, no fallen debris. Nothing in the way.”
My palms are sweating.
“I looked right at them—two of our people. One of them was just a kid. I had a med cart half full of trauma kits and adrenaline stims. Could’ve gotten them both out.”
He doesn’t move.
“I froze.”
There. I said it. Out loud. And nothing exploded. The ceiling didn’t fall. The ground didn’t swallow me whole.
But my throat tightens anyway.
“I don’t even know how long. Ten seconds? Thirty? The Grolgath weren’t even that close yet. But something in my head just… jammed. Like my body hit pause.”
I’m not looking at him now. I can’t.
“They both made it,” I add quickly, as if that’ll soften the rest of it. “Someone else got them out. I just stood there. Like a goddamn statue.”
I expect him to say something right away. A soft platitude. A brush-off. Or maybe one of those stoic “you did your best” lines that well-meaning assholes like to deploy when they don’t know what else to say.
But he doesn’t say anything.
He just waits.
Lets the silence be what it is.
Lets me finish without rushing to rescue me from it.
Eventually, I glance over.
He’s still watching me, steady as gravity.
“I keep thinking,” I murmur, “what if it happens again? What if something goes sideways and you’re counting on me and I just… stop?”
There’s a pause. Long. Then?—
“Freezing,” he says slowly, “is information.”
I blink. “What?”
“It’s not weakness. It’s data. It tells you something’s wrong, that something in the situation isn’t matching what your brain can handle. You froze because your instincts didn’t have a play. That doesn’t mean you failed.”
I sit up. “Feels like failure.”
He shrugs. “Then use the feeling. Let it teach you where the gaps are. Where the weight lives.”
“That sounds like a nice theory.”
“It’s not a theory. It’s survival.” He shifts upright, resting his forearms on his knees. “You’re not made of metal, Leah. You don’t have to be unbreakable. You just have to know how you break—and then account for it.”
That lands like a stone in my gut.
I stare at the floor for a while.
“Was it like that for you?” I ask. “When you froze?”
He gives a low hum, almost a laugh, but without humor. “First time I saw a civilian take shrapnel. She was pregnant. I was nineteen. The whole world slowed down. I could hear her scream sometimes.”
I look up.
“Did you move?”
“Not fast enough.”
The air between us thickens. It’s not heavy in the bad way. It’s just dense. Loaded with history, with truth.
With permission.
He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “You adapted. Down here, in this hole, with no clean exit—you’ve held. You’ve watched. You’ve acted. Don’t let one memory convince you you’re still that person.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
So I don’t.
Instead, I lie back down, staring at the ceiling again. Watching condensation drip like the world’s slowest metronome.
“Adaptability,” he mutters, almost to himself, “is the only real kind of strength.”
And there it is.
The shift.
The place in my chest where shame has been squatting, carving its name into my ribs—suddenly, it loosens. Not all the way. But enough. Enough to let air in.
We lie in silence again.
But it’s not the teeth-buzzing kind.
It’s full of things not said. Not yet.
The space between us shrinks. Not physically. We’re still on separate mats. But I can feel him now. The heat of his body, the weight of his attention. The charge.
I shouldn’t want this.
I shouldn’t want him.
But my skin hums. My breath stutters.
I think about his hands—how careful they are when he’s repairing the sensor net, how steady when he’s setting explosive failsafes. I think about the way his mouth moves when he’s talking about old wounds, the flicker in his eyes when he watches me move through the base like I belong there.
I think about how many things could go wrong if I touch that live wire.
But gods, I want to.
And I know he feels it, too.
Because when I shift—roll onto my side to face him again—he does the same.
Our eyes meet.
Nothing moves.
No one speaks.
But everything between us crystallizes.
Not mission. Not safety. Not need.
Just want.