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“It’s fine. I’ve had enough soup and soft food over the past few days to last me a lifetime,” I tell him honestly as I pick up one of the triangles.

I have to stop myself from tearing up again. Not because of the food, but because he cut them into triangles. Something about that, about the quiet, unnecessary care in it, catches somewhere in my chest before I can shove it down.

We eat in silence, the kind that settles instead of presses, easy enough that neither of us feels the need to break it. I’m starting to appreciate that about Conor, that he doesn’t reach for noise just to fill the space, doesn’t force conversation where it isn’t needed.

I make it through two sandwiches before I have to stop, the ache in my throat catching up with me even though I know I could probably force down more if I tried. I wipe my mouth with the napkin before setting it down on the coffee table.

“Thank you,” I tell Conor.

“It’s nothing. Here.” He shakes two tablets into his palm and holds them out to me. “Doctor said to take two every four hours, or as needed.”

I take them without argument and swallow them down. I hate medication, always have. As the bitter taste washes over my tongue, my mind goes to the dark place in my memories. A time when pills like this weren’t meant to help. Just meant to make everything stop. I quickly push those thoughts out of my mind. I lived through that time and refused to ever go back there.

Conor stands and holds his hand out to me. I hesitate only a second before taking it. He leads me down the hall and into a bedroom so large it makes my last two apartments combined feel claustrophobic by comparison. This can’t be a guest room.

Conor crosses to one of the dressers, pulls out a bundle of clothes, and hands them to me. The fabric is impossibly soft beneath my fingers, the kind of softness I’m not used to touching, let alone being given.

“Need help changing?”

I shake my head a little too quickly. What the fuck is wrong with me? Everything I usually keep locked down keeps forcing its way to the surface, and it’s taking more effort than it should to shove it all back under before it spills out completely.

“Bathroom’s through there,” he says, nodding toward a door across the room. “Call out if you need anything.”

He pauses for half a second before reaching for me again, his hand settling against the side of my neck, large and warm.

“I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”

Then he presses the briefest kiss to my forehead. It’s barely a touch, gone almost as soon as it happens, but the sensation still sends a sharp shiver down my spine, my body reacting before my brain can catch up, leaning instinctively into him like I’m already chasing more. He steps back and leaves the room.

Sighing quietly, I force my feet toward the bathroom. Any other time, I probably would’ve stopped to stare at the marble and chrome filling the massive space, at the kind of luxury that belongs in magazines instead of real life, but all I can think about is the feel of Conor’s lips against my forehead. The feeling of that touch lingers longer than it should.

As soon as I slide into bed, I know this has to be his room. I’m surrounded by him. Not just the clean scent of his cologne, but something warmer beneath it. It’s the distinctly masculine smell that belongs to Conor alone, settling into the sheets and pillows around me until it feels impossible to escape. I burrow deeper into the softness, exhaustion dragging heavily at my body as I close my eyes and let myself sink into it, into him, willing sleep to finally take me under.

Smoke surrounds me so thick it burns my eyes and clogs my lungs every time I try to breathe. Pain erupts across my body as shrapnel tears into my skin, sharp and hot, until the burning swallows everything else. I cry out for help, but my voice disappears beneath the screams of the other men bleeding out around me.

Gunfire cracks through the chaos, bullets slicing through the smoke close enough that I feel them cutting the air beside me. Then the smoke parts. Not naturally, but slowly, like something unseen is forcing it back. And Trent walks through it. Nothing about the battlefield touches him. No panic. He moves toward me calmly while the world burns around us.

“Get down!” I scream at him. “Take cover!”

But he just laughs.

“Look at you,” he says, smiling like he’s enjoying this. “Pathetic. You believed every fantasy I fed you. Ate it up like the needy little thing you are.”

“You said you loved me,” I choke out, shaking my head hard enough to make the world spin. “You said we were going to build something together.”

His laugh cuts deeper than the shrapnel buried in my skin.

“And you actually believed that?” he asks. “I told you who my family is. Where exactly did you think you fit into any of that?”

He crouches in front of me, close enough that I can see the disgust twisting his expression.

“You were convenient. That’s all. Something warm to pass the time until I got bored.”

Every word lands like another wound splitting open.

“I had to tell you what you wanted to hear,” he says softly. “Otherwise you never would’ve spread those legs for me.”

A massive explosion tears through the sky behind him, bright enough to blind me. I throw my arm over my face, eyes squeezing shut against the heat and light. And when I look again, Trent is lying motionless in front of me. His body is twisted wrong, mangled beyond recognition except for his face.