Page 70 of Honeyfires

I kept my hand exactly where she'd put it and began to move again, slow and deep, watching her face. Watching every flicker of expression. The way she swallowed and felt my hand feel it. The way her eyes went unguarded and enormous and stayed there, fixed on mine, too far gone to look away.

"I've got you," I said.

"I know, baby. I know you do."

I kept my hand at her throat and my eyes on her face and worked her up one last time, slowly, building it from nothing, feeling her begin to tremble beneath me again. Her hands found my forearm—not gripping, just resting, needing to feel the connection—and I pressed my thumb very lightly against her jaw and watched her eyes flutter.

"Stay with me," I said.

They opened. Found mine.

"Good." I pressed deeper. Felt her begin to crest. "You're perfect. You know that? You're so—"

She came with her eyes open and locked on mine, a wave that was quieter than the others and went deeper, a long full-body tremor that seemed to start somewhere in her chest and move outward, and she kept her eyes on mine through all of it, and I kept my hand at her throat and my gaze on her face, and when it finally passed, she exhaled slowly and completely.

I lifted my hand from her throat and brought it to her face instead, thumb tracing her cheekbone, and her eyes closed at last.

We stayed like that for a long moment.

"Vera," I said softly.

"Mm."

"Talk to me."

"I'm here." A long pause. "I'm—" Another pause, longer. "I want to say something, and I don't have words for it."

"Take your time."

She opened her eyes. Looked at me with something entirely open and entirely unashamed. "That's the most myself I've ever felt," she said. "Does that make sense? It's—you hold me that way and I feel like I'm exactly right. Like I'm—" She stopped. "I've never trusted anyone like I trust you."

"I know," I said, my voice almost cracking.

I unbuckled the harness, set it aside, lay back down, and she came immediately to my side, her head on my chest, her hand finding the phoenix on my ribs and resting there. I held her and felt her settle and thought about all the roads that had led here, and felt, for the first time in longer than I could name, like I was somewhere I was supposed to be.

Her fingers traced the compass on my forearm. The hawk. The Rilke. Then they slowed, and settled, and the tip of one finger came to rest on the tattoo above my heart.

"This one," she said softly. Not a demand. Just: I'm here again.

My throat tightened.

"Vera—"

"You don't have to." Her hand pressed flat against it, warm and still and steady. "I've just wondered. You've explained all the others."

I looked at the ceiling. The candles were throwing soft, shifting light across the room. Outside, the desert was breathing slow and dark and patient.

Tonight it felt like getting permission from the universe.

I'd carried this for eight years. Through discharge and the VA and the first bad winters stateside and finding firefighting and building something that felt purposeful again. I'd carried it through every late-night station conversation that turned honest and too real, and I'd still stopped short of the actual floor of it. I'd told the outline of it, the version that explained the PTSD without explaining the specific wound underneath. Not even Rodriguez. Not Jackson. Not anyone.

But here, in the dark, in Vera's bed, on her birthday, with the candles almost gone and her warm little hand flat against their initials—

"Lucas Johnson and Santiago Ramirez," I said. "My unit. Convoy partners. Best friends for two tours. The kind of friendships that only builds when you're surviving the same thing together, day after day, until you stop being able to imagine the world without the other people in it."

Her hand didn't move. Just stayed.

"Standard route. One we'd run dozens of times. Someone had planted an IED. Johnson's vehicle hit it first." The words came slowly, then faster. The way water moved when a dam finally found a crack it couldn't hold. "Ramirez went to help, and I was supposed to provide cover fire, but I froze. Three seconds. Maybe four. But there was a secondary device, and I wasn't—I hadn't—" I stopped. My voice was betraying me in a way I wasn't going to be able to prevent. "Johnson died instantly. Santi held on long enough for the medics to reach him, but he didn't make it. I swear to god, Vera. A significant piece of my soul died with them that day."