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Boots quiet on dirt. Hatchet loose in my hand. Bow slung over my shoulder. Every step measured, every sound sorted. Wind through branches. Fire cracking behind me. Sleeping bodies shifting low near the vehicles. Wesker’s huff from somewhere close to the ER van.

I shouldn’t have kissed her.

The thought sinks in every time my route brings Max into view. Dark windows. Sleeping shapes inside. The place where I left the letter tucked beneath her windshield wiper like paper could fix what my mouth might have broken.

Too much.

Too fast.

I stop near the tree line and flex my hand around the hatchet until the leather grip bites into my palm.

Fuck.

Clair had just survived another man putting hands on her and a blade to her throat. She had fought her way free. She had stood over him shaking and bloody and alive, and I should have given her space to breathe.

Instead, I backed her into a shelf and kissed her like the world was ending.

My jaw tightens.

She kissed me back.

That’s the part that keeps trying to save me.

Her hands in my jacket. Her mouth opening under mine. The little sound she made when I touched her face. The way she looked at me before the others came crashing through the door.

But then she went still.

And when I stepped away from her, she didn’t stop me.

Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe she was already trying to figure out how to run from me without hurting me.

The letter was supposed to stop that.

It was supposed to give her the truth without my hands on her. Without my mouth. Without the heat and blood and adrenaline making everything too sharp to trust.

Most of it was already written. Folded in my pocket for days because I am apparently brave enough to rob cannibals but not brave enough to hand one woman a piece of damn paper.

I drag a hand over my beard and look toward Max again.

I shouldn’t have left the letter.

That thought circles for the tenth time in as many minutes, wearing a path through my skull. Too much. Not enough. Too honest. Too late.

The earrings make it worse.

Every circuit around camp brings me close enough to search for movement inside the car. I tell myself not to.

I do anyway.

Nothing.

My grip tightens around the hatchet.

Today won’t let go either. Clair pinned. That man’s hand over her mouth. The knife at her throat. Her body hitting the floor. The gunshot tearing through the aisle.

Too close.

Way too fucking close.